THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 15, Number 2 Spring 2003

Editor: Vera Mowry Roberts Co-Editor: Jane Bowers Managing Editor: Kimberly Pritchard Editorial Assistant: Ken Nielsen Circulation Manager: Jill Stevenson Circulation Assistant: Mark Ginsberg

Edwin Wilson, Executive Director James Patrick, Director

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

Editorial Board
Ruby Cohn Margaret Wilkerson Robert Vorlicky Bruce A. McConachie Don B. Wilmeth William W. Demastes

The Journal of American Drama and Theatre welcomes submissions. Our aim is to promote research on American playwrights, plays, and theatre, and to encourage a more enlightened understanding of our literary and theatrical heritage. Manuscripts should be prepared in conformity with The Chicago Manual of Style, using footnotes (rather than endnotes) . Hard copies should be submitted in duplicate. We request that articles be submitted on disk as well (3.5" floppy), using WordPerfect for Windows or Microsoft Word format. Submissions will not be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Please allow three to four months for a decision. Our distinguished Editorial Board will constitute the jury of selection. Address editorial inquiries and manuscript submissions to the Editors, JADT/Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4309. Our e-mail address is: mestc@gc.cuny.edu

Please visit our web site at: web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc Martin E. Segal Theatre Center publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre Studies in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Copyright 2003

The Journal of American Drama and Theatre (ISSN 1044-937X) is a member of CELJ and is published three times a year, in the Winter, Spring, and Fall. Subscriptions are $12.00 for each calendar year. Foreign subscriptions require an additional $6.00 for postage. Inquire of Circulation Manager/Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4309.

THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 15, Number 2

Spring 2003

Contents

WILLIAM DEMASTES,

Introduction: The American Musical

STUART

J.

HECHT,

Assimilation and Dramatic Configurations in the American Musical

lAURIE SCHMELING,

28

When Uncle Sam Invaded Broadway: Genre and Patriotism in the Critical Reception of Irving Berlin's This is the Army
LYN SCHENBECK,

43

Images of Women in American Musical Theatre: The 1920s

HENRY BIAL,

61

Welcome Back to Berlin: Lessons in Staging the Holocaust from Cabaret, 1966 and 1998
DAN BACALZO,

71

A Different Drum: David Henry Hwang's Musical "Revisal" of Flower Drum Song
GARY KONAS,

84

Song and Dance Men: New York Mayors in Musicals

CONTRIBUTORS

98

Introduction: The American Musical

This special issue on the American musical was inspired in large measure by the well-attended successes of several panels on the topic sponsored by the American Theatre and Drama Society and presented at the MLA and ATHE Conferences over the past year. Though by no means a scientific measure, those panels suggest a growing interest among scholars in the American musical, and this special issue is intended to confirm that that interest is supported by a wealth of scholarly possibility. What follows is a sampling of what can be-and perhaps still needs to be-accomplished when good scholars apply themselves to the genre. Stuart Hecht's essay, "Hello, Young Lovers," studies the conventions and traditions begun and extended as the musical evolved from various forms to the book musical which has since taken center stage in musical history. He sees the rise of a distinct form as a crucial evolutionary event, but he also observes that the "integration of urban ethnic groups into American culture and society" were influential factors as well. If given the chance, Laurie Schmeling would probably rhetorically ask Stuart Hecht the following question: "Why wasn't This is The Army included in your study?" Her essay answers the question, bringing to attention a matter of generic concern when pursuing a study of a form's evolution. Schmeling points out that This is The Army, a 1942 critical and popular success, was something of a cultural singularity, arising out of the world war engulfing the consciousness of the American public at that time, whose success deserves critical attention despite being outside of the genre's evolutionary mainstream. Finally, while an evolutionary theory of genre gives us important and valuable models to utilize, and even as these models do (and must) consider cultural influences, we must also be aware of those important, successful culturally-informed productions that have been influenced by and caught in historical eddies, left behind as the genre "evolves": their stories have something to tell us as well. Lyn Schenbeck's essay looks at another such historical eddie, the "Roaring Twenties," and selects three musicals of the decade to demonstrate how the genre presented as well as influenced images of women during that dynamic period. Gender and the genre exhibit a unique and important interrelationship: as Schenbeck observes, "Because it was so often female characters that led the way toward social, racial, and gender understanding and acceptance, images of women in these shows are a crucial element in determining their historical significance."

II

The next two essays, by Henry Sial on Cabaret and Daniel Sacalzo on Flower Drum Song, turn to matters of ethnicity and offer different takes on the concept of "evolution" by comparing the revival of one work and "revisal" of the other. Sial evaluates the alterations made in order for Cabaret to transfer from its original1966 incarnation to its 1998 form, observing the temporal requirements mandating the changes in order, essentially, to produce similar effects. Newer is not necessarily better; rather, the goal often is (or perhaps should be) to create an event equivalently appropriate to the sensibilities of a new audience. Similarly, Sacalzo notes of Henry David Hwang's "revisal" of Flower Drum Song, "His project is best summed up by Mei-Li in Hwang's revised script: 'If we want to make something new, we first have to love what is old .111 Ethnicity again arises in Gary Konas's essay on three musicals of three dynamic New York mayors-who happen to encompass the city's powerful "Three I's": Italy, Ireland, and Israel. Konas's essay, however, highlights another important point about the musical: its public nature. While intimate tales of love are pervasive among musicals, Konas's study recalls a curious statement on theatre by Arthur Miller: "[T]he language of the private life [is] prose. The language of society, the public life, is verse."l Konas himself observes, "Whereas the straight play tends to be representational, treating its audience as eavesdroppers, the musical is presentational, campaigning for the audience's attention." As convincing as it is perhaps unexpected that the American musical suits the public/political realm, Konas's essay further hints that former mayor Rudolph Guiliani may be the next subject for this intriguing American musical sub-genre, leaving us with a sense that an entire vein (vain?) of material for musicals has yet fully to be tapped. -William W. Demastes President, American Theatre and Drama Society Louisiana State University

1Arthur Miller, "The Family in Modern Drama/' in Modern Drama: Essays in Criticism, Travis Bogard and William I. Oliver, eds. (New York: Oxford UP, 1965):

225.

Journal of American Drama and Theatre 15 (Spring 2003)

HELLO, YOUNG LOVERS : ASSIMILIATION AND DRAMATIC CONFIGURATIONS IN THE AMERICAN MUSICAL

STUART J. HECHT Oscar Hammerstein II is rightfully applauded for his life-long contributions to the American musical theatre. From his earliest efforts as a lyricist working with the likes of Sigmund Romberg and Jerome Kern, through to his last phase teamed with composer Richard Rodgers, writing both books and lyrics, Hammerstein enjoyed enormous prestige and acceptance. He is also rightfully remembered for his proclivity toward forming believable characters and promoting a humanistic agenda, be it the anti-prejudicial statements found in South Pacific or the political and social dilemmas faced by the King of Siam. And while he is sometimes lampooned for his overly folksy depictions and sometimes-awkward wordplay, the underlying integrity of his work endures as seen by the steady number of successful revivals of his and Rodgers' shows, as well as that of Show Boat. Rodgers and Hammerstein have regularly been credited with the complete integration of the musical, creating the "musical play" out of what had been " musical comedy," initiating the dominance of book musicals and the musical's corresponding "golden age." Beginning with Oklahoma! (1943) this era lasted roughly twenty years, ending with shows like Fiddler On the Roof and Cabaret, only to be eventually toppled by the emergence of rock and roll and later the so-called "concept musicals" of the 1970's. However, if you place Rodgers and Hammerstein within the larger context of their times, other patterns emerge, as evidenced in their works, which in turn influenced not only the content but the form of the book musical itself. Why is it that shows from the 1940s and 1950s are revived so often? What is in their subject matter and overall structure that enables them to endure? Was there a dramatic formula such plays used that in part explains both their commercial viability as well as their universality? I believe that the story of the book musical's rise directly corresponds to the generational integration of urban ethnic groups into American culture and society. More specifically, I think the musical reflects the efforts by New York City's predominantly, though not exclusively, Jewish immigrant population to assimilate to American life, as they gradually gained acceptance and affluence.

YOUNG LOVERS

The Canon, Threesomes and Foursomes There is a canon of musicals that are revived on a regular basis, even though those shows are decades old. This group is all book musicals, essentially "musical plays" rather than "musical comedies" and the majority of them were created between 1945 and 1960. As such they constitute a particular generation of works and enjoy similar elements and traits. While some titles included in this list might be debatable, there is a core of works that can be included. This list would include the major works of Rodgers and Hammerstein (Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music), some by Lerner and Loewe (Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot), by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying), and a smattering of works by other leading lights: Kiss Me Kate (Cole Porter), Annie Get Your Gun (Irving Berlin), Show Boat (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein), West Side Story (leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim), The Music Man (Meredith Willson), Gypsy (Jules Styne/Stephen Sondheim), Pal Joey (Rodgers and Hart), Damn Yankees (Adler and Ross). There are other works of great prominence from the period that are not revived often, usually because the books have grown dated (Finian's Rainbow, Fiorello!, Lady in the Dark, The Pajama Game, for example) and hence not on this list. There are also prominent book musicals written in the early 1960s that enjoy comparable revival success: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Fiddler On the Roof, Hello, Dolly!, Man of La Mancha, Sweet Charity, Cabaret. It is also true that in recent years, in order for some musicals to work effectively with contemporary audiences, some revivals have featured reworked books, making the stories either more topical or less offensive particularly in terms of portrayals of minorities. This would include recent revivals of The Boys from Syracuse, Pal Joey, Annie Get Your Gun and Flower Drum Song. But major revivals of most of the other musicals have been done successfully without drastic changes to story line or situation. Even the 2001 British reworking of Oklahoma! did not tamper with the essential story line or characters, choosing to deepen them instead. Meanwhile, there are many earlier classics that are never revived, despite possessing outstanding scores from musical theatre luminaries. Most of those come from the era of "musical comedy" and feature words and music by the likes of the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart. This is so generally acknowledged that when efforts are made to return to such material an entirely new book is written, as was the case for Crazy for You. But aside from Anything Goes, most shows from the 1920s and 1930s are kept on the shelf, unproduced, even though songs from those many

HECHT

shows are considered American popular classics and endure on their own. This suggests that the primary determinant for whether or not a show endures is its book. Almost every show in the "canon" is a book musical, suggesting that it is the story that enables the work to hold up over time, and the relative quality and enduring universality of that book also determine the degree to which it can still work on stage today. My initial question was: from where did the book musical come, and what are its components that enable it to work? My journey led me well beyond the realm of musical theatre and into the arena of the sociological, to believe that there is a direct relationship between how the Jewish population of New York City assimilated and evolved during the first half of the twentieth century, of the political threat it posed to the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (i.e. WASP) establishment, and how its strategies for upward mobility and acceptance became played out on the New York stage. Hence the book musical reflects efforts to gain acceptance and recognition; its very structure is an expression of those broader societal dynamics and shifts, certain dynamics of which still apply today and enable the form's perpetuation.

Musical Formations: Vaudeville and Operetta It is important to note here that the American musical was always a mongrel form. While evidence suggests that The Black Crook (1866) was not necessarily the first musical, it is nevertheless important because it was an amalgam . It was created by the owners of Niblo's Garden Theatre, who took a French ballet troupe whose theatre had burned down, and introduced them into a fantasy/melodrama script, with much spectacle. They thus wed crowdpleasing, hero vs. villain melodrama with austere ballet (though the predominately male audiences paid closer attention to the dancers' legs and suggestive songs) to create a landmark middlebrow event.l If this notion of blending divergent elements became part of the musical's format, two specific sources would later inform much of what became standard fodder for such shows. The first element was vaudeville, the fast-paced, glib, grassroots American entertainment phenomenon, with its comedic stereotypes, gag humor, song and dance, and catchy songs. The second element was operetta, starting with Offenbach, itself a popularized, middlebrow take on grand opera. But to American audiences operetta came to represent a more highbrow, classically European entertainment, with its foreign settings
lSee for example Robert C. Toll, On With the Show: the First Century of Show Business in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

YOUNG LOVERS

and exotically idealized romantic sentiments. And if vaudeville relied upon largely American-born, Tin Pan Alley composers, operettas came from largely European-born, classically trained composers. The former were usually more bent on sales, the latter on "art." Therefore, the vaudeville tradition was democratic, designed to appeal to mass tastes, whereas operetta mostly implied wealthy European aristocracy, with women in flowing gowns waltzing with immaculately uniformed men, swirling across vast, highly-polished palace floors. One aimed at America, the other at an elite, fantasy world abroad; one appealed to the practical realities of urban American life, the other to a romantic dream world to which one might aspire. For years a musical entertainment was either a "musical comedy," which generally meant roots in vaudeville, or an operetta, even if set in the Canadian Rockies. Eventually the book musicals would deliberately blend the two, perhaps in the tradition of The Black Crook, for demographic and commercial appeal.
Lessons and Love Even though the canon of musical plays often deals with more substantial subject matter, the stories are still built upon the romantic themes that formed the foundation of its predecessor, musical comedy. The King and I might be about colonialism, or the conflict between tradition and modernity, but the plot itself centers on the interpersonal relationship, the growing fondness between Anna and the King; West Side Story might be an eloquent statement warning of the dangers of prejudice, but the audience focus remains fixed on the love between Tony and Maria. Perhaps it is because America is essentially a middleclass nation-and, therefore, most concerned with domesticity-that stories of "boy-meet-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl" remain dominantly at the center of American collective values and hence a commercial staple. There are few if any commercially successful musicals that do not include that central romantic pairing. There are several shows that focus exclusively on that central pair; the prime conflict in the work is that there is an outside force threatening the duo's happiness. Sometimes this is simply a third party, usually a rival lover. This plot device is found in a number of shows: My Fair Lady (Freddie), Camelot (Lancelot), The Most Happy Fe/la (Tony or Joe, depending how you view the work). In other works the "third party" might be selfish ambition. It is ambition that either destroys or threatens to destroy the central love relationship in Pal Joey, Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy, for example. The bulk of the remaining shows are noteworthy because they feature more than one romantic couple. There is usually at least a second couple, sometimes even a third. This is most telling. If you look at the evolution of the musical prior to the so-called "golden age" you

HECHT

can see how the additional couple(s) evolved; in the era of the book musical, this already-established plot device began to be used to express larger societal issues, reflecting both artist and audience concerns. There are strong advantages to the use of double couples, instead of a primary couple accompanied by a third party. When constructing in threes there is always someone who is the "odd man out." It is always two against one, with the members constantly changing. Threes therefore create chaos and disruption and are, as a result, very effective in either drama or farce, where asymmetry is the rule. But, in the end, two will be happy and the third will usually not. But double couples suggest that there is someone for everyone, that no one will be left out in the end, even if the final groupings are not to everyone's liking. There is at least a consolation prize. Double couples are therefore symmetrical, almost artificially so, which points toward artifice and traditional comedy. However, when the member of one couple loses a partner, their loss is heightened when placed beside the other couple's completeness and hence happiness. Consequently, this form can also amplify loss, adding greater poignancy to the dramatic. Plots featuring multiple couples can be found in Roman comedies, commedia dell'arte, and Shakespeare. It was a device favored by Gilbert and Sullivan, themselves a big influence on the twentieth century American musical. But American musical theatre did not turn to it with any regularity until the toned-down Kern-BoltonWodehouse Princess Theatre musicals of the 1910s. Shows like Oh, Boy! and Very Good Eddie both relied upon use of double couples. Perhaps it was due to the limited resources available at that small theatre; with a small cast, the double couple device was an efficient way to create variety and comedic misunderstandings.2 While the double couple format began in 1910s American musicals as a dramatic mechanism, we will see how librettists later utilized this device to reflect changes in the composition of their audiences. The primary couple in any given show reflects the societal ideals, not only of behavior, but also in terms of power. The secondary couple served a variety of functions, all in relation to the primary couple, that evolved over time. But the secondary couple was still subservient to the interests of the primary couple, and held lesser sway in the eyes of the audience. Generally speaking, the secondary couple might function in one of four different capacities in such
2See amongst many Gerald Bordman, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, 2nd Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); also, P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, Bring On the Girls!, (New York: Limelight Books, 1984); also Julian Mates, (Westport, CT; Greenwood Press, 1985).

YouNG LovERS

musical plays: 1) they served an antagonistic function to the primary couple's protagonist function; 2) they served as dramatic foils, highlighting by contrast key dynamics that favored the primary couple; 3) they served a comedic commentary of the primary couple's plight, not unlike the way that Christopher Marlowe's Wagner functions in relation to the antics of Dr. Faustus; 4) they spoke to an element of the audience demographically different from those whom the primary couple addressed. As the musical evolved from the 1910s up to the 1940s the secondary couple functioned mostly in the first three capacities, with some notable exceptions. But with the book musical firmly established with Oklahoma! in 1943, the fourth element increasingly became a critical dynamic in that secondary couple's use. Background Evolution of Double Couples Librettist Guy Bolton's Princess Show books, especially when combined with P. G. Wodehouse's W. S. Gilbert-inspired conceits, favored farce, but there was a darker dimension to them. In Oh, Boy! (1917), for instance, the primary couple, George and Lou Ellen, have just wed, but want to keep it a secret. Amongst the various friends who break into their apartment is Jackie Sampson, an actress on the lam from the law. Compared to the virginal protagonist and his bride, Jackie represents another element in society. Where the newlyweds are relatively innocent and somewhat old-fashioned, Jackie is modern and risque. Her dress is revealing and she totes a gun she grabbed from a policeman. And though her "crime" is innocent enough (she flees from a melee at a ritzy club), Jackie is criminal because of her escape. But the character is more than unconventional, she is modern also in her outlook, assumptions and behavior. Jackie is outspoken, aggressive, sophisticated, less than virginal, and entirely attractive, both physically and in terms of her personality. She anticipates the 1920s flappers with their freedom and screwball verve. And though Jackie is paired with the protagonist's best friend, she is more a nuisance to the newlyweds consummating their marriage than anything else. Still, this secondary character represents a type at odds with the romantic protagonists. In a sense, this use of subsidiary characters to appeal to the full range of audience members is no different than what is usually found in Shakespeare. There is something for everyone in the audience, from the aristocrat to the groundling: Hamlet is for the politicos and philosophers, speaking in lofty verse, while the gravedigger is there for the groundlings, growling happily in prose. Bolton's script to Oh, Boy! appeals to the older generation, the younger generation, the old-fashioned, and the modern. It is smart, witty, lively and fun. And its range of characters ensures its appeal.

HECHT

When Bolton and Wodehouse wrote the better-known Very Good Eddie (1915), they again returned to the double-couple motif, but this time the distinctions functioned differently. Each couple includes a dominating spouse and a meek spouse. Circumstances reshuffle the deck, so that the two domineering spouses (Percy and Georgina) end up separated from the two meek spouses (Eddie and Elsie), for whom the audience roots. Eddie and Elsie make do, trying to preserve propriety though instantly attracted to one another. It is clever and cute, with a predictable outcome. And though the configuration lacks the sociological angle of Oh, Boy!, it still defines the proper couples as being likable protagonists, with the other the lesslikable antagonists. As such they serve as foils to each other, with only a sense that each ends up where they rightfully belong. There is then diversity of characterizations amongst the two couples, but all still belong to the same social milieu. Guy Bolton returned to the same formula twenty years later when he wrote the book to Anything Goes (1934). It resembles Oh, Boy! with a relatively innocent romantic pair (Hope and Billy) contending with the brash, worldly, outspoken actress, Reno Sweeney, who in the end winds up with a wimpy British aristocrat, who pales by comparison beside her. Amongst the major musicals of the 1920s, most did not make use of the double couple scheme. One major exception though is The Desert Song (1926), with a book by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. The Harbach-Hammerstein team did not use the format for other shows they wrote in the period, most notably RoseMarie. Why they turned to it for The Desert Song is unknown, but their use foreshadowed what Hammerstein would construct consistently later in his career. The Desert Song is set in a mythical Morocco and, clearly influenced by the then-popular Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow films, features the French Foreign Legion, an elusive Robin Hood inspired Arab hero (the meek Frenchman Pierre in disguise) who sweeps the heroine off of her feet. Margot, the heroine, is engaged to Paul, an overly aggressive French officer; Paul has had a secret liaison with Azuri, a native woman. Also present are Benjamin and Susan, a bumbling British correspondent and his brass-tacks girlfriend, there mostly for comic relief. Yet it adds up to three couples in all, each with a distinctive identity and function. The primary couple is Margot and Pierre, the secondary couple Paul and Azuri, the third couple Benjamin and Susan . Harbach-Hammerstein make Margot and Pierre's relationship entirely romantic. Their relationship is in the style of the European-inspired operettas of the day, and their songs are in the operetta vein. They are also supposedly French, though the audience would be encouraged to sympathize with them along American lines.

