Archives for November 2015

This song began its life as a cut number from the score of the classic Lerner and Loewe film musical Gigi. After being excised from the film, the bittersweet waltz ballad was recorded by a couple of second-tier crooners and wound up becoming a very minor semistandard that is still heard occasionally on radio stations dedicated to so-called Traditional Pop. Years later, when a stage version was made of the film, the team co-opted the melody of “A Toujours” for one of the new numbers they were composing for the stage. Written to give a musical opportunity to the great Agnes Moorehead as Gigi’s mercenary Aunt Alicia, it set a cold-blooded negotiation about the terms of Gigi’s status as Gaston’s mistress to the rhapsodic waltz melody, a juxteposition that is both hilarious and a perfect illustration of the scene’s concept…the reduction of love and romance to a mere business negotiation. The stage version of Gigi has never worked in either its original stage production or its surprisingly long string of revivals, but what sets it slightly apart from the other terrible stage adaptations of great musical movies from around the same time (Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Meet Me In St. Louis, Singin’ In the Rain) is that it at least contains five new Lerner and Loewe songs that are pretty much on the level of the original score, and “The Contract” is easily the best of them.

This song is far too much of a forgotten gem, given that it’s an essential part of virtually every stage production of one of history’s most successful musicals, but because it was left out of the movie, it seems to be largely unknown outside of hardcore theater-buff circles. It’s the principle character song for Oklahoma’s villain, Jud Fry, and reminds us of why he’s one of musical theater’s most fascinating antagonists. The thing about Jud is, he isn’t evil; he’s crazy. He’s genuinely too insane to help any of the thing he does, and is simultaneously a psychotic sexual predator and potential killer and a tragic outcast who just wants to be loved. This song focuses on both sides of this persona, developing his desperate loneliness and his fantasies about Laurie but climaxing in a burst of psychopathic rage. It might have been cut from the film because the filmmakers were uncomfortable with its sheer darkness and ferocity (it is easily the most intense and dramatic number in the score), but since those filmmakers were, essentially, Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves, and since the movie version is so authentic to the stage show’s spirit in every other respect, I’d tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. It probably had more to do with Rob Steiger, the actor playing Jud, who was absolutely perfect for the part in every other way but probably didn’t have the voice for a number as challenging as “Lonely Room”. And given how hard it would have been to find a Hollywood studio ringer with a suitable sound for the character, it may have actually been the lesser of two evils under the circumstances to simply cut the number. Even so, it seems regrettable, since the only songs from Oklahoma that aren’t household-name tunes are the ones that didn’t make it into the movie, and this song certainly does not deserve to be forgotten the way it has.

This song was cut from the stage version of The Wiz, but reinserted for the disastrous 1978 film version. It’s the only one of the new numbers added for that film that is any good, or that sounds remotely like it belongs alongside the stage songs, probably because it was actually written by the original stage songwriters and actually had a natural slot in the original story. It’s more upbeat than the number that replaced it in the stage version, “I Was Born On the Day Before Yesterday”, and it makes a big impression in the film, but that’s mostly because it’s being sung by Michael Jackson (he couldn’t act, but he did a fine job with his big musical number, even if his Scarecrow still being on his pole at that point meant his dance options were limited). That said, it isn’t as lyrically interesting or as relevant to the character as “I Was Born On the Day Before Yesterday”; the music in The Wiz may have been intentionally in the style of Motown-esque Pop-R&B, but the lyrics to “You Can’t Win” sound more like an actual pop tune and less like a theater song than “I Was Born On the Day Before Yesterday”, which does a much better job of setting up the Scarecrow’s character, so I can see why they thought it would ultimately be more valuable to the show.

This is the song that was replaced by “Something Good” in the film version, and even productions that are rigorous about fidelity to the original stage version usually use “Something Good” in its place. There are two reasons for this: one, the way the songs are set up means you can substitute one for the other without changing a single line of dialogue, and two, given that fact, it’s only common sense to replace a bad song with a great one. This has to be the dullest, least tuneful ballad Rodgers and Hammerstein ever wrote, and while some of the songs in The Sound of Music may get some flack for being excessively sugary, the fact remains that this is the only clear dud in the entire score. Granted, it has slightly more to do with the actual dramatic situation than “Something Good”, but its dreariness drains all the dramatic life out of what should be a thrilling moment in the show…and let’s face it, almost none of the songs in The Sound of Music are tightly integrated into the drama anyway. The other two songs from the stage version of The Sound of Music that didn’t make it into the film, “How Can Love Survive” and “No Way To Stop It”, were cut for the sake of tonal changes and so they wouldn’t have to hire singers to play the Baroness and Max, but this song was cut because it simply wasn’t a good enough song, and I’d say that was one of the smartest decisions the makers of the film made.

In this case, the song in question is still a treasured piece of virtually every stage production of The Music Man, but was left out of the famous film version. It’s a very serious, almost severe song with an almost aria-like construction, and it perfectly sums up Marian’s character, telling us exactly who she is and what she wants without ever seeming expository or heavy-handed for a moment. There’s no clear explanation for why it didn’t make it into the film, but there is a fairly obvious theory. There were persistent rumors for many years that this song was ghostwritten, as a kind of gift, by Meredith Wilson’s friend and colleague Frank Loesser, and those rumors have now essentially been confirmed: there are recordings available of the two pieces of music from The Most Happy Fella…a cut song and a bit of underscoring…that, when combined, form the tune of “My White Knight”. Loesser never attempted to claim credit for the song, so it seems unlikely that Wilson was forced to drop it from the film, but the most plausible explanation is that Wilson simply didn’t feel comfortable using a number written by someone else in the film for some reason. The problem is that the song it was replaced with, “Being In Love”, while certainly pretty, is entirely incorrect for Marian’s character, and its bubbly, upbeat sound clashes with the earnest tone of the original number’s recitative-like middle section, which was retained. Despite not being at all a bad song in its own right, the inclusion of “Being In Love” is the only major flaw in an otherwise near-perfect film adaptation, and you could argue “My White Knight” constitutes the primary incentive to actually see the show in the theater, given the quality of most revival versions.