YOUNG LOVERS

In other words, though ostensibly "French" they are in fact American fantasy characters, about as French as Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum are Japanese in The Mikado! Margot and Paul, then, also represent the dominant culture and its ideals. They are white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant as the hero and heroine; there is nothing about them that would indicate otherwise, despite their thinly proscribed "masks" of identity. The secondary couple is less reputable. Paul is supposed to be heroic, but his zeal reveals him to be cruel, even sadistic. This is no match for Margot! While Pierre is revealed to be the heroic Red Shadow, Paul is similarly revealed to be a brute. Consequently, he ends up with the native woman, Azuri. To period audiences Azuri would be sexy, exotic-and essentially base. She dances in a sexual manner, is consumed by jealousy to betray our heroes, is ruthless and brutal to a degree that matches the supposedly civilized Paul. In short, the two belong together. Paul cannot have Margot, perhaps because he does not match her idealized standards, perhaps because he has already slept with Azuri and, therefore, is no longer "pure." So whereas the Margot/Pierre match is defined by romance, the Paui/Azuri match is defined by sex. Paui/Azuri represent the bottom of the play's society: they are mixed ethnically (where Paul is Christian, Azuri is presumably Muslim); they are defined only in terms of their physicality (sex and violence); the music associated with them echoes Arabian themes, hence foreign to WASP America; and both pose threats to the primary couple. The third couple, Benjamin and Susan, mostly function as comic relief. Benjamin is a comedic coward of the sort later popularized by Bob Hope-a bumbling, fast-talking, object of ridicule, who somehow keeps the girl. He is also British, which is to say a third nationality, though familiar and sympathetic to 1920s American audiences. The couple is also an inversion of a sort later regularly found in theatre and film : Benjamin is cowardly and shy of sex, though not quite effeminate; Susan is strong and assertive and entirely in favor of sex, though not quite masculine. In short, this duo is comedic and harmless outsiders caught in the middle of a full-blown melodrama and trying just to make do by relying on clever wit in the face of brute force. They are like a comic vaudeville routine that somehow survives the Titanic. As such they are not subject to the moral absolutes that govern the other two couples. They will not be rewarded for operettainspired fantasy ideals, nor damned for misbehavior. No one cares if they have sex or not-the two deserve each other and we, the audience, are happy to have them around to break up the seriousness of the rest of the play. It is in the tradition of say a Wagner to Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, or a Bottom/Pyramus to Shakespeare's Oberon et al.

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Hammerstein would return only a few years later to using a comparable couples formula with his libretto for Show Boat (1927). Again we find the primary couple (Magnolia/Ravena!) who embody the WASP ideal of romantic love leading to marriage and children. They sing "Make Believe" when they first meet, a song that echoes operetta; their relationship is entirely serious, even sad. Juxtaposed against them is the secondary couple (Julie/ Steve or Julie/ Bill). Where Magnolia/ Ravena! are WASP, Julie is of mixed blood ; where Magnolia/Ravena! result in marriage, Julie is first with Steve, later with the unseen Bill, suggesting sex but not marriage; where Magnolia/Ravena! sing in operetta-like tones, Julie is known for the "coon song" "Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine." There are other couples in Show Boat as well, but none can be described as romantic. Ellie and Frank seem more concerned with ambition than love, Queenie and Joe focus on basic survival, and Cap'n Andy and wife Parthy are anything but outwardly loving. It is then the double couple that serve as contrasting foils to each other, representing the upperhalf and the lower-half of riverboat society. And since Show Boat is so concerned with the implications of racial inequality, it is fitting that both extremes of the caste system be represented. For the most part, musical comedies of the 1930s featured weak books and are generally not revived today. However, Of Thee I Sing (1931) featured music by the Gershwins and a book by GeorgeS. Kaufman that did make use of double couples. It was the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize, due to its biting satire of American politics. The script featured double couples in what was beginning to become a familiar configuration. The protagonist couple is presidential candidate John P. Wintergreen and his girlfriend Mary Turner; the secondary couple is Alexander Higginbottom and Diana Devereaux. Though a politico, Wintergreen marries for love, which also boosts his political campaign . He praises Mary's corn muffins and is later rescued from scandal by her giving birth, again the domestic ideal. Within the context of the play they are serious characters and their love is real. As a Presidential candidate and his bride they are both WASP and their campaign song is the closest thing to a ballad in the play, "Of Thee I Sing ." In contrast, Higginbottom is entirely a joke, cut from the same cloth as Benjamin in The Desert Song-bumbling, inept, but winning out in the end; Diana is a conniving sex pot, ruthless and ambitious, cut from the same cloth as Azuri in The Desert Song. And though not ethnic per se, she is related to the foreign monarch, Napoleon, a fact that places her outside American values and almost results in war. With Higginbottom ending up with Devereaux we have another mongrel match, akin to Paul and Azuri, which resolves the plot but does not suggest genuine happiness or love; this duo represent sex, comedy and outsiders. One can only presume that they pose no real threat to

YouNG LOVERS

10

the primary couple, or to their happiness. The Higginbottom/Devereaux alliance then is the ying to the Wintergreen/Turner alliance's yang, much as was the case for the Julie/Steve pairing compared to Magnolia/Ravenel. There is room for both pairs in this society, even if one is given clear preference and, along with it, power. After all, Wintergreen/Turner will succeed in their ambitions whereas Higginbottom/Devereaux will not, and the same holds mostly true for Magnolia/Ravenel, especially when compared to Julie/Steve. Still, the world of Of Thee I Sing and the world of Show Boat are enriched by the presence of both sorts of couples; they serve to fill out the social reality, making the plot and characters seem more three-dimensional. But there is more. There is also the implication that failure is as possible as success in the world of both plays, and that for those who do not succeed there is a drop in the social order, a downward mobility, perhaps (in the case of Julie) even the hint of alcoholism leading to a not-so-distant death.

Musical Plays Arrive It is with Oklahoma! (1943) that the book musical is firmly established. Oklahoma! is regularly noted for its integration of book, music, lyric, dance, character and theme. It is also praised for the ballet-inspired choreography of Agnes DeMille. But in many ways Oklahoma! is also the amalgamation of every musical element that preceded it. On the surface it is a folksy, homespun tale centered on a romance and a picnic dance. But closer inspection shows it to be far more complex and sophisticated. Musically, the show blends operetta ("Many a New Day'') with vaudeville C'Kansas City," '1t's a Scandal! It's an Outrage!''); even the title number hints at a blue note in its choral "Oklahoma" section. The same range is reflected in the dance numbers, from the ballet that ends the first act, to the buck and wing dancing of Will Parker. But Oklahoma! also builds upon Hammerstein's earlier use of multiple couples and uses them in much the same fashion. The primary couple, Curly and Laurie, are again romantic, serious and WASP; the music they sing together are ballads, and Laurie even flirts with operetta, as suggested earlier. The secondary couple, Will and Ado Annie enjoy a relationship built on sex, are comedic, and also are WASP. But Ado Annie is tempted by Ali Hakim, a thinly veiled Jewish character (as were most peddlers in the West): sexual, comedic, and ethnic. It is Jud who threatens the primary couple's happiness; Jud is sexual, serious and, though not ethnic, decidedly an outsider. Curly also flirts with Gertie, comedic and sexual. In the end, after Jud's death, couples are paired according to proper type: Curly with Laurie, Will with Ado Annie, and Ali Hakim with Gertie. Jack has found his Jill. Ali Hakim, like Jud, is an outsider who has gained access to

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the dominant culture of the play. But where Jud must die, Ali Hakim is allowed greater acceptance by play's end . Jud threatens to destroy the primary couple; Ali wishes to sleep with Ado Annie, but has no desire for permanence, and hence is not a serious threat to Will and Ado Annie. Beside, it is clear in both "I Caint Say No" and in "All 'Er Nothing" that neither Will nor Ado Annie are particularly faithful to each other. But sex isn't marriage. It is Ado Annie's talk of marriage that spooks Ali Hakim and threatens Will. But to the romanticallybased Laurie, it is love and marriage that are the ideal, even if she is sexually charged, judging by her kissing Curly. Jud's interest in sex threatens to destroy her idealized innocence, and his threatening return on their marriage day is symbolic of the danger he presents. That is why he must be destroyed, according to the play's value system. But Ali Hakim is relatively harmless. He has no desire to disturb the status quo. The inverted moralizing of "It's a Scandal! It's an Outrage!" in which he sings about how nowadays sex must lead to marriage demonstrates his wish to live outside the status quo. If Ado Annie wants to remain "wild and free" so too does Ali Hakim. In the end he has happily surrendered Ado Annie to Will, but cannot control his impulses, so ends up in a shotgun wedding with Gertie. He is now tamed, forced to settle down and join the community. No one mentions that it is a mixed marriage; he is reluctant, but everyone else welcomes him into their world with open arms. He is converted to their lifestyle and system of beliefs, like it or not; once so assimilated he can find acceptance and domesticity, even if not blissful! But his acceptance is dictated by Curly and Laurie, who welcome him to their wedding festivities; Ali Hakim will adjust to them, not they to him. Hammerstein repeated this use of double couples in all of his shows with Rodgers, though with telling variations. In Carousel (1945) the primary couple (Billy and Julie) are not ethnic, per se, but are decidedly outsiders. The secondary couple, the Snows, are portrayed as slightly comedic and entirely part of the respectable middle-class. It is Billy's efforts to gain upward mobility that ultimately doom him and his romantically-based love for Julie. But in the end he gains salvation and acceptance in death, singing the pseudo-religious "When You Walk Through the Storm"; he is no longer a roustabout, but in death an angel or prophet, converted to a higher sensibility. His and Julie's love, once almost illicit, is transformed to the spiritual, the sacred, and both are cleansed because of it. As such they trump the affluent, materialistic Snows; the "fringe" characters gain respectability. In South Pacific (1949) the primary couple (Emile and Nellie) are juxtaposed against the secondary couple (Cable and Liat). Andrea Most notes that Liat remains silent, that she is only an ethnic paste-up

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of a character, two-dimensional and only a plot device.3 True. But in a sense so too is Emile. Another angle on the play is that Cable and Nellie are essentially the natural couple : both are Americans (though Cable comes from money and Nellie does not), both stuck in a foreign land, both plagued by the prejudices they carry with them. Moreover, both Cable and Nellie find true love in the South Pacific, and find it amongst the Polynesian locals, not from amongst the American soldiers and nurses. For the aristocratic-born Cable, his love for Liat means personal happiness, but fettered by a. conservative upbringing he recognizes his love (passion, sex, ethnic mixing) will result in downward mobility in America. For the down-home Nellie, her love for Emile also means personal happiness, but perhaps because she is not as tied to tradition as is Cable, she has the capacity to act with greater personal freedom and learns to accept native ways. However, the suggestion is that she will stay amongst the Tonkonese married to Emile, and will never have to face the folks back home and their prejudices. It also helps that Emile, though once wed to a native woman and possessing mixed children, is himself French. The continental identity trumps the American in 1940s culture wars. And this dynamic is heightened by the casting of Ezio Pinza, an opera singer, in that role. As a result, Emile is exotic and unorthodox and an outsider, but entirely acceptable given his highbrow affiliations. Given the initial template of double couples, then, Emile and Nellie are less ethnically mixed (even with the native but Frenchsinging children) than are Cable and Liat. Emile and Nellie's relationship is romantic and will lead to domesticity (they serve soup at the end); Cable and Liat's relationship is sexually based and is hence doomed. It is not unlike the couple construction found in Hammerstein's earlier work, Show Boat. Cable, like Julie before him, is doomed, but his destruction paves the way for Nellie's future happiness (much like Julie does for Magnolia's career); Cable dies, but Nellie finally realizes how deeply she wants Emile to survive that same suicide mission, triggering her final transformation and acceptance of more liberal ways. The King and I (1951), Flower Drum Song (1958) and The Sound of Music (1959), all again feature the double couple configuration. In the first two shows the double couples represent the clash between traditional ways and the modern, with the modern as equated with assimilating to Western ways. Again, the primary couple are more traditional in both, and their songs are more serious and ballad based, reflecting the romantic and domestic intentions; the secondary couples, by contrast, are more sexual and/or passionate in
3Andrea Most, '"You've Got to be Carefully Taught': The Politics of Race in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific." Theatre Journal, 52.3 (2000) 307-337.

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their intent, as they desire to break with tradition as it threatens their personal happiness. Use of couples in The Sound of Music is less pronounced, with the secondary couple being Liesl and her boyfriend Rolf, at first innocent ("You Are Sixteen'') and later sinister when he becomes a Nazi. But Maria is a stranger in the house (community) and is able to convert the Van Trapp family to her view of life. And just as Maria transforms the family toward that which is conventionally "good," the world outside is being converted to "evil" via the Nazis. The family must emigrate and flee toward freedom. And as was the case in Carousel, the rebellious Maria (like Billy) finds herself through domestic duties and attains a higher spiritual level, reinforced by another Rodgers pseudo-religious song, "Climb Every Mountain." The Rodgers and Hammerstein shows established the new standard-and formula-that others then attempted to follow. Significantly, a number of the most successful also utilized that double couple paradigm, and along with it comparable themes of insiders versus outsiders and implied assimilation. Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon (1947) is a prime example. Two Americans (Tommy and Jeff) travel in Scotland (a foreign country) and come upon an eighteenth century village. They then form two of the play's three couples: Tommy falls for Fiona, Jeff for Meg. But it is also the day of Jean's wedding to Charlie, at the expense of Harry Beaton. In terms of plot construction, the Jean/Charlie wedding represents the communal center of the play; Jean and Charlie represent the perpetuation of the status quo and their union will no doubt result in children. Harry also exists in this cultural center, but his bitter dissatisfaction at Jean's rejection causes him to try to flee. But if anyone leaves, then the magic spell that protects Brigadoon will break, signaling the town's demise. Harry is denied the right of the emigre, so unable to leave he dies. The other two romances exist more at the town's fringe. Tommy and Jeff are both clearly outsiders. But Fiona is also marginalized as the older, unwed daughter. Similarly, Meg is marginalized as the promiscuous, comedic character of lower social stock. Consequently, Tommy and Fiona form the romantic duo and the purity of their love enables the town to reappear at play's end to accommodate Tommy's acceptance. Jeff and Meg, on the other hand, are the secondary couple, comedic in tone and built entirely on sex, without long-term commitments. She is a Scottish Ado Annie, he an American Ali Hakim, at best a reluctant groom, just passing through. Jeff is also modern, urbane and cynical, whereas Tommy is nostalgic, idealistic and romantic. Jeff fits in with modern-day Manhattan, Tommy does not. His discovery of Fiona rescues him, just as her finding a mate rescues her. But where Harry Beaton was not allowed to emigrate, Tommy can . Perhaps it is because Harry runs from hate, knowing it will destroy others, while Tommy comes to

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Brigadoon appreciatively, with love, eager to add to the race. Tommy gains admission, thereby converting to Brigadoon and its ways, leaving his own identity behind. The idealized dream represented by Brigadoon is a fantasy he happily buys into with its promise of eternal happiness and marital bliss. It is a Scottish version of the American dream. Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls (1950) is perhaps the epitome of the double couple format and its assimilative associations. Again we find two couples: Sky and Sarah, on the one hand, and Nathan with Adelaide on the other. Both Sky and Sarah are portrayed as outsiders to the dominant, local gambling community; Sky because he is a loner, Sarah because she is with the Salvation Army. But later we find that Sky's real name is the Biblical sounding Obadiah, that he is from Midwest farm stock. And just as the name "Sky" points to heaven, Obadiah is the proper match for the religious Sarah. He seems to bring her down to earth, even as she inspires him to want her to wed. Their relationship then is romantic-about as operetta-like as Loesser gets as they sing the gentle ballad "I'll Know" together-and while charming, essentially serious. Nathan and Adelaide, by contrast, are ethnically based, probably Jewish. In "Sue Me" Nathan calls himself by the Yiddishized "nogoodnik" and also asks the Yiddish query, "nu?" that Adelaide clearly understands. They are recognizably New York ethnic types. And while there seems to be genuine affection for one another, their relationship is more about sex than marriage, much to Adelaide's regret when she complains of "getting the fish-eye from the hotel clerk." As the secondary couple, then, they fit the mold of being ethnic, sexually-based, and comedic and singing more along the lines of American vaudeville than along the lines of the European inspired operetta. In fact, the entire gambling community is a microcosm of the ethnic, New York culture. Their religion is gambling; when they sing "The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York" it is a paean to tradition, sung in the final verse in chords, in part barbershop, but ultimately that more usually associated with liturgical music. But after all, the crap game is their religion. Sky and Sarah ultimately serve as missionaries, trying to get the gamblers to "see the light," to correct the errors of their ways. Sky bets on their souls-and they lose. Consequently, they all end up in the mission house and join a rousing gospel number, singing their repentance, finally finding God. "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" is a conversion scene, when all abandon their former selves (gamblers, ethnic) and embrace the proselytizing Protestantism promoted by Sarah's Salvation Army. Having thus assimilated, marriage is now possible. Sky weds Sarah, and Nathan finally can wed Adelaide.

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Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate (1948) plays with the double couple scenario, largely through the contrast between actors Fred and Lilli, and their alter egos, Petruchio and Kate. There is also Lois and her gambling boyfriend Bill, presumably the secondary couple, who also play the secondary couple in Taming of the Shrew, Bianca and Lucentio. Fred and Lilli, once wed, will again wed by play's end. They are therefore domestically-based. Musically they sing "Wunderbar" togethe~ a waltz clearly inspired by Viennese operetta, and also the haunting ballad, "So In Love," which establishes their relationship as romantic, rather than sexual. They are also lead actors in the company, hence the top of the pecking order, and are seen throughout as playing Shakespearean characters who parallel their own lives, reinforcing their social standing. Lois and Bill are more sexually-based and irresponsible, as demonstrated by their song "Why can't You Behave?" In addition to being mixed up with gambling gangsters, Bill is also a featured dancer with three Black performers (Fred's dresser, Paul, with two friends)4 who perform the decidedly sexual, "Too Darn Hot." Bill and Lois are comedic and flighty, a lower rung in 1940s WASP America's social ladder. What is most interesting in Kiss Me Kate, beyond the couples, is the song "Brush Up Your Shakespeare." It is a study in contrasts. Two gangster enforcers suddenly become vaudevillians. The song is a vaudeville list song. But though vaudeville (lowbrow), the subject matter is Shakespeare (highbrow), though the reason to use Shakespeare, they argue, is to get women to sleep with you (lowbrow, again). But the larger message is one of assimilation. If you can transform yourself by mastering high culture then you will win society's rewards. Everyone is an actor and in America you can be who you want to be. It is the American dream, distinctive from the stifling restrictions posed by European traditional social roles and delineations. Where else can threatening gangsters instantly transform themselves into lovable hoofers and magically demonstrate a high class wit, sophistication and education incongruous with the audience's previous impressions of them, as well as their probable background? And yet the message of Kiss Me Kate seems to be, and this from the only major composer or lyricist of the era who was not himself ethnic (Cole Porter), that while one might dress up in high culture and try to use it for one's own advancement, ultimately it cannot disguise one's true identity. Though acting the highbrow Shakespeare, Fred and Lilli still behave as unruly, egocentric actors; the singing gangsters argue the merits of using Shakespeare to get
4Samuel and Bella Spewack, Kiss Me Kate, found in Stanley Richards, ed., Ten Great Musicals of the American Theatre (Radnor, PA: Chilton Books, 1973)

253-254.

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girls, but not for romantic (love, marriage) intent but rather for crude (sex) intent. The outward guise of assimilation, in the end, is a fraud. But since the audience roots for all the abovementioned characters, such behavior is not condemned, merely acknowledged as being an acceptable fact of life. The last show to consider here is West Side Story (1956). Obviously a work designed to portray the destructiveness of prejudice, Arthur Laurents's book makes use of the double couple format. The primary couple, Tony and Maria, are romantic, sincere and represent the hope of the future. They sing together in tones akin to classical music ("One Hand, One Heart" and "Tonight''), and though ethnically mixed, suggest domesticity and peace. The secondary couple are Bernardo and Anita, sexually passionate and entirely ethnic. Since the people in the Puerto Rican community portrayed in the play are newcomers, they do not have the established social clout of the selfstyled Americans. They still have one eye on their country of origin, rather than on America. The implication seems to be that only if they can become more like Tony and Maria, (i.e. mixed), and therefore leave their ethnicity behind, will they have a chance for acceptance and success in America. West Side Story, paradoxically given its dominant theme of opposing intolerance, is itself intolerant of clinging to one's ethnic identity in the face of assimilation.

The Rise of Ethnic Prominence In short, in the roughly twenty years between Very Good Eddie and Oklahoma!, a shift occurred in the portrayal of the double couple. At first both the primary and secondary couple were WASP, differing only in personality or lifestyle. But by the time of Oklahoma!, perhaps due to Hammerstein's invention, the primary couple embodied romantic love, operetta/ sincerity and basic WASP values, whereas the secondary couple embodied passion, popular culture, and irresponsibility, and were often comedic and usually ethnic. As such it spoke to its changing New York City audience, perhaps in reassuring ways, at least as understood through the eyes of the authors. The WASP order was in power, and it was a welcoming, benevolent element. Even though immigration curtailed in the early 1920s, the preexisting ethnic population was gradually gaining ground: politically, economically and socially. The second couple lacked the primary couple's prestige and had their foibles, but they were a welcome, colorful component in the communal whole. The emergence of the ethnic figure as hero occurred in the years following World War II. Now a Frank Sinatra or a Kirk Douglas shared the stage with the Clark Gables and Gary Coopers of the world. This would all culminate with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, the first Irish Catholic President. Heroes gave way to anti-heroes, the

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upright to the cool. You can trace the evolution of the ethnic hero through the characters in the American musical. By the late 1950's the ethnic figure, until then confined to a secondary role and generally not directly defined as being ethnic, came to the forefront on the musical stage. Note their central presence in West Side Story (1956), Most Happy Fe/la (1956), Flower Drum Song {1958), and Fiorello! (1959). Characters akin to the Ali Hakims, Liats and Nathan Detroits began to become the primary, powerful protagonists of the musical stage. In West Side Story, Most Happy Fe/la, Flower Drum Song and Fiorello! the central characters are all recent immigrants to America, and the plots largely center upon the difficulties in adjusting to American life. And though not ostensibly an ethnic protagonist, Meredith Willson's The Music Man {1957), in a plot suggested to Willson by Frank Loesser, tells of an outsider, Professor Harold Hill, who manages to convert a skeptical Iowa town to his particular dream. In the early 1960s this dynamic came even further forward. The protagonists were either blatantly ethnic or concerned with issues of ethnic identity. Dolly Levi is clearly Jewish though this is never directly stated. Tevye all the villagers of Anatevka are Jewish. Cabaret demonstrates how Nazism (anti-Semitism) threatens Gentile and Jew alike. Other hit shows of the period boast similar concerns. Man of La Mancha focuses upon the high-minded outsider, trying to fight for idealism and combating prejudices. Don Quixote is also an aristocrat who cavorts with the mongrel lower classes, confusing them with nobility, and, in the end we learn that they are the truly noble, compared to Don Quixote's aristocratically-born family and their base actions. The message is clear: true nobility is gained by merit, not by birth. Camelot is similar in spirit, with its message that actions speak more nobly than birth. But Camelot is also "ethnic" in that it is an attempt to explore WASP ethnic roots, and that it promotes King Arthur's idealism with its lessons of chivalric action and the creation of a respectful, open society. Sweet Charity's title character is simply a born loser, whose misadventures seem to burlesque those of Don Quixote, the lovable dreamer, doomed for being an outsider to societal norms. Candide also falls into this category, though Lillian Hellman's satire fiercely denounces 1950s conformity and McCarthyism, even as the Old Lady sings the merits of being "easily assimilated." Some shows of the period explored similar themes, but favored traditional American values when confronted with modern day change : Bye Bye Birdie portrays the Elvis inspired Conrad Birdie as the outsider, who clearly disrupts and almost destroys the values of smalltown, WASP America. In Damn Yankees, Joe Hardy escapes into the world of youthful fantasy, but finding mostly unhappiness, in the end, returns to the reassuring, familiar comfort found in his old age back

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home. It is often argued that the golden era of the book musical ended because of the rise of rock and roll. I would go one step further. Because the book musical is directly linked to the aspirations and assimilative experience of the second generation of immigrants, it could not survive once that generation achieved its social and political goals. Unlike their parents, the third generation, members of the socalled "baby boom," were born into that place in society achieved by their parents. They were part of the Establishment, born into acceptance and affluence. There was no need to prove oneself, no insecurities about one's rightful place in society. They were already accepted, already "in." Consequently, the musical, with its function to educate and reassure, did not hold the same meaning, nor did it serve the same critical function for the new generation as it had for their parents' generation. The pull of rock and roll, along with the emerging Civil Rights Movement, both pointed downward; affluent kids, assured of their superior place in society, now turned their attention to the disadvantaged, not only because of idealism but because of a sense that there was an authenticity and meaning found amongst the Black, urban poor that seemed sorely lacking in their own upper-middle class lifestyles. Popular culture now meant imitating the lower class, assured that they themselves will never fall from their high societal perch. Perhaps there was some sort of latent identification with their parents' own impoverished roots that drew them there. But regardless, the musical had little meaningful appeal, and seemed hollow once robbed of its symbolic importance. The rise of the book musical then reflects the rise of the second generation, i.e. the children of immigrants, as they ascended within American society, gaining acceptance and power.

Second Generation Jews in Particular: The rise of the musical corresponds to the emergence of the Jewish audience in New York City. Though Jews had been in America since Colonial days, they did not assert their own ethnicity until the late nineteenth century. German Jews favored assimilation, and sought acceptance through a degree of invisibility, even when they were prominent. The arrival of large Jewish population from Eastern Europe, however, forced a change in this public persona. Russian Jews, by contrast, lacked the refinement of their assimilated brethren, and formed their own enclaves in New York's Lower East Side, which included a thriving Yiddish theatre. But as the twentieth century progressed, this population improved its collective lot economically, and the Yiddish theatre gradually gave way to attendance at nonethnic American entertainments. And while America grudgingly adjusted to the rising Jewish presence in the entertainment industry,

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in point of fact Jews represented an increasingly larger proportion of New York's theatre-going audience.s With a few notable exceptions (Cohan, Herbert, Porter), most of the creators of musical comedy and later the book musical were Jews. Kern, Berlin, the Gershwins, Arlen, Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein (half-Jewish), Harburg, Fields, Weill, Loesser, Lerner and Loewe, Adler and Ross, Bernstein, Sondheim-Jews all. It is not surprising, given their religious backgrounds, that they favored works which explored issues of social justice. But it is equally significant that their personal concerns might find their way into the shows as well. More specifically, what this group also shared was that most of them were the children of immigrants. As the second generation, they shared a willingness to assimilate to American life in an effort to gain acceptance and to find economic success, to realize the American Dream. But surrendering one's own cultural identity, to assimilate, seemed to be part of the bargain. And while echoes of Jewish musical traditions occasionally found their way into the music they wrote, for the most part they sought a larger acceptance and adjusted their creativity-and perhaps themselves-accordingly. The Broadway musical stage therefore reflects this group's changing attitudes and efforts, but also reflects their cultural evolution. The first chapter is their rise through the populist vaudeville, from the objects of derision to headliners, perhaps culminating in the shows of Florenz Ziegfeld, also a Jew. The second chapter would be the revues and musical comedies that flourished throughout the 1920s and 1930s, with their experimentation and efforts to gain greater respectability even with low-comic residue holding them down. The third chapter would be the book musicals, or "musical plays" as they preferred to call them, their crowning achievement, not only because of their enduring success, but because of their widespread, national acceptance. Yet the book musicals embody the ideals and aspirations of this second generation, more than simply entertain. When one thinks
5Regarding the rising presence of Jews in relation to their portrayal on stage, see Harley Erdman, Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860-1920 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); also, Nahma Sand row, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); also, Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976). Also, Encyclopedia Judaica ( 1971) notes in its entry on New York City cultural life: "The half-century following the end of World War I witnessed the entry of Jews in large numbers into every corner of New York artistic and cultural life .... The role of New York Jews as consumers of the arts also grew immensely during these years. It is safe to say that from the 1920s on Jew formed a disproportionately high percentage of New York's theatregoers.... One rough estimate placed Jews at 70% of the city's concert and theater audience during the 1950s."

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of the book musicals beginning with Oklahoma! one thinks of integration-integration of book, music and dance. Establishing the book musical prototype, Rodgers and Hammerstein in Oklahoma! also included a mish-mash of high and low culture, and notoriously wove in use of ballet to forward the plot. But in the same breath Rodgers and Hammerstein were also establishing a model for assimilation, a model consistently copied by their imitators and themselves through the book musical's heyday. With few exceptions, the most successful of the period's book musicals offered lessons in acceptable behavior and a model for how Jews might fit into the dominant American society. This was a lesson for the entire audience, Gentile and Jew alike, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s. The underlying assumption was that the Jews, like any contemporary ethnic group, strove to rise in American society. Book musicals explored a range of issues, many centering on social justice, but to a still greater extent they explored the dynamics of being an outsider, trying to gain access to an idealized community, learning to adjust in order to gain admission and hence to enjoy the economic benefits that accompany that acceptance.6 Comedic book musicals usually ended with dreams realized; dramatic book musicals usually ended with dreams shattered . And the "dream" in question can be clearly and consistently equated with the "American Dream" that the authors and composers themselves sought to realize, along with their audiences.

The Genteel Hegemony & Notions of Refinement But there was opposition amongst the WASP elite to integrating American society so as to include members from the various ethnic populations. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century the genteel elite's political power slowly gave way to machine politicians and ward bosses. The new political elite's power was based upon the newly arrived immigrant populations. Largely ousted from the political sphere, the old monied elite turned instead to less materialistic standards by which to measure acceptance into the highest circles. Issues of purity and refinement became the measure by which acceptability would be determined, and many of the genteel elite took positions as guardians of culture on the boards of art museums, symphony orchestras, libraries, universities-and art theatres. They became standard-bearers for high culture, even as

6See for example Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975); also, John Hingham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1981); also, Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).

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popular entertainments gained considerable ground, as a defense of their values and their vested interests in the societal hierarchy.? Meanwhile, members of the ethnic immigrant groups adjusted to American life and, consequently, gained wealth. But the standard amongst the elite was no longer simply wealth, it was refinement. Even as the predominant New York audience flocked to see Ziegfeld and his tasteful displays of conspicuous consumption, a form in line with the simple standards of new money, the old money was turning more toward European modernism, thereby raising the cultural bar. In response, the first generation sent their children to colleges, sometimes even Ivy League, and, in imitation of the genteel elite, encouraged mastering European culture through travel abroad. Many musical composers followed this trend, including Kern, Rodgers, and Gershwin. Rodgers, Hart and Hammerstein all attended Columbia, along with Herbert Fields. It makes sense for sociological reasons, in addition to musical reasons, that a George Gershwin should strive to succeed, not only as a commercial composer, but as a classical one as weii.B The national impulse toward refinement was tied to nationalism; America wanted to create its own art on a par with Europe's. Theatrically, the emergence of the Little Theatre Movement and particularly the writings of its star playwright, Eugene O'Neill, achieved this end. O'Neill's drama provided an artistic alternative to nineteenth century melodramas; it proved respectable literature. But O'Neill's work also demonstrated American refinement, akin to the efforts of the WASP elite, though they often disparaged of O'Neill's subject matter. The producing organization that promoted O'Neill and produced his work was the Theatre Guild, an outgrowth of the Little Theatre movement and dedicated to presenting work dedicated more
7See for example, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago from the 1880s to 1917 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1975); also, Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); also, Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982); also Frederic C. Jahar, The Urban Establishment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). Bcase in point is the evolving professional theatrical career of Lew Fields and his children Dorothy, Herbert and Joseph, which ranged from baggy-pants Dutch comic routines of the 1880s through jazz musical comedies, and up through the cynical and sophisticated book musicals of the 1960s. See Armond Fields and L. Marc Fields, From the Bowery to Broadway: Lew Fields and the Roots of American Popular Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). In another parallel vein, see Lewis A. Erenberg, Steppin'Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981).

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to art than to money. But the Theatre Guild sought to place theatre on a cultural par with the symphony, art museum and ballet. Plays by O'Neill, Ibsen, Chekhov and Shaw starring actors like John Barrymore and Katherine Cornell brought dignity and art to the American stage. However, the ideas of an Ibsen or Shaw proved more sympathetic to the upwardly mobile immigrant population than to the status quo. They challenged Victorian assumptions and, along with them, the genteel traditions of the WASP old guard.9 It makes sense then that it was the Theatre Guild that provided the idea and agreed to produce what was to become Oklahoma!. Just as Eugene O'Neill sought to combat the tired melodrama of his father's theatre by creating a new, higher-brow American drama, so too did Rodgers and Hammerstein combat the tired musical comedy form by creating the artistically integrated book musical. And just as O'Neill drew upon classical European theatre traditions in forming his innovations, so too did Rodgers and Hammerstein do the same in shaping Oklahoma! . The book now mattered. Characters were to be three-dimensional. Songs functioned much like Shakespearean soliloquies. The setting was more realistic than was the musical theatre norm. Just as The Count of Monte Cristo was giving way to Desire Under the Elms, so too was Rose-Marie or A Connecticut Yankee giving way to Oklahoma!. But there was more. Oklahoma! also included ballet. Ballet was not new to a Richard Rodgers musical; On Your Toes (1936) featured his "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" number, choreographed by no less than George Balanchine. But in On Your Toes the dance was a dance number, even if operating within the plot. In Oklahoma! characters broke into dance as naturally as they broke into song, and Agnes DeMilles' choreography was more classical ballet, versus Balanchine's bluesy riffs. Ballet was not supposed to be on the musical comedy stage; that was the proper venue for jazz or tap. Oklahoma! is then not only a change in the musical's dominant form, it is also a deliberate effort at upward mobility. Efforts to refine the musical correspond directly to efforts to refine American drama. But the inclusion of classical dance meant that the music had to live up to those new standards and that the music, since now for ballet, should be assessed according to the standards of high culture, rather than popular culture. Though situated around a rural picnic dance, Oklahoma! was an effort at high art. If the WASP elite had made refinement the sine qua non for

9See Robert C. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); also, Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

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acceptance into the American establishment, more meaningful than one's wea lth, then Rodgers and Hammerstein, along with those who followed writing comparable book musicals, aimed for admission to the club. Furthermore, if they were in the vanguard, their audience was not far behind . Perhaps attending a book musical was not the same as attending the symphony, opera or the ballet, but it was a close second. It makes further sense, then, that the Rodgers and Hammerstein team would again use Agnes DeMille to stage Carousel, and that they then created the role of Emile DeBeque for a Metropolitan Opera star, Enzio Pinza. If Rodgers could write for ballet he could also write for opera. And writing material that would be worthy of Pinza coming to the Broadway stage further validated the musical as approaching high culture.

Assimilation and the Rewards of Lost Identity

This is not to say that audiences attended musicals deliberately to learn the lessons of assimilation. They generally attended to enjoy an escapist experience. But the presence on stage of characters that, even if indirectly, represented their own identities and lives, certainly added to their ability to identify and sympathize. Hence the staged display of ethnicity itself provided a powerful statement, legitimizing the societal claims of the seemingly disinherited, supporting their claims to deserve a piece of the cultural and political pie. Today the same dynamics hold true for any minority or disenfranchised group, as seen in the plethora of scholarship, particularly in gay and feminist studies.to But in the case of the musical, not only the presence of ethnic characters but the recurrence of themes pertaining to the former immigrants' experience permeate the entire canon of works. Musical plays resonate with issues pertaining to the American dream and to its promise of opportunity, upward mobility and financial reward; they also reverberate with issues of assimilation and conversion as the means to achieve those secular ends. Musical plays therefore serve as symbolic ritual, an acting out of the promise of America. Though on the surface they may seem superficial and frivolous, when armed with this larger sociohistorical context, one begins to understand that they served a symbolic function and, consequently, embodied the deep and profound concerns of much of their audience. No wonder they could be seen as
lOSee for example, bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992); also, Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York: Routledge, 1993); also, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); also, for a study that applies this more directly to Jewish ethnicity, see Barbara W. Grossman, Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny Brice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).

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reassuring, well beyond simple issues of escapism. No wonder the form endures more than almost any other American dramatic or theatrical form. Still, the form rings hollow without an audience informed by this larger historical context to provide it with symbolic meaning, much as a religion, robbed of belief, is reduced to merely picturesque myth. The classic book musical may have been an expression of the creative artists' aspirations and lives, as well as that of their immediate audience, but because they address the question of what it takes to attain the American dream, the bulk of those shows have effectively spoken to audiences well beyond New York and its particular ethnic mix. They are in fact national dramas, speaking to basic American concerns, reaffirming our nation's basic value system. That they also often contain the social and political beliefs of their creators is almost incidental to this larger societal function. Irving Berlin's first hit was "Marie from Sunny Italy," reflecting his ethnic surroundings; much later in his career he wrote the WASP anthems "White Christmas," "Easter Parade" and "God Bless America." George and Ira Gershwin's first collaboration told modestly of their "cousin in Milwaukee"; Gershwin later parodied highbrow pretence by pointing out "you say tomato and I say tomahto" and mostly wrote of sophisticates, not to mention his internationally acclaimed classical music efforts. Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart began with "and tell me what street, compares with Mott Street in July?/Sweet pushcarts slowly glide by" and moved on in time to be able to note how "the lady is a tramp," but still later Rodgers with Hammerstein wrote songs about politics and nature. Upward mobility often meant abandoning one's roots and adopting the concerns and lifestyles of the well-born.ll In marking the hundredth anniversary of Richard Rodgers's birth, critic John Lahr described the composer as being particularly concerned with appearance, an ambitious social climber, a mass of contradictions. He also notes how Rodgers sought to bury his earlier affiliation with Lorenz Hart after achieving still greater success with Oscar Hammerstein II. Lahr is unsparing in his depiction of a guiltridden Rodgers making sure that Hart's estate went to charity instead of to Hart's family, but also notes that it is only in recent years that
llSee Paul Zollo, "Sultans of Song." Reform Judaism (Winter 2002), 14-25. Zollos notes a range of Christmas songs written by Jewish composers also include " .. .'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' by Johnny Marks, 'Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow' by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, 'Silver Bells' by Livingston and Evans, and the 'Christmas Song' (Chestnuts roasting on an open fire .. .') by Mel Torme." Speaking of Irving Berlin's song "Aiabammy Bound," Zollo writes of " ... [s)ongwriter Randy Newman, who once said, 'I seriously doubt Irving Berlin was ever Alabammy bound,' surmised that the Russian-born songwriter wanted 'to get into America

harder."

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daughter Mary Rodgers Guittel has worked to reassert her father's work with Hart.12 But an assimilationist lens one can help us to understand why Hart might prove a liability to Rodgers and his ambitions. Larry Hart was short, ugly and miserable, and he was also gay, alcoholic, cynical, intellectual, aggressively clever and witty, sexual and urbane. To some degree, then, Hart embodied the targeted characteristics of the New York Jew. When the Oklahoma! project came along, Rodgers first offered the project to Hart, who refused essentially because it was not his sort of thing, and encouraged Rodgers to work with Hammerstein instead. Oscar Hammerstein took to such subject matter effortlessly. He was everything that Hart was not. Hammerstein was straight, a family man, wholesome and optimistic, even corny. He favored believable characters and plots, and he used simple imagery inspired by nature in his lyrics, wrote mostly operettas, and favored romantic love and spiritual ideals. And though Hammerstein's father was Jewish, his mother was not. In short, unlike Hart, Hammerstein expressed the WASP ideals, even if colored by liberal attitudes towards social justice.t3 As we see in the double couples examined here, Rodgers and Hart are much like the secondary couple-ethnic, comedic, sexual, urbane-but ultimately of lesser consequence compared to the primary couple, Rodgers and Hammerstein-WASP, serious, high minded, romantic, ultimately of the heartland. As good a work as Pal Joey is, its appeal is limited to the urban sophisticate; Oklahoma!, by contrast, had far-reaching national appeal. Rodgers, working with Hart, could never attain the upward mobility he craved; Hart, unable or unwilling to assimilate, proved professionally limiting. Rodgers, working with Hammerstein, could successfully disguise his ethnicity, complete his assimilation, and gain, not only enormous commercial success, but also the sort of respect and recognition that he craved. Lahr speaks of how Rodgers began to view himself as a sort of "monument" rather than as a person . That is to say he had succeeded in squelching himself personally and taken on a culturally delineated social role. He achieved the formulaic American Dream, and by assimilating gained power and prestige and became
12John Lahr, "Walking Alone: Richard Rodgers's Disappearing Act." The New Yorker (July 1, 2002) 90-94. This dark picture of Rodgers is reinforced in Meryle Secrest, Somewhere For Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2001). It is understandably absent from the composer's autobiography, in even the reissued version that featured endnotes by Lahr. See Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography [Centennial Edition] (New York: Da Capo Press,

2002).
13See Hugh Fordin, Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II (New York: Random House, 1977).

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accepted within genteel circles as part of the nation's cultural establishment. It is damning and ironic that Hart, both Jewish and gay, could not successfully assimilate (i.e. escape his identity) and chose instead to self-destruct, whereas Rodgers, more able to disguise his own identity, could assimilate and hence flourished.14 In 1955 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein appeared on the CBS television showcase, The Ed Sullivan Show. The event was a celebration of Oklahoma!, twelve years after its debut. Rodgers conducted a small on-stage orchestra and chorus. The orchestra sat behind fluted music stands while Rodgers stood formally before them, baton in hand. Evident in the camera lens are a series of string instruments (violins, violas, bass), a harp, even a bassoon. Just beyond the orchestra stood a dozen singers, men and women, anonymously in shadow. Under Rodgers, the orchestra began to play the building notes leading up to the rousing, "Oklahoma" number, and suddenly appeared John Raitt, dressed in a tuxedo, to sing the first verse. He is then joined by Florence Henderson, Barbara Cook and Celeste Holm. All (including Rodgers, Hammerstein and Sullivan) are in formalwear, women wearing jewelry. No hint of denim or calico, and the event seems strangely forced without it. It is a tribute to a by-now American classic, the show that started it all for the distinguished composing team, an event staged to declare their success and their standing. It is clear from the tuxedoed Rodgers vigorously conducting a mini-version of a classical orchestra, accompanying the opera-trained Raitt, that we the viewing audience are encouraged to view Oklahoma! as a work on the same level as symphonic music. Then the bejeweled, elegantly gowned Celeste Holm sings, as a solo number, "I Caint Say No," the simplicity of the lyrics and the character she portrays again strikingly at odds with her rich appearance and attire. But the audience reacts to every word, every note. They seem not to notice the incongruities.ls Nor is it odd that a weekly variety show, televised from New York City with a stiff-backed Irish-American emcee, assumed the prerogatives and trappings of a highbrow cultural arbiter. If the Sullivan show promoted Oklahoma! as high art, it was also asserting that Rodgers, Hammerstein and the usually down-home characters merited being placed upon a pedestal. Rodgers and Hammerstein had "made it" in their audience's eyes, which included a nationally-telecast audience. But the audience related to those on stage personally as
14Note that though publicly assimilated, Rodgers nevertheless supported Jewish causes. See Andrea Most. 15Andrew Solt, The Best of Broadway Musicals: Original Cast Performances from the Ed Sullivan Show [Videotape] (Walt Disney Home Video, n.d.)

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well; if Ado Annie can still be herself and yet now dress in pearls, so too, vicariously, could the live audience. Oklahoma! deserved such upper-crust associations and its quality merited inclusion in America's highest cultural pantheon. But that was in part because the audience felt it too deserved similar rewards. At least for that "brief, shining moment," Richard Rodgers was viewed as rightfully being a national icon, associated with the highest standards-and without a trace of any visible ethnicity. No doubt the studio audience (men in 1955 jackets and ties, women in dresses and gloves) shared in the warm, reassuring glow of similar democratic assumptions.

Journal of American Drama and Theatre 15 (Spring 2003)

WHEN UNCLE SAM INVADED BROADWAY: GENRE AND PATRIOTISM IN THE CRITICAL RECEPTION OF IRVING BERLIN'S THIS IS THE ARMY

LAURIE SCHMELING

There is something about a soldier; and on the Broadway which is part of the democratic if not the fighting front, it is that he brings excitement with him. On a hot night of last July, "This Is the Army" marched into town, capturing it with no delay whatsoever and stirring up a general jubilation which has not ceased, even though the show long since has gone. Lewis Nicholsl
The popular perception of the history of the Broadway musical through the mid-twentieth century has remained remarkably consistent: transformed by the infusion of Jazz Age vitality and showmanship into a quintessentially American theatrical form, the musical found its mature expression in Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1943 "musical play," Oklahoma!, which marked both the culmination and the reinvention of the genre. This evolutionary model of the genre conflates questions of genre history and genre theory and elides differences in current and historical understandings of the musical. It fails to account for what genre historian Rick Altman suggests is the It assumes a ongoing discursive process of genre definition.2 contemporary critical consensus that did not exist regarding the putative American-ness of the musical during the interwar period and implies that aesthetic values took precedence over contemporary cultural concerns in the critics' response to individual shows. The response to Irving Berlin's This Is the Army illustrates how
Those items followed by the abbreviation, NYPL -PA, were found in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

lLewis Nichols, "The Army Writes Its Plays," New York Times, 20 June 1943, sec. 2, 1. 2Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 121: "Genres must be understood discursively, i.e., as language that not only purports to describe a particular phenomenon, but that is also addressed by one party to another, usually for a specific, identifiable purpose."

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contemporary critical perceptions of the musical differed from the later model valorizing the integrated musical. When Berlin's all-soldier revue premiered on Broadway on July 4, 1942, it was met with virtually unanimous praise on both patriotic and aesthetic grounds and generated numerous articles detailing both its inception and reception. The show was hailed as an artistic success not in spite of its unabashed nationalism, but because of it. This paper explores how, for the diverse press of the period, This Is the Army became an exemplar of the American musical not because it broke new ground generically, but because it was the most overtly American musical. When the New York Drama Critics Circle named its best play of the 1942-43 season, Irving Berlin's This Is the Army was the only musical to receive a vote on the final ballot.3 It played to standingroom three times a day for every one of its 113 performances on Broadway and then toured the United States for nearly five months. Warner Brothers' film adaptation of the revue went on to become the highest-grossing film of 1943. After a three-month tour of the United Kingdom, This Is the Army played to military men around the world for two more years. Together, the Broadway production, tour, and film earned over $9,000,000 for the Army Emergency Relief Fund. Yet, while an average of 600 productions of Oklahoma! are licensed annually in the United States and Canada alone, This Is the Army hasn't even warranted revival by one of the lost-musicals-in-concert series that seem to be sprouting up in every American city. 4 Outside of musical theatre historians and military veterans with long memories, This Is the Army is largely forgotten. A majority of musical theatre histories-when they mention the show at all-note This Is the Army's contemporary triumph as the Broadway revue's last hurrah, before it succumbed to the popularity and generic superiority of the musical play. In the theatrical campaign of 1942-43, Berlin's revue may have won the critical battle, but it ultimately lost the generic war. There is no dearth of musical theatre studies but, until recently, most of them demonstrated a distinct bias in favor of an evolutionary model of genre development, culminating in the musical
3"Critics Prize Won by 'The Patriots,"' New York Times, 14 April 1943, 25. Sidney Kingsley's The Patriots was named best play of the season. Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, the eventual Pulitzer Prize-winner, was a distant runner-up. Oklahoma! did receive mention on an earlier ballot. Irving Berlin was also invited to attend the critics' annual dinner, "in recognition of his work for This Is the Army."
4"0klahoma! Facts and Figures," Rodgers & Hammerstein Theatre Library, 28 Aug. 2002, <http://www3. rnh .com/theatre/showslevel3/oklahoma/facts.html >. The R&H Theatre Library also licenses production of Irving Berlin's work. At present, This Is the Army is unavailable for professional or amateur production (R&H Theatre Library, 28 August 2002, <http://www.rnh.com/theatre/ index.html> ).

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play.s In this model, revue, musical comedy, musical satire-and even the musical play's close cousin, the operettaG-become vestigial appendages to the generic corpus; sometimes they disappear altogether. While all historians must be selective in the material they cover, their inclusions and omissions often speak to their own aesthetic, methodological, and/or theoretical biases. This Is the Army isn't included in either Mark Steyn's or Ethan Mordden's look at the careers of "Broadway babies," and Gerald Mast's can't Help Singin~ a valuable study which examines both stage and film musicals, has nothing to say about a show that was a major success on both fronts.? (Mordden does give the show his typically breezy, anecdotal once-over in Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s.)B Kurt Ganzl is concerned exclusively with "the original musical play in all its shapes, forms and sizes," so it comes as no surprise that This Is the Army is absent from his surveys, The Musical: A Concise History and Song and Dance: The Complete Story of Stage Musicals-although the title of the latter is a bit misleading.9 This Is the Army does appear in Stanley Green's Broadway Musicals: Show by Show, but doesn't merit its own entry in his Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre.1o In his survey of
5The following examples are representative of a prevailing historiographic approach and are by no means exhaustive. For further discussion of the methodological limitations common to many earlier musical theatre histories written for a popular audience, see Alicia Kae Koger, "Trends in Musical Theatre Scholarship: An Essay in Historiography," New England Theatre Journal3, 1 (1992): 78. The intervening decade since publication of Koger's article has seen an increase of serious scholarly investigation of the musical, but even academic presses continue to publish works that lack scholarly documentation. 6Gerald Bordman, American Operetta: From H.M.S. Pinafore to Sweeney Todd (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 3. Bordman, amongst others, argues that the musical play is simply operetta by another name: "What's in a name? A lot, obviously. Operetta by any other name is far more welcome." 7Mark Steyn, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (New York: Routledge, 1999); Ethan Mordden, Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Gerald Mast, Can't Help Singin': The American Musical on Stage and Screen (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1987). BEthan Mordden, Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 96-97. 9Kurt Ganzl, The Musical: A Concise History (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), xii. Kurt Ganzl, Song and Dance: The Complete Story of Stage Musicals (New York: Smithmark, 1995). lOStanley Green, Broadway Musicals: Show by Show, 3rd ed. (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 1990), 117. Stanley Green, Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre (New York: Da Capo, 1976).

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the work of Broadway's composers and lyricists, Green mentions This Is the Army ("the brilliant World War II all-soldier show'') as a placeholder between Berlin's book musicals Louisiana Purchase {1940) and Annie Get Your Gun {1946), citing the "greater emphasis on the book value of musicals" and composers' concern to integrate songs with librettos, thanks to "the emergence of Rodgers and Hammerstein."H Cecil Smith, despite his predilection for musical comedy, notes that "under the stress of wartime emotion, This Is the Army provided an incomparable experience."t2 Even when the show is praised on formal grounds, the tone is valedictory; in Gerald Bordman's estimation, the sparkling quality of Berlin's score, "a hitpacked, unforgettably melodic work that roused the American Musical Theater from its lethargy,"B marked "a turn-around ... but not in any way that might have been foretold and certainly not for the musical revue."t4 On Broadway in the 1940s, all musical roads eventually lead to Oklahoma! The problem, of course, isn't Oklahoma!. The problem is an engrained way of thinking about the musical that collapses the difference between genre theory and genre history. As Rick Altman points out, "Genre history holds a shifting and uncertain place in relation to genre theory. Most often simply disregarded by its synchronically oriented partner, genre history nevertheless cries out for increased attention by virtue of its ability to scramble generic codes, to blur established generic tableaux and to muddy accepted generic ideas."ts I am not suggesting that the revue is/was a superior form of musical entertainment to the musical play nor that the musical play does not deserve the historic attention it has received, but that thinking of genre as a "permanently contested site,"t6 rather than a transhistoric, Platonic ideal can help us think more historically when
Hstanley Green, The World of Musical Comedy: The Story of the American Musical Stage as Told Through the Careers of Its Foremost Composers and Lyricists, 4th ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1980), 77; 79. 12Cecil Smith, Musical Comedy in America (New York: Theatre Arts Books,

1950), 322.
13Gerald Bordman, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 531. 14Gerald Bordman, American Musical Revue: From The Passing Show to Sugar Babies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 120. 15Aitman, 8. 16Aitman, 195.

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considering genre. As Altman asserts, "the perceived nature and purpose of genres depend directly and heavily on the identity and purpose of those using and evaluating them."17 If we don't wish to fall into the trap of writing history ahistorically, we need to look more closely at how historical understandings of genre differ from our own and how cultural exigencies affect the way genres are "read" and used by particular groups at particular times. The advantage to a user-oriented approach to genre is that it can help the historian escape the transhistoric trap of the master narrative; the disadvantage lies in the many groups who potentially lay claim to user status and their diverse interests. Composers and lyricists might deploy generic terminology to different effect than publicists; audiences unfamiliar with a wide range of generic texts may respond more favorably to a show considered generically inferior by reviewers who see a new show every week. Some critics place more value on formal elements of production, others on social relevance. Ads, programs, posters, feature articles, reviews, and cast recordings are all cultural texts that can mediate the primary performance text, as well as generic meaning between users.1s Sometimes these artifacts are all the access that musical theatre historians have to the 'original' text of a production. While all theatre historians operate under a certain handicap, given the ephemeral nature of performance, musical theatre historians often don't even have a script or original scores to consult. On the other hand, not having a stable text can also free them from thinking they are dealing with a stable, fixed subject. For the musical theatre scholar, theatrical reviews, magazine articles, and newspaper features are important sources of information regarding the reception of individual productions; they are also cultural texts in their own right-produced by one audience for the consumption of another. In Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle, Michael Oriard demonstrates how "the sportswriter mediates between the athletic contest and its audience;

17Aitman, 98. The discursive nature of genres is demonstrated in "the continued contestation among producers, exhibitors, viewers, critics, politicians, moralists, and their diverse interests" which "keeps genres ever in process, constantly subject to reconfiguration, recombination, and reformulation" (195). Altman's work is concerned primarily with the musical film, but many of his arguments regarding the transhistorical tendencies of genre theory apply to the musical stage, as well. lBAitman, 84: "[L]ike all critical constructs, genres are created and sustained by repeated use of generic terminology- not only as part of recognizable generic criticism, but also in ads, posters, labels, iconography, quotations, and other intertextual references."

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sportswriting is the text of that mediation."t9 Reading football "through and against" these texts "[does] not offer transparent access to the primary texts of the games themselves or to ordinary readers' own interpretations of them," but the sportswriter, as "an interested follower of the game," is "to some degree representative" of those "interested readers.''2o Much like the majority of fans "read" football through the broadcast and print media rather than see games in person,2t theatre historians predominantly "read" past productions "as already interpreted" through secondary texts. While one show cannot be taken as representative of an entire genre, reading This Is the Army through the feature articles and reviews that appeared in the New York dailies, mass-circulation magazines, theatrical periodicals, and other specialized publications of the day, provides a striking example of how cultural concerns influence critical response to both thematic content and aesthetic form.22 Reading the reviews of the Broadway run of This Is the Army, it is difficult to tease out a distinction between the reviewers' patriotic fervor and their artistic pleasure. Rather than one or the other taking precedence, one reinforced the other. "It was," Elizabeth Jordan pointed out, "very easy to get sentimental over the appeal of This Is the Army... and a lot of us promptly did.''23 The Herald-Tribune's Richard Watts declared it "not merely a magnificent soldier show," but "one of the greatest musical shows of any description ever produced in this country... at once a delightful entertainment and a song of American democracy.''24 The often dyspeptic George Jean Nathan was won over by its "skillful technique of entertaining patriotism into its spectators instead of trying to inject it with a grim hypodermic syringe."2S It was the very antithesis of the "greasepaint Yankee
19Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 17. 200riard, 17. 210riard, 17.

22This Is the Army received extensive press coverage before, during, and after its Broadway run. Given the scope of this essay, I will restrict my discussion to reviews of the Broadway production. (Leonard Hall's "Exposing the Army's Handsomest Man and Strongest Man" will have to wait for a future study. [New York Journal American 15 Aug. 1942, This Is the Army Clippings, NYPL-PA.])
23Eiizabeth Jordan, "Theatre, This Is the Army," America 67 (18July 1942): 417. 24Richard Watts, "The Theaters: A Historic Event," New York Herald-Tribune 6 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPL-PA. 25George Jean Nathan, The Theatre, "School Opens Again; On to Berlin," Review of This Is the Army, American Mercury 55 (Oct. 1942): 450-451.

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Doodledom" that could drive a man to drink, if not outright "traitorousness."26 The critics' effusiveness in praising this production that is today remembered "as a blur of synchronized khaki uniforms and hundreds of soldiers singing patriotic slogans and indulging in innocent horseplay" may be mildly embarrassing to a postmodern sensibility, but as Berlin's biographer Laurence Bergreen points out, "there was more to it than simple morale boosting. Through his songs, Berlin managed to inject human touches that made life in the armed services comprehensible to civilian audiences.''27 What made the show brilliant propaganda, without "a line of positive propaganda in it,''28 was the presence of actual soldiers on stage singing that melodious Berlin score. "The American soldier playing theatre," wrote Variety's Abel Green, was "an excellent sample of American democracy in practical work.''29 The soldiers' presence, in turn, contributed greatly to the audience's strong sense of identification, an integral element of patriotic sentiment. Political philosopher Elie Kedourie's definition of patriotism as "affection for one's country, or one's group, loyalty to its institutions and zeal for its defence" reflects the general tenor of the reviewers' responses. Kedourie draws a distinction between patriotism and nationalism, which "depends on a particular anthropology" and "asserts a particular doctrine of the state or the individual's relation to it."30 While not entirely free of nationalist overtones, the critics'

26George Jean Nathan, "This Is the Army. July 4, 1942," in The Theatre Book of the Year, 1942-1943: A Record and an Interpretation (New York: Knopf, 1943), 34. In his "Honor List," Nathan named This Is the Army-not Oklahoma!-the season's "best musical show" (1). 2.7Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 402-403. 28Richard Watts, Jr. "Soldiers on the Stage," New York Herald-Tribune, 12 July 1942, This Is the Army Clippings, NYPL-PA. 29Abel Green, "'This Is the Army' a 100% Smash As Show and Inspiring Americanism," Variety, 8 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPL-PA. 30Eiie Kedourie, "Nationalism and Self-Determination," in Nationalism, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994), 49-50. Kedourie posits that confusion between nationalism and patriotism exists "because nationalist doctrine has annexed these universally held sentiments to the service of a specific anthropology and metaphysic. It is, therefore, loose and inexact to speak, as is sometimes done, of British or American nationalism when describing the thought of those who recommend loyalty to British or American political institutions" (50).

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Americanism in response to World War II corresponds generally to this concept of patriotism as a defensive, unifying instinct against foreign aggression. The "we're-ali-in-this together" spirit came through strongly in the reviewers' oft-repeated reminders that the show's profits would be turned over to the Army Emergency Relief Fund: This Is the Army was not only good entertainment, it was good for the country. If the worthy cause of Army Relief were not already enough, the critics offered further justification for Uncle Sam's decision to put soldiers on a Broadway stage instead of shipping them out to the theatre of war: "an Army that can put on a show like this one is plainly the right sort of Army."31 This Is the Army embodied what Theatre Arts called the spirit of the "new 'armed forces'-that spirit that combines high good humor, laughter and horseplay with a deep and serious intention.''32 The show and its performers were a distinctly American work, one that could only be staged in, and enjoyed by, a democracy. In "Soldiers on the Stage," a Sunday opinion piece published a week after the show's opening, Watts vigorously defended the show's "sense of humor that reveals clear-eyed strength rather than cynical weakness." The most appealing facet of that humor was that it was not spent in "mocking the enemy," but in smiling at ourselves: "It shows the American Army in a gay and laughing mood because its confidence is high and its heart is honorable. It is American democracy smiling with good, cleansing humor and proclaiming to the world that it really believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.''33 It was the morale booster the country needed, and the Army was smart enough to give it to us. George Freedley could not think of a "more useful task for these soldiers to perform than by filling thousands of people each week with the spirit which is going to fight this war to the finish.''34 Brooks Atkinson emphasized that the audience "could not take the show even frivolously," if troops were not already engaged overseas "on a terrible errand" far removed from "the gayety of the theatre. Although the Army has left its heart at the Stage Door Canteen, it is putting its back
31John Anderson, "'This Is the Army' Opens at Broadway," New York Journal American 6 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPL- PA. 32The World and the Theatre [This Is the Army], Theatre Arts 26, no.9 (Sept. 1942): 545. 33Watts, "Soldiers." 34freedley, George. " Berlin's 'This Is Army' Best Evening of Entertainment of the 1942 Season," New York Morning Telegraph 7 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPL-PA.

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into war against tyranny."35 These performers, the critics reminded their audience, were soldiers-soldiers who eventually would face a bigger battle than the one at the box office. The powerful response evoked by this correspondence of "performer" to "role" was enhanced by the form of the revue. Because all of the skits, songs, and dances foregrounded the fact that these were soldiers "playing" soldiers, the dual "reality" of these performer/soldiers was not obscured by the need to create characters with a dramatic through-line as they might be in a musical with a book libretto. Genres function, in part, through meeting audience expectations, i.e., genres function intertextually. No matter how implausible the reason for bursting into song and dance, audiences for musical comedies and operettas expected some sort of dramatic framework. The predominant rationale behind the Broadway revue was entertainment: song and dance advanced nothing but the show. If the songs and dance were good, so was the revue. A thematic unity to the musical and comic elements of a revue was not a prerequisite to success, but in the case of This Is the Army, structuring the show as a peek into the life of the enlisted man enhanced the patriotic resonance that a basic Army talent show might have lacked. The emphasis on the organic relationship between music and character in the musical play would later be praised by some of these same reviewers as the genre's artistic advance in the direction of dramatic verisimilitude-a very relative term when applied to the musical-but, for a wartime audience, it's likely that no attempt to portray a soldier on stage, pining musically for his girl, could pack the same emotional wallop of a real soldier, Sgt. Ezra Stone, playing a soldier who was "getting tired" so he could "dream" of her. The soldier in question may not have even had a girl, but no radical suspension of disbelief was required for most of the audience to embrace the dramatic logic of the situation-although The New Yorkers Wolcott Gibbs was "inclined to doubt that the thoughts of the average combat pilot" were "exclusively concerned with love."36 Gibbs' response demonstrates how this identification of performer with role had the potential to send mixed messages to some in the audience, especially those who might have preferred a more overt political statement from the revue Berlin and his collaborators staged. Even though the songs and performers met with wholesale critical
35Brooks Atkinson, "'This Is the Army,"' New York Times 16 Aug. 1942, sec.

8, 1.
36Wolcott Gibbs, "One Best Bet," review of This Is the Army, New Yorker,

11 July 1942, 26.

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approval, not every critic was enamored of the romantic preoccupations central to certain numbers and skits. Ralph Warner, of Womens Wear Daily, was particularly vocal in his displeasure, charging that, "if This is [sic] the Army reveals the typical rank-andfile attitude toward the war, then the boys are only slightly and generally aware of what they are fighting for." Warner additionally faulted the show for failing to take on the Axis leaders in a direct manner: "This Is the Army might have been produced in 1918, for Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito are scarcely mentioned, and then only obliquely." The show had "the will to inspire audiences," but it would have been "even more memorable" if it had included "a real fighting song, a song of enmity for fascism.''37 For most reviewers, however, it was to the show's-and Berlin's-credit that it did not engage in flagwaving or American chauvinism, nor did it "assure us that a single Yank can lick fifty Germans or a hundred and fifty Japs with his hands tied behind his back.''38 In less accomplished hands than Berlin's, This Is the Army "might very well have become oblique Nazi propaganda.''39 This Is the Army underscored the need for unity on all fronts with musical nods to the other branches of the armed forces, including a surprise first-act finale tribute to the Navy which brought down the house. But Berlin's most daring move-by contemporary military and theatrical standards-was his insistence that AfricanAmerican soldiers be included not only in the revue, but as fully integrated members of the military unit. In As Thousands Cheer, Bergreen attributes Berlin's actions primarily to the composer's theatrical expertise and not his social beliefs: "In his show business milieu, of course, Blacks had long been stars, popular with both black and white audiences. By integrating the revue, Berlin was simply importing familiar conventions into the Army."4D But as a soldier in
37Ralph Warner, " Irving Berlin's 'This Is the Army' In Lusty Premiere at Broadway," Women's Wear Daily 6 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPL-PA. I have not been able to track down a script for This Is the Army, but the extant lyrics contain little overtly political satire. When This Is the Army did broach political issues, its tone was more spoofing than biting. See "Aryans Under the Skin," in The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, ed. Robert Kimball and Linda Emmet (New York: Knopf, 2001), 361-363. This number paired "six little Japanese from Tokyo" with "six little German frau Ieins from Berlin" in a comic dance number. The Italians were excluded from the dance because "They're not Aryans anymore." 38Nathan, "School," 450. 39Jbid., 451. Ever the gadfly, it must have been somewhat disorienting for Nathan to find himself in the position of echoing a majority of his critical colleagues. 40Bergreen, 396.

GENRE AND PATRIOTISM

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World War I, Berlin had also witnessed first-hand how the armed forces had broken down barriers between various ethnic groups; it's possible he believed integrating the show's unit might provide a similar opportunity for African-Americans.4t As a result, the This Is the Army unit was the only fully integrated company during World War II, which makes it all the more ironic that the African-American soldiers' off-stage military life wasn't reflected in their on-stage presence; integrated in life, they were essentially segregated in performance. They were given a first-act specialty number, "What the Well Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear," and then disappeared until they joined the entire 300-strong company in singing the show's rousing finale, "This Time (is the last time)." Despite Bergreen's assertions, in 1942 it was not yet entirely common to see black performers fully integrated into predominantly white theatrical productions on Broadway. The 1930s were, in fact, a period of greater theatrical segregation than the 1920s, and it was only during World War II that black performers began to be cast in greater numbers in Broadway musicals.42 Berlin had cast African-American performers in his earlier productions, most notably Ethel Waters in As Thousands Cheer (1933), but his show biz instincts, honed in an earlier theatrical era, inclined toward using black singers and dancers in specialty numbers. In addition, Berlin harbored an outdated attachment to minstrel numbers. This Is the Army opened with a minstrel show, which culminated in the song "Mandy," introduced in 1918 in Berlin's first soldier show, Yip, Yip, Yaphank, and performed again in blackface in 1942, by six cakewalking Mandys "opposite their Sambos."43 Berlin was not the only person who failed to grasp fully the irony of this situation; the majority of reviewers thrilled to the flashy hoofing of the dancers in "What the Well Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear" and embraced with a fond nostalgia the minstrel show
41Ibid., 396-397. 42AIIen Woll, Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1989), 210-211. It is telling that Woll cites Harold Rome's post-war revue, call Me Mister (1946) as the first show to significantly reflect the increased integration of black performers into the mainstream Broadway musical. The three actors cast in the show were not relegated to the chorus but given central roles in this show about the challenges -comical and serious-that faced returning Gis after the war. This Is the Army-socially progressive off-stage, conservative on-receives no mention (213). 43Abel Green, '"This Is the Army' a 100 percent Smash As Show and Inspiring Americanism," Variety, 8 July 1942, This Is The Army Reviews, NYPL-PA. Ezra Stone, the director of This Is the Army, had a prickly relationship with Berlin, but still managed to save the composer from his own worst instincts when he talked Berlin out of staging the opening minstrel show iwth the entire company in blackface (Bergreen, 397).

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elements, blackface and all. Their appreciative responses to the show's "curtsy to the colored soldiers' contribution,"44 however, seem less a product of overt personal racism than of hegemonic-and generic-expectations met and reified by the performance onstage. "What the Well Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear" was cited by nearly every critic as a highlight of the production, a number "shot with vitamins and good nature."45 When the African-American soldiers began their routine, "the show [hit] a spot of terrific speed and zest," which lasted "for ten minutes with practically no foot ever touching the ground."46 The New York Sun's Herrick Brown opined that audiences wouldn't see "any better stepping anywhere along Broadway than that presented by the Negro dancers to the rhythmic strains of this number."47 In the midst of the critical huzzahs, only Ralph Warner-again! -saw fit to blow a few raspberries at the show for "its out-moded [sic] treatment of Negroes." He cited both the blackface performance of "Mandy" and the "tap and buck" of "What the Well Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear" as examples of this "ancient" Broadway "weakness," and decried the latter's "implication that in Harlem the boys wear top hats, or wide-brimmed colored hats, tight, striped trousers and gay coats-in other words that they are typical minstrel boys" who've now exchanged their fancy dress "for the olive drab and khaki of the Army." Warner alone noted that "the only time [Negro and white soldiers] mingle" on stage was during the show's finale. In a further irony, Warner indicted the "virtual segregation" on stage as "merely a reflection" of Army policy "in building segregated units."48 It is evident from their lack of comment on the topic that this theatrical segregation did not strike other reviewers as anything but "natural"; it also did not impact their enjoyment of the AfricanAmerican soldiers' performances.49 The only performer, in fact, who was more universally praised was Berlin himself. In his shrewdest bit
44Green, "100% Smash." 45Burns Mantle, "Hail to 'This Is the Army!' Our Greatest Soldier Show," New York Daily News 6 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPL-PA. 46John Anderson, '"This Is the Army' Opens at Broadway," New York Journal American 6 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPL-PA; [Lewis Nichols?], "'This Is the Army' a Rousing Hit; Throng Pays $45,000 at Opening," New York Times 5 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPLPA. 47Herrick Brown, '"This Is the Army,' New Soldier Show, Arrives at the Broadway Theater," New York Sun 6 July 1942, This Is the Army Reviews, NYPLPA. 48Warner, "Lusty Premiere."

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of showmanship, Berlin reprised his popular soldier's lament, "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," from Yip, Yip, Yaphank, as the penultimate number in the show. Decked out in his doughboy uniform, and joined onstage by other original cast members from the World-War-I soldier show, "Sgt." Berlin brought down the house. With his reedy, thin tenor, Berlin was no powerhouse performer, but his plaintive rendition tapped directly into the vein of nostalgia that runs deeply through patriotic sentiment. Time reported that a quarter century later, "it was still the best song in the show" and had most of the opening night audience "dabbing their eyes"; it was, Wolcott Gibbs declared, "if not one of the great artistic events of the season ... incontestably the most moving."so It was perfectly placed as prelude to the closing refrain of "This Time": "For this time/ We are out to finish/ The job we started then,/ Clean it up for all time this time,/ So we don't have to do it again."Sl In This Is the Army's final two songs, two generations of soldier-actors onstage embodied both pride in the military's tradition of service to democracy and the commitment to improve on that tradition. A very reassuring message for an audience that felt its democratic institutions and traditions were threatened as never before. This is only a starting point for further investigation. One show cannot be taken as representative of an entire genre nor can the responses to one show be seen as representative of critics' responses to the musical as a genre. If we really want to understand the historical context of musical theatre criticism, we need to read it through and against the critics' responses to non-musical theatre, as well. It would be informative, for example, to read the reviews of This Is the Army in relation to reviews of other musicals and plays written on World-War-11 themes to see if they demonstrate the same melding of nationalist and aesthetic concerns as the response to This Is the Army. In addition, a broader study might also consider the critics' gender and their educational and professional backgrounds, as
49Jt is questionable whether the press even knew that the This Is the Army company was a fully integrated military unit off-stage. I have not found a single review or feature article that mentions this fact. Whether this is a result of a U. S. Army wish not to have the information widely publicized or the show's publicists failing to see it as a selling point, it seems to have been a well-kept secret either within-or from-the mainstream (white) media. (I have not investigated whether or not the information was available in the African-American press of the period.) Was the public deemed ready for black and white soldiers together on stage, but not on the battlefield? The subject warrants further investigation.

50The Theater, "Soldier's Chorus," review of This Is the Army, Time 13 July

1942, 36; Gibbs, 26.

51"This Time (Closing)," in Complete Lyrics, 363.

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well as the editorial policies and demographics of the publications for which they wrote. Taking these factors into account might, in turn, broaden our notion of the "interested" audience for musical theatre journalism: New Yorker readers, sure, but Catholic World? This Is the Army is largely forgotten today, in part, because of musical theatre historians' tendency to emphasize the formal development of the musical as a genre over its significance as a cultural text for its audience. From an historical distance, it is tempting to see the overwhelmingly positive critical response to This Is the Army as the theatrical equivalent of "no atheists in a foxhole," but for a nation at war, the line dividing aesthetics and patriotism was not so distinct. For this particular audience at this particular moment, the most American musical was the best American musical.

Journal of American Drama and Theatre 15 (Spring 2003}

IMAGES OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN THEATRE: THE 1920s

LYN SCHENBECK

A New Generation Flappers in fliwers. bobbed hair, the Algonquin Round Table and the Harlem Renaissance, Miss America and woman suffrage, Ziegfeld and his Follies: most of us have no trouble conjuring up images of women from the 1920s. The historical reality of women's lives during that period conforms to no such handy set of snapshots. Historians noted a decline of feminism and an increase in sexual freedom. Scholars writing in the 1930s and 1940s observed that, although women had been emancipated and industrialized, they usually chose to remain at home, perhaps because new household appliances had reduced some of the drudgery of domestic life. Discrimination against women in education, hiring, salaries, promotions, and politics was rampant throughout the decade.! Since 1970, feminist historians have revised this picture, describing women of the 1920s as politically active reformers, although as voters they broke little new ground. A new image of female independence, coupled with overt sexuality, was projected in advertising and the motion picture industry in the 1920's. These images served to propagate new social values and perceptions; they had a profound effect on fashion as well . With the advent of inexpensive, ready-to-wear clothing, women felt freer to try any style. In order to promote the new standard sizes, and to compensate for camera problems, fashion photography began to stress slimness and women began to count calories.2 For some time, issues of race and gender had intersected in problematic ways in American life. Although many middle-class black women tried to fight alongside white women on gender discrimination, white women were often uncomfortable with their help. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, a Boston suffragist and editor of the

!Estelle Freedman, "The New Woman: Changing Views of Women," in

Decades of Discontent, Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen, eds. (Westport, CT:

Greenwood Press, 1983), 21-44. 2Joan Jacobs Brumberg, "Fasting Girls: The Emerging Ideal of Slenderness in American Culture," in Linda K. Kerber and Jane Sherron de Hart, eds., Women5 America: Refocusing the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 376.

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Women5 Era, a black newspaper, was one of many who complained about the double standard in the woman suffrage movement. She felt that white suffragists should offer black women, burdened both by sexism and racism, more consistent help in gaining political equality.3 Race and gender problems were further complicated by an evolving American class system. Three landmark Broadway musicals reflect these conflicts in different ways. I will examine principal female roles in Shuffle Along (1921),4 No, No Nanette (1925)5, and Show Boat (1927)6 to illustrate

3Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, "Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment," in Decades of Discontent, 262.
4Shuffle Along, book by Aubrey Lyles and Flournoy Miller, music by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissie, opened at the Cort Theatre on May 23, 1921. It was the first commercially successful African-American show on Broadway in more than a decade. It launched several careers, including that of Josephine Baker, and introduced a number of black dance rhythms and steps to Broadway. As a result of Shuffle Along, "all stage dancing became more rhythmic, and jazz drummers were getting ideas from tap dancers." The story concerns a three-way mayoral race in all-black Jimtown. Interwoven with that is a budding romance between Harry Walton, the only honest mayoral candidate, and ingenue Jessie Williams. The musical broke box-office records and signaled the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, with its emphasis on a New Negro.

son September 16, 1925, No, No Nanette, book by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, music by Caesar and Vincent Youmans, opened at the Globe Theatre. Nanette is an adolescent New Woman, ready to experience life. Her attempts at freedom entwine with a subplot involving efforts by her (married) male guardiana Bible salesman-to conceal his generosity toward three flappers. After several cases of mistaken identity and complex love triangles and quartets, everyone's problems are solved. Two of the show's hit songs, "I Want To Be Happy" and "Tea for Two" epitomize the atmosphere of financial prosperity, frivolity, and romantic fantasy prevalent in musical comedies of the 1920's.
6Show Boat was not another frothy musical; its relatively honest depictions of class difference, racial enmity, abandonment, and revenge took precedence over light comedy and happy endings. Adapted from the Edna Ferber novel with book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and music by Jerome Kern, it premiered in New York at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927. Show Boat was the first musical in American theatre history to feature a racially integrated cast. Show Boat emphasizes strong female characters, including the matriarchs Parthenia Hawks, wife of the showboat's captain, and her black counterpart Queenie; the entertainers Julie Dozier-a mulatto passing for white-and Ellie May Chipley; and Parthy's daughter Magnolia. Like the novel, Show Boat the musical covers a broad span of history, beginning in the late 1880s when Andy and Parthy Hawks purchase the Cotton Blossom and ending in the "present" with the bittersweet reunion of Magnolia and gambler Gaylord Ravenal.

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the era's diverse attitudes toward women.? The most obvious organizing modality for the disparate images of women in these three shows may be conflict between the new generation of women and the old-and between an emerging value system that prized sexual autonomy, financial independence, and individualism, and a system based on patriarchy and female "privilege" through male protection. Each show contains women of both generations who negotiate the remarkable changes in American values and behavior in a variety of ways. Beyond Costumes It is hardly surprising to find that the costumes in these three shows portray the female generation gap in visual terms, ranging from severe Victorian garb (Show Boat's Parthenia Hawks) to highfashion flappers (Nanette's eponymous hero). Even the nuances of racial uplift ideology may be present, in the relatively demure outfits worn by the Shuffle Along cast.B Even more significant, however, are the images presented in the book, lyrics, and music of these shows. Shuffle Along features two ingenue roles, Jessie Williams and her comic sidekick Ruth Little. Each reflects a different side of the 1920s generation gap among women. Jessie, daughter of Jim Williams, who runs the Jimtown Hotel, is the old-fashioned ingenue, who aspires only to marriage and a family. Her father withholds permission to marry the man she loves, Harry Walton. Emotionally stronger than her beau, it is she who must maintain faith in their future, fulfilling the traditional woman's role as moral compass in uncertain times.
7I have used the following sources for all references to these three shows: (1) Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, Shuffle Along (hereafter referred to as SA), unpublished manuscript, Library of Congress A969-245, November 18, 1922; (2) Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, No, No Nanette (hereafter referred to as NN (1925), unpublished prompt book, New York Library for the Performing Arts NCOF+ (Mandel, F. No, no Nanette, 1925); (3) Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, No, No Nanette (hereafter referred to as NN (1971)), unpublished script (New York: Tams-Witmark Music Library, 1971); (4) Oscar Hammerstein II, Show Boat (hereafter referred to as SB), in liner notes to CD set, Show Boat, conducted by John McGlinn (London: EMI CDS 7 49108 2, 1988), reproduction of 1927 script [orig. in New York Library of the Performing Arts] . BRegarding images of proper New Negro females, see Hazel Carby, "It Jus Be's Oat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues," in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, Robyn Warhol and Diane P . Herndl, eds. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 746-58, which explores protagonists in novels by Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen, women who either deny their sexuality or are forced to sacrifice it for the greater good. The idealized New Negro woman, constructed for the needs of the patriarchy, was seldom allowed to be a flapper.

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Ruth Little is the New Woman. A quintessential flapper, she wants only freedom and fun: "None of that wedding stuff for me, kid."9 Ruth does want a man, however, and in "''m Craving for that Kind of Love," describes him this way: I'm wishing, and fishing and wanting to hook, A man kind [of] like you find in a book, I mean a modern Romeo, I do not want a phoneo. He maybe the baby of some Vamp, Oh babe! At vampin' and lampin' I'm the champ, And if I once get him, I'll just set him Beneath my parlor lamp.-and let him Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me with his tempting lips, (Sweet as honey drips) Press me, press me, press me, To his loving breast, While I gently rest. l o Ruth expresses her desire in openly physical terms, while avoiding any hint of the Jezebel image that New Negroes (or, for that matter, old-line racial "uplifters'') would have found offensive. This song's emphasis on lighthearted romantic fantasy and her character's obvious ties to progressive mainstream attitudes save her from slipping into stereotype. When No, No Nanette opened four years later, its very first number presented a picture of young American womanhood brimming with overt sexuality: Flappers are we. Flippant and fly and free, Never too slow All on the go. Petting parties With the smarties .. .ll Nanette, the show's ingenue, is much like Jessie Williams in Shuffle Along: ultimately she wants to settle down and raise a family.12 Nanette wants to take risks first, have fun, and spend money: "I want to get out a little and look the men over."13 When her guardian Jimmy
9SA, 4 . 10SA, 65. llNN (1925), 1-2.

12Freedman, Decades of Discontent, 25.

13NN ( 1925), 1-11.

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Smith gives her $200 for anything she wants and then bestows complete freedom on her in Atlantic City, she becomes the prototypical New Woman of the 1920s, smoking, dancing, and playing the field. Sue Smith and her friend Lucille are no longer ingenues. Sue, a frugal woman who considers herself rather plain, wants to bring up Nanette as conservatively as possible: "I agreed to take you home with me and train you to be a good wife for some good man ."14 She has money but refuses to spend it, and she doesn't approve of the new sexuality. By the show's finale, however, when Sue discovers her husband has been spending money on other women, she decides to change, vowing to "throw economy to the winds. Hereafter, my sole purpose in life will be to spend and spend and spend."lS Superficially, this can be read as an embrace of a new freedom, but Sue is actually sacrificing some of her financial autonomy and self-discipline (traditional male prerogatives) in order to placate her husband. Lucille, wife of lawyer Billy Early, is an even more recognizable "type": the woman who aspires to wealth and pursues a lifestyle she cannot afford. She is determined to do anything she must to keep her man, and she continually offers strategies: "Remember Sue, what I've always told you. Flannels may keep YOU warm, but it takes silk to keep a husband warm."16 However, Lucille does gamble a bit, wears fashionable clothing, and towards the end of the show, in "You can Dance with Any Girl at All," she lets her husband know that, as a modern woman, she is willing to give him supervised freedom. Lucille: A little freedom now and then Is apt to make the best of men A little better even when He leads a model life. Billy: I quite agree that liberty Permitted in the right degree Produces sweeter harmony Between a man and wife. But your words sound very strange. Lucille: The world has seen a change. Oh, you can dance with any girl at all 14NN (1925), 1-11. lSNN (1925), 3-17. 16NN (1925), 3-8.

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So just forget me And act as though you never met me. I will be a flower on the wall While you are dancing fancy free. Show the ladies every step you know Just raise Hades till they tingle Mingle till they think you're single You can dance with any girl at all As long as you come home with me.17
Show Boat's portrayal of three generations of women, each rooted in her own era, created an even more nuanced sense of the evolution of women's images and attitudes from the late 1880s to 1927. The five main women's roles in Show Boat are quite different from one another. Class and race also strongly influence these women's self-perceptions and their perceptions of others. Parthenia Ann Hawks, wife of Captain Andy, owner of the showboat, is a non-nurturing, domineering, bigoted woman. Her entire attitude recalls Mencken's famous definition of Puritanism-"the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere, may be happy." When the show begins, Magnolia, its ingenue, is seventeen. Like Nanette, she is a free spirit, stubborn, innocent, overtly sexual, and interested in having a man at some point in her life. "I drift along with my fancy-Sometimes I thank my lucky stars my heart is free, and other times I wonder where's the mate-"18 Magnolia also has a vivid imagination. When she first meets gambler Gaylord Ravenal, they " Make Believe," and she sings

Though the cold and brutal fact is You and I have never met, We need not mind convention's Ps and Qs. If we put our thoughts in practice We can banish all regret Imagining most anything we choose.1 9 She takes every opportunity to challenge her mother's authority. Blind to color, class, and age, Magnolia is the total antithesis of Parthy. When Parthy grabs Magnolia's arm to keep her from going to see the ostracized mulatto Julie, Magnolia " [shakes] her off almost savagely."
17NN (1971), 115121.

18SB, 63. 19SB, 65.

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Regardless of social pressure, Magnolia remains true to her affection and support for Julie. She feels that only her father, Captain Andy, understands her. In the novel Ferber wrote, "Between father and daughter there sprang up such a bond of love and understanding as to make their relation a perfect thing, and so sturdy as successfully to defy even the destructive forces bent upon it by Mrs. Hawks."2o Magnolia is the first adolescent character in a musical who truly matures during the course of the show. Julie Dozier, actress on the showboat, is the most complex character in the musical, although she gets relatively little time onstage. At the outset of the drama she is happily married to a white man aware of her status, but soon events and social pressure reduce her to a "tragic mulatto," a familiar figure in early twentieth-century American literature and drama.21 Her story reveals the savage interdependence of gender, race, and class distinctions in the patriarchal structure of the time. Queenie, black maid and cook for the Hawks family, comes close to being a pure Mammy stereotype.22 As such, she takes great pride in mothering all the young white women on the boat. Queenie is also a seer, a role traditionally associated with both the feminine and the primitive. Just before the climactic "miscegenation scene," when Julie's racial deception is revealed, Queenie predicts disaster: Mis'ry's comin' aroun' De mis'ry's comin' aroun' I know it's comin' aroun' Don't know to who.23

Battle(s) of the Sexes Shuffle Along represents a stable American patriarchy; the show's business owners and politicians are all men, and male characters get most of the stage time. Two of the three mayoral candidates, Sam Peck and Steve Jenkins, are partners in a grocery

20Edna Ferber, Show Boat(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926), 29. 21Beth Maclay Doriani, "Black Women in Nineteenth-Century America," in We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible, Darlene Clark Hine, Wilma King, and Linda Reed, eds. (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1995), 378. 22Catherine Clinton, "Mammy," in Black Women in America, Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 745. 23SB, 74.

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store and stealing from each other. Unbeknownst to the other, each hires Keeneye, that "great colored detective," to catch the thief. The third candidate, Harry Walton, gets to marry Jessie Williams if he wins the election. When Keeneye discovers the thefts, Harry becomes the new Mayor and Jessie's father gives his blessing to the marriage. The Shuffle Along cast also features a modest assortment of archetypal female characters, including two ingenues and a shrew. Aside from the ingenues, however, women get short shrift. Mrs. Sam Peck appears to have no first name of her own, and the writers gave the remaining female character, the Mayor's secretary, no name at all. Mrs. Sam Peck is the only married female in the show and, not incidentally, the shrew. She actively resists Jimtown's patriarchy by dominating her husband and so attempting to control the election and the town. As she tells Sam: "Well, if you run the city and I run you, don't that make me run everything?"24 The script lists Mrs. Peck as a "Suffragette,"2S but since the Nineteenth Amendment had been adopted the year before Shuffle Along opened, this designation has little to do with her actions and more to do with her fundamental nature, i.e., that of a woman who seeks to usurp power from men.26 Mrs. Peck also shines in the traditional roles of woman as moral force and insufferable competitor: Mrs. Peck: "Imagine me the leading light of the city running things to suit myself. Why the first law I'll pass will be to close up Jim Green's Bevo parlor. Mr. Peck: (reprovingly) For what? The man ain't done nothing to you. Mrs. Peck: Oh, he's making too much money and his wife is wearing such fine clothes, why she's snubbing everybody. But you wait, my time is coming. I'll show her. I'll fix her. I'll SHOW her." 27

24SA, 21. 25SA, third introductory page (no number). 26Aiice Dunbar-Nelson, "The Negro Woman and the Ballot," in Words of Fire, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, ed. (New York: The New Press, 1995), 87. African American men had not been well disposed toward the idea of woman suffrage; they felt marginalized enough with the racism that was becoming more virulent daily. If women got the vote, many feared that their power would be even further diminished. 27SA, 21.

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The family structure depicted in No, No Nanette is a far less stable patriarchy. Its principal male character, Bible salesman Jimmy Smith, actually provides an example of reverse gender representation. Na'ive, passive, selfless, and manipulated by women throughout the show, he has little control over his fate or that of his ward. He depends on others to solve his problems. His feminized worldview is amply articulated by the "philosophy" he voices constantly: I want to be happy But I won't be happy Till I make you happy too. Life's really worth living When we are mirth giving Why can't I give some to you? 2s Of the ten main characters on Nanette's cast list, seven are women, and six of those are substantia l roles. Jimmy's wife Sue, like Jimmy, resists gender stereotyping. She runs the household and controls family finances. A practical, strict parent to Nanette, she sometimes grows impatient with her "other child": "Jimmy, you never seem to grow up.''29 In Edginton's novel, Nanette is not James's ward, but one of the women upon whom he lavishes gifts.30 Clearly the musical's writers felt that Nanette would be more useful, and more attractive to the audience, as an ingenue in the New Woman mold. Young and enthusiastic, she nevertheless encounters problems in trying to gain some autonomy. In the Act I finale, when she expresses her desires to her beau (the aptly named Tom Trainer), he replies, "Nanette, you're raving. Girls should be saving.'' Nanette gets very angry and suggests that she'll start shopping for a sugar daddy, that kinder, gentler representative of the patriarchy: "I'll find a Santa Claus to pay my bills.''31 When she threatens to leave Tom, the chorus functions as
2BNN (1971), 1-25. The most surprising aspect of Jimmy Smith may be that, in adapting his character from the novel Oh! James! by May Edginton, Irving caesar and Otto Harbach converted the hard-driving businessman James Bright, a fellow with an oddly gentle private side, into an almost totally ineffectual person. Apparently they felt their American audiences wouldn't accept a generous, passive, naive, male character who is also a highly competitive businessman. 29NN (1971), 1-5. 30May Edginton, Oh! James! (London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1914), 70-72. 31NN (1925), 41.

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her patriarchal conscience, singing, No, No Nanette, don't make him grieve You're going a bit too far. No, No Nanette, you must not leave, Remember how young you are. We really think you ought to stay. It's wrong to tease poor Tom this way. You may regret so please remember No, no, no, no Nanette.32

SCHENBE CK

Towards the end of Act III, Tom and Nanette kiss and, "in an instant," she realizes that Tom is the man for her.33 She's had her fling, and now it's time to satisfy the conventions of heterosexual courtship. Lucille is more than willing to offer Nanette her experience as a guide. In Act III, Nanette must reveal to Tom that she lied regarding her whereabouts: Nanette: But how can I explain it to Tom? Lucille: Never explain. Nanette: But if men ask questions? Lucille: Don't answer-just tire them out. That is familiar advice to generations of otherwise powerless females who used sex to distract a man from the issue at hand. Later Lucille suggests another form of manipulation: "My dear, no man's brain works when the woman he loves is crying."34 Elsewhere Lucille bestows her most useful maxim : "The only way to keep a husband straight is to keep him broke."3S She tells Sue, "Spend their money. The more extravagant you are, the more men treasure you ."36 Although a wife's extravagance may limit a man's freedom ("keep a husband straight"), it also demonstrates his power-through the luxury of her wardrobe. A woman constantly in need of money also models total dependence on her man. Whereas Sue bases her self-image on her own strength of character, Lucille and Nanette seem to be empowered by money.

32Ibid ., 41-43.

33NN (1971}, 3-12, 3- 13. 34NN (1971}, 3-8. 35NN (1925), 1-5. 36NN (1925}, 3-7.

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Lucille's lack of self-esteem is also shown by her constant need for new, fancy clothing. Suspicious of all men, she convinces Sue that Jimmy is involved with another woman and that a detective should follow him. When Sue discovers that her husband has been giving money to three women, she and Lucille decide to make him suffer. Lucille's pessimism and anxiety provide the bitter truth beneath the last laugh in the script: Sue: Lucille, have we made him suffer enough? Lucille: NO man can suffer enough.37 Just as if Nanette were an opera, a woman (Lucille again) performs the only lament in the show.3s When she thinks that her husband has been philandering, she sings the "Where Has My Hubby Gone Blues," in which she completely succumbs to the patriarchy: "I don't know happiness unless, dear, I'm with you .... The whole world travels in twos." The men of the chorus offer to be her beaux but she rejects them. They tell her to "Throw away his photograph until you find a better half who won't try to roam." She cynically replies, "I know he'll come back and then he'll do the same thing again."39 Lucille and Mrs. Sam Peck of Shuffle Along share several important traits; both are overtly domineering where their husbands are concerned, suspicious of men in general, and full of advice. Pauline, maid to the Smith household, is a stock theatrical character, overworked, undervalued and jealous of her mistress. She is privy to everything that happens and voices home truths that no one else dares utter. Pauline's main "feminine" problem her fatal jealousy of her privileged female employers, and she relies (like the "privileged" Lucille) on money to heal her pain. In Act III's "Payday Pauline," Jimmy and Billy bribe her, offering "enough to buy a home for you" and more. She feistily replies, "Right here, let me be frank. My idea of a love nest is the National City Bank."40 When she is about to leave for the fourth time, Jimmy assumes that his wife has discharged her. She replies: "Discharge? Huh, I quit. They don't discharge cooks nowadays. But I like you Mr. Smith. I always get on with the men wherever I work, but where oh where, do you men get these wives?"41 It is clear that she 37NN (1925), 3-19.
38Susan McClary, Feminine Endings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 46.

39NN (1971), 153-160. 40NN (1925), 3-13. 41NN (1925), 1-23.

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could use some sexual healing too. In the song "My Doctor," she openly expresses her desire in lyrics both humorous and suggestive: I like it best when he's sounding my chest, I get nice and close to his head. His touch stimulates and excites me, Like the shock of a cold morning bath. I don't think he's much of a doctor, But oh Lord-what an osteopath!42 Today it seems clear that one reason for the enormous popularity of Edna Ferber's novels was her ability to create vivid, recognizable American women. From Emma McChesney & Co. (1915) to Ice Palace (1958), her stories abound with strong women facing difficult situations. Show Boat was no exception, and Hammerstein wisely retained its feminine point of view when he adapted it for the musical stage. We only glimpse the patriarchy as it affects and is affected by the female characters. Yet both female and male issues relating to the difference between having power and feeling powerful are woven into the show. As the drama begins, Captain Andy's household is a de facto matriarchy. Parthy uses a combination of shrill assertion, manipulation, and obstruction to get her way: she is a portrait of female authoritarianism at its worst. Ferber provided scant justification for her behavior: "The intolerance with which women of Parthenia Ann's type regard all men was heightened by [her being older than Andy] to something resembling contempt."43 Parthy resists change, has no tolerance for personal differences, and sees no point of view other than her own. Much to Andy's dismay, she tries to exert intense control over every aspect of life on the Cotton Blossom. Cynical and completely negative about everything, like Mrs. Peck in Shuffle Along, she never sings in the show, a sure sign that she is irredeemably unsympathetic. She blames the showboat, and by extension Andy, for everything bad that occurs. Parthy doesn't just hate men, she appears to dislike every creature who doesn't fit her view of a human being.
42NN (1925), 2-7. The three women to whom Jimmy Smith has given money, Flora (Latham) from 'Frisco, Betty (Brown) from Boston, and Winnie (Winslow) from Washington are typical gold diggers, blackmailers who expect money if they are to "keep the secret." Although each woman swears that she had no physical relationship with Jimmy, the letter Flora leaves for him mentions "the spirit of two natures vibrating as one." None of these hussies goes through any transformation in the show. 43Ferber, 27.

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Judgmental and competitive, she is remarkably unfeminine. Ravenal (the most autonomous male in the show, and thus perhaps the most "manly'') seems to be the only character who can intimidate her. Yet by the end of Act I, Captain Andy is also openly defying her. He encourages Magnolia to marry Ravenal and helps them plan the wedding. When Parthy raises objections, he rebukes her and proceeds to the church in spite of her anger. He shows no sympathy when she faints: "Good! Now we can go on with the wedding!"44 From that point on, Andy is free from Parthy's domination. Julie Dozier, a woman, an entertainer, and a mulatto, is the most socially marginalized female character in any of the three shows. Ferber described Julie as lazy and alcoholic. Physically weak and timid, she runs away from her problems. Long after she has left the showboat, she discovers Magnolia desperately auditioning for a nightclub job with "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man." Knowing Magnolia's need and loyalty, filled with self-hatred and years of rejection, Julie throws Magnolia a kiss and exits. It is the last we see of her. She has given her job and her life for Magnolia,4s very much in keeping with the inevitable-victim aspect of the tragic mulatto figure.46 Every song Julie sings, from "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" to the heartbreaking "Bill," reflects her tragic character. Unlike Julie, Queenie has always known her place. She mediates between the Negro community and the whites on the showboat, another task customarily assigned in plantation literature to the Mammy figure. Queenie has some power over her husband Joe and some influence over the whites that she nurtures, but she is aware of how cautious she must be. She is obviously respected by the other Negroes, especially Joe, whom she constantly but affectionately criticizes. "Joe! Dat lazy nigger don't help me-he's always too tiredef dat feller ever tried to cook, he'd be puttin' popcorn in flapjacks so dat dey'd turn over by demselves."47 Sociologists and other interested observers of black households in
44SB (1927), 94. 45Miles Kreuger, Liner notes , 17. 46Edward Byron Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States (Boston : Badger Press, 1918), 378. Julie's last appearance is described in the stage directions as follows: "This is Julie, a hollow-cheeked woman-looking older than she really iswith all the earmarks of one who is down-and-out-marks which she has desperately and pathetically tried to hide by overdressing, by making use of too many odds and ends of finery, by a too-anxious application of rouge. She sits there, oblivious to all that is going on around her. From time to time she opens her handbag and takes out a pint flask-typical of the bottled goods of the time-and furtively takes a drink." SB, 102.

47SB, 68.

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the 1920s were convinced that the so-called "maternal household" was an essential aspect of black culture, usually ascribed either to survivals of West African practice or to the legacy of slavery. In both internal and external perceptions of black culture, it seemed traditional for the woman to be the foundation of the family. To white observers, this apparent confirmation of a black matriarchy was further evidence of black males' fundamental inferiority.4B It was thus possible to read the strength of women like Queenie as a negative social signifier.

Women and Black Aspiration in Shuffle Along Shuffle Along succeeded with whites partly through its conservatism-it portrayed African Americans as clever but harmless, sensual but fundamentally upright. The authors' orientation was firmly directed toward a vision of racial uplift through genteel behaviormodeling "whiteness"-but this was met with a combination of practical and aesthetic concerns posed by its mostly younger performers, who wanted to show off their specialties-which were in some cases decidedly old-fashioned-and yet to portray a New Negro as well.49 The resulting melange of performance styles in the show blended traditional and innovative, old and new, in a mosaic of black culture. The consistently high quality of the music in Shuffle Along helped set it apart from earlier black shows: its songs vary in style from ragtime to two genuinely serious love ballads. Inclusion of the latter was a daring innovation. As Robert Kimball wrote in Reminiscing with Sissie and Blake, "Honest, unburlesqued romantic love interest in a black show was on dangerous ground: white audiences might boo the show off stage."so Noble Sissie related the following anecdote about the romantic duet "Love Will Find a Way," sung by Jessie and Harry:
On opening night in New York this song had us more worried than anything else in the show. We were afraid that when Lottie Gee and Roger Matthews sang it, we'd be run out of town. Miller, Lyles, and I were standing near the exit door with one foot inside the theatre and the other pointed north toward Harlem.
48Regarding "manliness," see Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), esp. 1-44. 49Judith R. Kramer, The American Minority Community (New York: Crowell,

1970), 211. The "old" represented the docile, compliant, banjo-playing Negro; the
"new" represented confidence and self-reliance. 50Robert Kimball and William Bolcum, Reminiscing with Sissie and Blake (New York: Cooper Square Press, 1973), 93.

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We thought of Blake, stuck out there in front, leading the orchestra-his bald head would get the brunt of the tomatoes and the rotten eggs. Imagine our amazement when the song was not only beautifully received, but encored.s1 Elsewhere, Blake had to compromise his views of what was appropriate for a black musical. He originally wrote "I'm Just Wild About Harry" as a waltz. But Lottie Gee, the actress cast in the original production, told Blake that it didn't feel right to her: "How can you have a waltz in a colored show?" Blake reminded her of other examples, but she won in the end, and he made it into a one-step as she requested. Its short phrases, rapid tempo, strophic form and duple meter are nevertheless reminiscent of such George M. Cohan songs as "Oh, You, Wonderful Boy."s2 How did the added racial concerns of Shuffle Along's creators affect the images of women offered in the show? Gloria Collins, daughter of Hazel Burke, a chorus member in the original production, told me, "My mother said that the lighter your skin, the better your chances to be in the show. Fortunately, she had fairly light skin and that helped. They figured that the only way to make any money would be if whites came to the shows and they wouldn't come if everyone was dark."S3 Photographs of the original production show that the women in Shuffle Along had a variety of skin shades. It is interesting to note that the two female performers who ultimately became the most famous, Josephine Baker and Florence Mills, had darker skin than others in that chorus. Within the production itself, there appears to have been little or no intra-racial strife. In Shuffle Along, all the female characters are middle-class. None of them has to work, since their middle-class husbands or fathers provide support adequate for their financial "independence." Although working women were respected in the black community-indeed, the survival of most households depended on them-the aspirational quality of these stage women's work-free lives cannot be dismissed. Like the all-black towns that Jimtown recalled, the ideal of a leisured "lady of the home" was fondly embraced by most of the black middle
51Jbid.
52It will not have escaped black audience members' attentions that all of Jimtown, including its churches, schools, businesses, and political system1 was populated and controlled by African Americans. In fact, such towns existed 1n the early twentieth century and were a significant source of pride, not only to their inhabitants but to those who put up wifh less freedom and security in other areas. See footnote 5.

53Interview with Gloria Collins in July 10, 2001.

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class and elite. The women of Shuffle Along are shown respect in other ways. None of them speaks in dialect; that emblem of the "old" Negro is relegated to a handful of dishonest male characters. There are no mothers or "mother signifiers" present, even in the lives of the two young women, Ruth and Jessie-was the Mammy stereotype an obstacle here? (It surfaces anyway, in one of Harry Walton's songs.)S4 We learn nothing at all about the Mayor's secretary, and Mrs. Sam Peck doesn't appear to have children. As we have noted earlier, through her association with the New Woman flapper middle-class blacks could read Ruth Little as an aspirational figure rather than a sexual stereotype. Even so, for whites in the audience she may have displayed the essence of black female sexuality when she sang "I'm Craving for that Kind of Love," and "I'm Simply Full of Jazz." She is also the only leading female character in Shuffle Along who dances-another traditional signifier of ripe female sexuality.

Women and White Appropriation in Nanette and Show Boat Appropriations of cultural blackness have been a common feature of America's white cultural landscape since the days of the minstrel shows. What may be most pertinent to the present discussion is the degree to which such borrowings are linked to female characters in Nanette and Show Boat. In this regard, one could say that a double distortion occurs with the mapping of white notions of "blackness" onto (mostly) male notions of the female. The creators and performers of No, No Nanette were all white, even the actress who played the maid; African Americans were invisible. In other words, Nanette was a typical Broadway entertainment. However, its creators freely appropriated black culture both directly, through the use of jazz songs and dances, and indirectly, through the association of "black" (i.e., overt and promiscuous) sexuality with some of the female characters.ss Thus the prominent use of dances like the Charleston and one-step. Thus Lucille's lament,
54"Mammy, I'm feeling tired and weary, My heart is heavy laden, too. Mammy, there's only one who can cheer me, And that only one is you . So won't you sing me to sleep, dear Mammy With a "hush-a-bye, oh pickaninny tune" SA, 48. sson the tendency to regard open displays of sexuality, and promiscuous behavior, as "Negroid tendencies," see inter alia bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 51-86.

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the "Where Has My Hubby Gone Blues/' approximates authentic blues style by borrowing some textual flourishes and a few blue notes. Women in the show also demonstrate their affinities with blackness by dancing the Charleston and the one-step. The creators of Show Boat certainly conferred a measure of honorary negritude upon Magnolia through her involvement with Julie and Queenie. They collaborate in teaching her Negro songs and dances, specifically the shuffle, at which she apparently excels. (Joe remarks, "Look at dat little gal shuffle!'')SG Aside from the number sung by blacks, modeling blackness, such as "Mis'ry's Comin' Roun"' and "In Dahomey," one other song becomes a crucial signifier of negritude. Her confident, idiomatic performance of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" is what first creates suspicion about Julie's past in the minds of the colored people. Because of its lyrics and many minor sevenths, it sounds blueslike, but it too is "passing": it is cast in 32-bar strophic song form and contains little syncopation. Queenie, Joe, Magnolia, and Julie perform it at various times throughout the show. In the Finale of Act I, the black and white choruses sing it together, and then Magnolia sings it alone in Act II, Scene IV. During that scene, the song's musical style is updated to ragtime and its tempo is drastically altered, a wry comment not only on the changing times, but also on continuing white appropriation of black culture through ragtime. Appropriations of "black" sexuality permeate Show Boat as well. Magnolia and Ravenal's daughter Kim, who is only on stage during the last two scenes of the show, sings a song with the chorus that associates southern (read black) sexuality with jazz dance: It's getting' hotter in the north every day. It's not the temp'rature that's makin' it that way. It's cause they're dancin' all the time The dances of a warmer clime. If you want Iovin', gals, you must learn to strut; They leave yqu cold unless you do nothin' else but! Up on the levees of Broadway It's getting hotter ev'ry day! The levee shuffle of the south Has traveled north by hoof and mouth, Makin' our feet slow down, Doin' those neat low-down Twistin' and turnin' steps, Blazin' and burnin' steps.57 Following that song, an extended set of specialty dances is seen.
56SB, 71. 57SB, 110.

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Among them are the Eccentric Dance and the Buck Dance, most likely the "buck and wing" dance by then so familiar from black shows like Shuffle Along.
Conclusion Because it was often female characters that led the way toward social, racial, and gender understanding and acceptance, images of women in these shows are a crucial element in determining their historical significance. While the characters in Shuffle Along and No, No Nanette remain static and two-dimensional, many of those in Show Boat grow during the course of the show. Because the local patriarchies in that show are weak or unpredictable, it is left to the women to create and sustain a life for themselves and their children. They do this in the face of a larger social system whose inequities continue to make their struggle more difficult. By situating the drama in a show-business milieu, Ferber (and Hammerstein) may have sought to exoticize these women's stories, to safely remove them from "real" American life. Yet they succeeded in communicating the pitfalls and opportunities that would become increasingly available to American women as the twentieth century went on. Show Boat helped effect dramatic changes in American musical theatre, and its portraits of women were no small part of those changes.

Journal of American Drama and Theatre 15 (Spring 2003)

WELCOME BACK TO BERLIN: LESSONS IN STAGING THE HOLOCAUST FROM CABARET, 1966 AND 19981

HENRY BIAL In the recent smash hit The Producers, the two title characters concoct a recipe for box office catastrophe : a musical called "Springtime for Hitler." Surely, think Bialystock and Bloom, a musical about the Holocaust will be the most spectacular flop in the history of the great white way. The unspoken assumption on which The Producers is premised is that the Broadway audience, mostly Jewish, liberal, or both, will never accept a musical in which Nazis sing, dance, and tell jokes. Overlooked by the title characters of The Producers is the fact that a musical about the Holocaust has already been a commercial and critical success on Broadway... twice. This essay explores the dramaturgical approach to the Holocaust taken by the musical Cabaret, written by Joe Masteroff (book), John Kander (music), and Fred Ebb (lyrics), based on Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" and John Van Druten's 1951 play I Am A Camera. Cabaret opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on 20 November 1966, and ran 1165 performances.2 The production was produced and directed by Harold Prince, with choreography by Ronald Field. The cast included Jill Haworth as the would-be ingenue Sally Bowles and Bert Convy as Cliff Bradshaw, an Americanized version of author Christopher Isherwood's self-named narrator in the "Berlin Stories."3 Herr Schultz, the elderly Jewish fruit vendor, was played by Borscht-belt comedian and Broadway veteran Jack Gilford, and Freulein Schneider, his German love interest, was portrayed by Lotte Lenya. The Emcee, of course, was the inimitable Joel Grey, who revised his role with above the title billing in a less successful 1987 revival. Three decades later, a revived/revised version opened at the Henry Miller Theatre (renamed the Kit Kat Klub for the occasion) on 19
lAn earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 meeting of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) in San Diego, under the title "Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Shalom: Jews and the New Cabaret." 2Including transfers to the Imperial Theatre in March 1967 and to the Broadway Theatre in October 1968. 3See Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind {1929-1939) (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976), The Berlin Stories (New York: J. Laughlin, 1946), and The Berlin of Sally Bowles (London: Hogarth Press, 1975).

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March 1998, transferred to Studio 54 in November of that year, and (as of this writing) is about to enter the fifth year of its run, having recently accomplished the remarkable, though not unprecedented, feat of running longer on Broadway than its original. The 1998 production was produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company and directed by Sam Mendes, based on a production he had first directed at London's Donmar Warehouse in 1993. Co-director Rob Marshall staged the dance numbers. This production starred Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles, John Benjamin Hickey as Cliff, Ron Rifkin as Herr Schultz, and Mary Louise Wilson as Freulein Schneider. The Emcee was Alan Cumming, whose performance swept virtually every major acting award for musical theatre in the 1997-98 season. By examining and comparing these two productions of Cabaret, we can draw some valuable lessons about the challenges of staging the Holocaust for a Broadway audience.4

Lesson #1-With apologies to The Producers, you can make a musical about the Holocaust, as long as it's not, you know, about the Holocaust. In 1966, before the word Holocaust had even come into regular usage to describe the horrors of Nazi Germany, Cabaret was considered brilliant and daring for its ability to depict the rise of Nazism within the context of an often comic musical. Richard Watts, Jr, for example, writing in the New York Post, declared that Cabaret "is a bright, handsome and steadily entertaining show, yet at the same time it manages to include in its scope a growingly horrifying depiction of the slow and ominous encroachment of the Hitler madness."s Or, as the Daily News headline euphemistically trumpeted, '"Cabaret' Has Fine Production, Good Cast, Downhill Story Line."G Walter Kerr, in the New York Times, declared in joyous tones, "This is social commentary.''?
4J should note here that I am too young to have seen the original 1966 production of Cabaret. I have seen the 1998 revival thrice to date, including an invited dress-rehearsal/preview on 13 February 1998, and the opening night performance.
5Richard Watts, Jr. "Two on the Aisle: The Innocence of Sally Bowles." New York Post, 21 November 1966, as reprinted in New York Theatre Critics Reviews XXVII, 16:240. GJohn Chapman, "'cabaret' Has Fine Production, Good Cast, Downhill Story Line." New York Daily News, 21 November 1966, as reprinted in New York Theatre Critics Reviews XXVII, 16:241. 7Walter Kerr, "The Theatre: 'cabaret' Opens at the Broadhurst." New York Times, 21 November 1966, as reprinted in New York Theatre Critics Reviews XXVII, 16:242.

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Yet Cabaret pulls a few punches, starting with the title: "When we first set out to do 'Cabaret,"' Masteroff explains, "its title was 'Welcome to Berlin.' A bunch of Jewish groups-what we call 'theater party ladies'-came to us and said, 'With a title like that, we could never sell the show to any Jewish group.' So we changed the title to 'Cabaret."'B Dramaturgically, the play is also easier to enjoy because it ends before things get really bad. Cliff, sadder but wiser, goes home to America, and what happens afterward is left to our imagination. This, of course, comes from the source material, Isherwood's "Berlin Stories," and Van Druten's I Am A Camera. As in The Diary of Anne Frank (also revived during the 1997-98 Broadway season), the narrator's point of view is shaped without the benefit of hindsight; because the character telling the story does not yet know the depth of the horrors the Nazis committed, the story is not burdened with the task of trying to explain the inexplicable. To put it another way, Cabaret is not about depicting the unthinkable; it is about depicting our inability to think the unthinkable. As both an artistic task and a commercial one, this is much easier. The story of the play is only tenuously connected to the overwhelming trauma of Auschwitz. It depicts the rise of Nazism and the growing prejudice against Jews, but even here, as Keith Garebian writes, "Kander and Ebb wisely avoid striking an audience on its collective head with clanging symbols.''9 Director Harold Prince was not bashful about introducing swastika armbands and other outward trappings of Nazism, but the production seems to have been effective in part because it did not lay it on too thick, foregrounding the romantic plot between Sally and Cliff, and using the creeping horror as a kind of backdrop to this more conventional musical. In a widely-noted concession to audiences' sensitivity about anti-Semitism, one significant cut was made in the score. In the comic number "If You Could See Her (Through My Eyes)" the Emcee waltzes with a gorilla in a skirt, the improbable image of a cross-species romance parodying the Nazis' ideology of racial purity. Lyricist Fred Ebb included a last line, which as Hollis Alpert writes was "meant to show the creeping antiSemitism of the period.''lo "If you could see her through my eyes," sings the Emcee, "She

Bsuzanne Weiss, "At 35, 'cabaret' returns to S.F., stays timely." Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, retrieved 1 February 2003 from http://www.jewishsf.com/bkO 10504/etp6a .shtml. 9Keith Garebian, The Making of Cabaret (Toronto: Mosaic Press, 1999), 70. lOHollis Alpert, Broadway: 125 Years of Musical Theatre, (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1991), 216.

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wouldn't look Jewish at all."ll Numerous theatre party agents wrote to Prince, demanding that the line be cut-they did not distinguish between depicting anti-Semitism and endorsing it, apparently, and feared that Jewish audiences would be offended.t2 Prince capitulated, over the objections of Ebb and others, and the line was changed to "She isn't a meeskite at all."13 The use of the Yiddish word for ugly (borrowed from elsewhere in the score) not only takes the edge off the song's chilling conclusion, it suggests that perhaps the Emcee might himself be Jewish. At the very least, the Emcee's use of a Yiddish word (and the Klub patrons' acceptance of it) undercuts the fear of Jewish cultural contagion that the song itself purports to represent.

Lesson # 2 -The new Cabaret is bolder in its depiction of fascism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust This lesson should not be surprising to anyone who has seen the revival, or followed the press coverage around it. Everything is much bolder in the 1998 production, from the quasi-environmental staging concept, to the treatment of homosexuality, to the costuming of the chorus girls. Ben Brantley in the Times, for example, writes, "This 'Cabaret' is seedier, raunchier, and more sinister than the original groundbreaking Broadway version."t4 Brantley's colleague Michiko Kakutani calls the production "darker, raunchier, and more disturbing than its predecessors."ts Mendes's production seems, at least on the surface, to foreground the Holocaust-or at least the evils of Nazism-much more than the original did. He has restored the line cut from "If You Could See Her." He has staged the play in a cabaret setting to suck the audience deeper into the atmosphere of 1930s Germany. As Fintan
llAII quotes from the original libretto are drawn from Joe Masteroff, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, Cabaret (New York: Random House, 1967).
12See Alpert, 216 and Garebian, 79. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Jewish organizations, taking their cue from the Anti-Defamation League, held a particularly hard-line and vocal position on anti-Semitic representations in theatre and film; see, for example, Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, The New AntiSemitism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974). 13The 1967 version of the libretto published by Random House includes both the line as performed and Ebb's original, the latter designated "Alternate" (93). 14Ben Brantley, "'Cabaret':Desperate Dance at Oblivion's Brink." New York Times, 20 March 1998, as retrieved from http:www.nytimes.com/library/theater/ 032098cabaret-theater-review. html. 15Michiko Kakutani, "Culture Zone: Window on The World." New York Times Magazine, 26 April 1998.

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O'Toole writes, "It means [ ... ] that there is no escape from the selfdestructive world in which the Nazis will come to power. We are on their territory, willing participants in their sick spectacle."16 And, most notably, he has given the play a shocking, haunting, coda, in which the apparently solid back wall of the theater flies out, leaving the company lined up like prisoners awaiting execution in an empty, blindingly white space, as the Emcee slowly takes off his coat to reveal a concentration camp uniform, marked with a yellow star (indicating his Jewishness) and a pink triangle (indicating his homosexuality).17 Cymbal crash-end of show. While the selfconsciously Brechtian finale evokes the presentational conclusion of the original production, the combination of light and sound, and the spectacle of the concentration camp imagery hits the audience in a more visceral way.

Lesson #3-Wait a minute, the original Cabaret was pretty bold, too, but in a more subtle way. In its own way, it was perhaps bolder. While the Holocaust itself and the anti-Semitism of certain characters and moments were downplayed by the original Cabaret, Jewishness is actually more prevalent in the original. Herr Schultz sings a song, "Meeskite"-from the Yiddish word for "ugly." "Meeskite" is not a particularly good song. It is not terribly essential to the play-as evidenced by the fact that not a single major critic felt the need to comment on its absence from the 1998 revival. It was likely inserted to make use of headliner Jack Gilford's comic abilities. But it is also the only Yiddish word in the entire text of the show.1s And its use emphasizes Herr Schultz's Otherness, despite his repeated contention that he can safely stay in Germany because he is German. Herr Schultz's security in that belief is ironically undermined by the need to introduced "Meeskite" with a preamble: "Now the only word you have to know," he says, "to understand my little song is the Yiddish word: 'meeskite.' 'Meeskite means ugly, funny-looking."19 Furthermore, it is during the singing of this number (at the engagement party), that Schultz, Freulein Schneider, and the audience first sense the open
16fintan O'Toole, "Under the Spell of a Stark 'Cabaret' Welcome to the Kit Kat Klub." New York Daily News, 20 March 1998, 59. 17A red circle, indicating the Emcee's communism, was also part of the costume at a dress-rehearsal I attended 13 February 1998, but was apparently cut during previews. 18The Hebrew word mazel-"luck"-also makes an appearance, spoken by Herr Schultz.
19Cabaret libretto, 79, italics in original.

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hostility of the Nazi, Ernst, and the other Germans toward Jews and things Jewish. Mendes's rationale for cutting "Meeskite" and two other numbers ['Telephone Song" and "Why Should I Wake Up?'') is musical, rather than political. Much of the negative criticism about the 1966 original focused on the pallid nature of the more-conventional musical numbers (including "Meeskite") in comparison to the edgier, more vibrant cabaret songs. Martin Gottfried, for example, decried the "Broadway-style ballad[s], staged in the stock manner of old-style musicals."20 But the consequences of cutting "Meeskite" are significant. The comic quality of the song underlines the fact that, in conventional musical theatre terms, Herr Schultz and Freulein Schneider represent the comic romance that provides the subplot to the primary relationship between Sally and Cliff. This is a marked contrast to the 1998 version, in which Ron Rifkin, a powerful acto~ but no comedian, played Herr Schultz with a more reserved, dignified air. Even his duet with Freulein Schneider on "It Couldn't Please Me More (The Pineapple Song)" takes on an earnestness that dulls the comic edge of the scene. Mendes is more ready than Prince, it seems, to joke about anti-Semitism, but less willing to joke about Jewish ness. But can you have one without the other? It should also be noted that the elimination of one of Herr Schultz's numbers, done in part to make room for more singing by Sally Bowles, shifts the balance of the play even further away from the Schultz-Schneider interfaith romance in favor of the Sally-Cliff plot. The original Cabaret featured four numbers for Herr Schultz (including two duets with Freulein Schneider) and only three for Sally, as compared to three numbers for Herr Schultz and five numbers for Sally in the 1998 revival (two songs "Mein Herr" and "Maybe This Time" having been imported from the film version). Describing the genesis of the Schultz-Schneider romantic plot (which does not exist in either the Isherwood stories or the Van Druten play), Masteroff explains, "The main reason we wanted that story was because neither of the leads, Clifford and Sally, were German. No matter what happened, they could pack up and go. We needed to show the people who couldn't leave."21 This element is still present in the 1998 Cabaret, but it is no longer foregrounded by the book. Instead, Mendes' environmental staging of the play is designed to make the audience feel that we are the ones who are trapped.
20Martin Gottfried, "'Cabaret."' Women's Wear Daily, 21 November 1966, as reprinted in New York Theatre Critics Reviews XXVII, 16:241. 21Weiss, op.

cit., http://www.jewishsf.com/bk010504/etp6a.shtml

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I would further suggest that Gilford's Herr Schultz, because he speaks Yiddish and with a Yiddish-inflected German accent, is (to an audience) more Jewish than Rifkin's Herr Schultz. Gilford's Herr Schultz is also more Jewish simply by virtue of the fact that he is Jack Gilford, previously known to Broadway audiences from Jewish roles in The Diary of Anne Frank (1955) and The Tenth Man (1959) and widely popular among Jewish nightclub audiences. As Marvin Carlson notes, "it is difficult, perhaps impossible, once their career is under way, for [actors] to avoid a certain aura of expectations based on past roles. The actor's new roles become, in a very real sense, ghosted by previous ones.''22 Gilford, as Herr Schultz, could not escape (even had he wished to) his quintessentially Jewish persona, which is presumably one of the reasons Prince cast him in the role. Rifkin, though he had played his share of Jewish roles-including Broken Glass (1994) and, coincidentally, a revival of The Tenth Man (1989)-did not come to Cabaret with the same stature and pedigree that Gilford did. His performance was not, to use Carlson's term, ghosted by Jewishness to the same degree. The relative deracination of this principal character in the 1998 production makes the revived Cabaret easier for the audience. Today, we are asked to think, "Why do they hate him, when he's no different than they are?" In 1966, audiences were asked to recognize that Jews are different, but that hating them was wrong anyway. Is this not a bolder choice?

Lesson #4-The audience is smarter than you think It is conventional wisdom in this kind of essay, and in the discourse of theatre history in general, to assume that contemporary audiences are more enlightened, more liberal, more knowledgeable than audiences of twenty or thirty or forty years ago. This is why, presumably, the new Cabaret can go further in its representation of the Holocaust. The Philadelphia Inquirers Clifford A. Ridley reflects this conventional wisdom in his description of the "Three Ladies" number from the 1998 production: "This kind of unbridled license is what Cabaret always seemed to aim for but, in more circumspect times, only imperfectly achieved.''23 For the purposes of this lesson, I will stipulate that the contemporary production does do more to point explicitly to the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the reason it does this is not because it can, but because it must--not just because the bar for shock value on Broadway gets raised every season, but also because the movement of the Jewish Herr Schultz further from the play's center
22Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 67. 23As quoted in Joe Masteroff, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Cabaret: The Illustrated Book and Lyrics (New York: Newmarket Press, 1999), 56.

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makes the coming genocide less immediate to the audience. The biggest challenge Mendes faced in staging Cabaret is that the 1998 audience could not be expected to have the same intimate familiarity with the Europe of the 1930s that a 1966 audience did. In 1966, a significant percentage of the audience had first hand experience of fascism. Many more had heard the stories told by their parents or other older relatives. It seems likely that the majority related to World War II as "current events" rather than as history. This cannot be overlooked in attempting to analyze the meaning and the impact of Cabaret in 1966. In a recent essay on Fiddler on the Roof, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett notes that there are large gaps in the Jewish culture depicted by the musical-yet: "a Jewish audience could fill [in] the blanks with all that it already knew about the virtual Jewish world of Anatevka ."24 Similarly, I submit that the original Cabaret felt to audiences in 1966 as if it were a more explicit depiction of Nazi Germany, because the book, lyrics, music, and Prince's staging gave them just enough to "fill in the blanks" with what they already knew about that time, that place, and the horror yet to come.

Lesson #5-Text, schmext So how did Mendes rise to the challenge of giving Cabaret not a different relationship to the Holocaust, but the same one it used to have, despite an audience that did not, could not bring the same intimate connection to the era that the original audience did? Not by significantly rewriting the book or the lyrics. In fact, one of the biggest surprises to be found in a close comparison of the two librettos is that despite all the talk about how radical the new Cabaret is, the changes in the text from 1966 to 1998 are pretty minimal. Three songs out, three new songs in.2s A couple of lines cut here, an aside added there. But on paper, it is essentially the same play. What changes there are, as noted in Lesson #3, actually de-emphasize the importance of the Holocaust to the musical's plot. Yet Mendes, discussing his production with Playbill, says of Cabaret, "It's really about the central mystery of the twentieth century-how Hitler could have happened.''26 Mendes' approach to exploring that mystery reflects the importance of
24Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Imagining Europe: The Popular Arts of American Jewish Ethnography" in Deborah Dash Moore and Ilan Troen, eds. Divergent Jewish Cultures: Israel and America (New Haven: Yale University Press,

2001).
25The "new" songs, "I Don't Care Much", "Maybe This Time", and "Mein Herr" were written but not used for the original production, and subsequently used in the 1972 film version of Cabaret. 26As quoted in Joe Masteroff, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Cabaret: The Illustrated Book and Lyrics (New York: Newmarket Press, 1999), 99.

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performance in the creation of meaning in a dramatic text. Rather than substantially revise the text, a strategy used by adaptor Wendy Kesselman and director James Lapine in another revival presented in the 1997-98 Broadway season, The Diary of Anne Frank, Mendes instead chose to perform the play in a different mode. Using environment, mood, and gesture, the new Cabaret makes explicit certain ideas for an audience that needs to have it spelled out for them. As O'Toole writes, "The difficulty of making us really believe in them [the Nazis]. Of making the swastika more than just a red-andblack design, is obvious. This production of 'Cabaret' tackles it by plunging us into the moral disarray from which they crawled.''27 O'Toole refers in part to the environmental staging concept of Cabaret. The Henry Miller Theatre, itself ghosted by years of service as an afterhours club, was transformed into the Kit Kat Klub of the play. Cocktail tables and banquettes took the place of conventional orchestra seats. Drinks were served on the floor prior to the show and at intermission. To enhance the illusion that we, the audience, were patrons of the Kit Kat Klub, small, period-style lamps on each table would come on during the scenes set in the cabaret itself, dimming unobtrusively during the scenes set in the boarding house. Mendes also found gestural-or, after Brecht, gestic-ways of enhancing the impact of significant moments throughout the show. Consider for example the song, "Tomorrow Belongs To Me," which in both productions is sung once midway through the first act and reprised as the first act finale. The music and lyrics of the song are the same in both productions. As Keith Garebian writes, "This is, perhaps, the only number close to Nazi musical taste which, as musicologists and historians inform us, ran primarily to rousing marches and cafe tunes.''28 In 1966, "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" was sung as a number for the cabaret waiters. In this context, its lyrical imagery and musical signatures were sinister enough to the ears of a 1966 audience; they did not need "musicologists and historians" to inform them. For the 1998 production, "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" is first played on a phonograph (as if presenting an historical artifact) by the Emcee, wearing an 55-style leather coat. As the song, pre-recorded by boy soprano Alex Bowen, nears its conclusion, the Emcee gestures across his upper lip to indicate Hitler's mustache; for those who don't get the point, he removes the needle from the record just before the end of the song and, raising his arm in a Heii-Hitler gesture, pronounces the last two words "to me" in a sinister stage whisper, followed by a cymbal crash and blackout. For those who still don't get the point, at 27Q'Toole, op. cit. 28Garebian, 75.

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the conclusion of the reprise, the Emcee (who has been surveying the scene from a catwalk above the stage) turns, lifts up his 55-style coat, and reveals a swastika painted on his bare bottom. Drumroll, cymbal crash, blackout, intermission. A short course in European history, brought to you by Alan Cumming's bottom . This latter device is one of the clearest indicators of Mendes's dramaturgical vision. Cumming's sinewy body, made up with bruises, sores, and track marks to go with his painted face and rouged nipples, is explicitly marked as the body of Germany. By extension the sexual perversity of the cabaret milieu becomes a stand-in for the moral perversity of the Nazis. The libertine excess of Sally, the Emcee, and the Cabaret Girls is no longer simply an escape, a way to avoid confronting the political realities of pre-war Berlin. It is now part-andparcel of the Nazis' rise to power. While this is ironic, given the Nazis' official stance vis-a-vis homosexuality and other forms of "deviance," it also paints good and evil in surprisingly stark tones for an audience that, in classic Brechtian fashion, is implicated in the stage action . As Mendes told the New York Times, "The lure and the allure of the club pulls in the audience and shows them what they have become part of by sitting and watching it.. .. It's rough. It's dirty. It's in your face."29 Ultimately, then, Mendes uses the sleaze to do what history can't-shock his audience. And we should be shocked, shouldn't we? With each passing decade, fewer and fewer people relate to the Holocaust as personal experience; for more and more of us, it is history, magnified in importance, mythologized, and flattened out. As the Holocaust recedes from our collective memory, would-be creators of theatre must work that much harder to bring its memory to life. The history of Cabaret and its reincarnation show us clearly that when it comes to staging the Holocaust, there is one more lesson to be learned:

Sometimes you have to do more just to do the same thing.

29As quoted in Mervyn Rothstein, "In Three Revivals, the Goose Stepping Is Louder." New York Times, 8 March 1998, ret rieved 1 February 2003 from http: www.nytimes.com.

Journal of American Drama and Theatre 15 (Spring 2003)

A DIFFERENT DRUM: DAVID HENRY HWANG'S MUSICAL "REVISAL" OF FLOWER DRUM SONG

DAN BACALZO In the opening scene of the newly revised Flower Drum Song, a young woman flees from China to America following her father's arrest during an anti-communist demonstration.! It is a bold beginning to a bold exercise, led by playwright David Henry Hwang, to reimagine the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Hwang has written a completely new book that integrates most of the original songs, including "I Enjoy Being a Girl," "Don't Marry Me," and "Love, Look Away." In October 2001, the revamped Flower Drum Song opened to glowing reviews in a production at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles-directed and choreographed by Robert Longbottom and featuring an all-Asian-American cast headed by former Miss Saigon star Lea Salonga. The show opened on Broadway one year later to a decidedly less favorable response from critics. This essay examines the musical "revisal" of Flower Drum Song in the context of the musical comedy form, debates about racial representation, and C.Y. Lee's 1957 best-selling novel, The Flower Drum Song, which served as inspiration for both musical treatments. In both versions of the musical, new immigrant Mei-Li falls in love with assimilated Asian American Wang-Ta. Wang-Ta, on the other hand, is pursuing Asian American nightclub entertainer Linda Low. Disillusioned, Mei-Li becomes betrothed to another man, only for Wang-Ta to realize he loves her after all. The character names and the "Boy Meets Girl" romantic plot formula, however, are where the similarities between Hwang's book and the original libretto end. In the script by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joseph Fields, MeiLi and her father arrive in America so that Mei-Li can fulfill an arranged marriage contract with the owner of the Celestial Bar nightclub, Sammy Fong. However, Sammy is in love with his star performer, Linda Low. He knows that Wang Chi-Yang is looking for a traditional Chinese bride for his eldest son, Ta, and tries to pass Mei-Li off on him. Mei-Li does indeed fall for Ta, but Ta is also enamored of Linda. After a lot of confusion and miscommunication, Mei-Li ends up with Ta, and Sammy with Linda.
lin the L.A. production, Mei-Li's father tore down a banner with a photo of Mao on it. In the Broadway version, he rips up the Little Red Book that symbolized Communist China.

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In Hwang's version, Ta is the son of Wang Chi-Yang, who owns the Golden Pearl Theater in San Francisco, dedicated to the preservation of the Chinese Opera form. Ta's father allows his son to use the theater as a nightclub for one night of the week, as it brings in more money than the Chinese Opera performances. Ta's efforts are discovered by theatrical agent and promoter, Madame Liang, who convinces the elder Wang to transform the theater into Club Chop Suey, which she claims will become the hottest nightspot in Chinatown. At first resistant, Wang is eventually won over and undergoes a dramatic change. Under the stage name of "Sammy Fang," he becomes the nightclub's host and star talent. Ta is horrified by his father's conversion and the increasing exploitation of Asian stereotypes for the nightclub acts. By the end of the musical, he rediscovers a love for Chinese Opera, reconciles with his father, and wins back the love of Mei-Li. The extent of Hwang's revisions is unprecedented, as the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization is notorious for being inflexible regarding changes to the duo's musicals. In an interview I conducted with Hwang, he told me that it was the combination of his being not only a Tony Award-winning playwright, but an Asian American one as well, that most likely led to the acceptance of his initial proposal. Indeed, Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, has been quoted as saying that they probably would not have agreed to do this if Neil Simon had brought it to them.2 Rodgers and Hammerstein are credited with reconceptualizing the musical comedy format. Prior to Oklahoma!, their first collaboration in 1943, most musicals paid little attention to the unification of the book with the songs. Musical theater historian Richard Kislin writes: "The typical pre-Rodgers and Hammerstein musical turned on a contrived plot whose only function was to provide a dramatic excuse for the sequence of hit songs assembled for the score.''3 In contrast, the best Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals are known for the way songs propel the narrative action of the musical forward. In this respect, the original libretto for Flower Drum Song by Hammerstein and Fields is comparatively weak. The majority of the musical numbers do not further the dramatic situation . "Grant Avenue," for example, is sung by Linda Low at the party celebrating the dual graduation of Ta from college and Wang Chi-Yang's sister-inlaw, Madame Liang, from citizenship school. However, there are no direct references to these events in the lyrics, and the song is only
2Personal interview with David Henry Hwang, 26 October 2001. 3Richard Kislin, The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theater, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1980), 135.

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barely set up by the lines in the script. Linda has just secured an engagement to Ta, and a jealous Sammy spouts off that she's only marrying for the money, and that she'll soon be living on Nob Hill. A few girls at the party overhear the end of the conversation and ask Linda if she is moving. She replies by launching into the song . The transition is forced and does not flow organically from the dramatic situation. In Hwang's version, "Grant Avenue" is used by Madame Liang (who is no longer related to Wang Chi-Yang) and company to convince the elder Wang to allow his theater to be turned into a nightclub. They describe the attractions of Chinatown, and how it could fit in: "You can shop for precious jade or teakwood tables or silk brocade. Or see a bold and brassy nightclub show, on the most exciting thoroughfare I know."4 Here, Hwang makes use of the song to further his plot. Although primarily sung by Madame Liang, several lyrics are given to other company members to show how they are getting swept up by the idea of the nightclub and are actively working to convince Wang to give in. The final straw is when Wang's oldest friend, Chin, joins in the song; Wang realizes that he is all alone in his opinion and has to submit. One of Hwang's major achievements in his "revisal" is to make the existing songs work to tell the story he wants to tell. He claims not to have added any lyrics, although some were cut and others repeated and/or moved around for added emphasis or dramatic resonance.s An example of this is "A Hundred Million Miracles," sung by Mei-Li as the opening number. In the original musical, Mei-Li's father accompanies her to America and is present while she sings the song. In Hwang's revision, he is arrested by the communists and dies in prison. The plaintive coda of Mei-Li singing repeatedly "My father says..." is invested with an added emotional weight, not found in the original. Her grief at her father's loss shines through, establishing an emotional tenor that would otherwise be lacking. "I aspired [ ... ] to write the book Hammerstein would have written had he been Asian American," says Hwang of his revisions.6 The playwright's efforts seem aimed at doing what Rodgers and
4Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, with revised libretto by David Henry Hwang. Flower Drum Song, Virginia Theater, New York City, opened 17 October 2002. Spersonal interview with David Henry Hwang, 26 October 2001. 6David Henry Hwang, "Letters" Time Out New York, 24 October 2002, 8. In this letter to the editor, Hwang corrects a misquote that had been circulating in a number of different articles following its initial appearance in the L.A. Times on 14 October 2001. There, he is quoted as saying "It's the book Oscar Hammerstein would have written had he been Chinese American." In the letter to Time Out, Hwang goes on to say, "It's one th ing for an author to say that he aspired to write, say, the Great American Novel, but quite another for him to claim that he's actually done it. It's intimidating enough trying to follow in Oscar Hammerstein's footsteps without also opening myself up to charges of total self-delusion."

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Hammerstein were famous for-creating an integrated book musical. Moreover, by this statement, Hwang is also claiming that as an Asian American playwright, he has an advantage over Hammerstein and Fields in regards to the representation of the show's characters. One of the reasons the musical has not had a major revival since its premiere is that many view its representations of Asian Americans as outdated and stereotypical. Even when it was first performed, some critics noted that Rodgers and Hammerstein's portrayal of Asian Americans in Flower Drum Song differed little from their depictions of Asian characters in the duo's previous musicals, The King and I and South Pacific. Kenneth Tynan, writing in The New Yorker, declared, "It seems to have worried neither Mr. Rodgers nor Mr. Hammerstein very much that the behavior of wartorn Pacific Islanders and nineteenthcentury Siamese might be slightly different from that of Chinese residents of present-day California, where Flower Drum Song is fictionally sung."7 In other words, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals featuring "Oriental" characters, all Asians are pretty much alike. The original Broadway musical ran for six hundred performances and was adapted into a 1961 Universal-International film, which is how the majority of people know the show. With a screenplay by Joseph Fields, the movie replicated the essentialist view towards racial identity found in the Broadway production. One scene has Ta and Linda enjoying an afternoon drive. During their conversation, Ta acknowledges that he is both Chinese and American, but then goes on to assign essentialist attributes to his dual identities. The "American half" of him wants to kiss Linda, while the "Chinese half" of him is afraid . "Well, let's start working on the American half," says Linda before pulling Ta to her and kissing him.s Here, "Chinese" is identified as passive and afraid while "American" signifies action and passion. It was sequences like this one that caused many to feel that the musical was outdated. Hwang reports that "when ethnic political awareness blossomed in the 1970s and '80s, Flower Drum Song became a work Asian Americans protested as 'patronizing and full of stereotypes."'9 This, of course, contributed to the idea that the existing
7Quoted in Bruce McConachie, "The Oriental Musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein and the U.S. War in Southeast Asia." Theatre Journal. 46.3 (October

1994): 389.
BRichard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Screenplay by Joseph Fields.

Flower Drum Song, Universal Pictures, 1961. The scene corresponds to one in the original Broadway musical (published by Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1969), but I've
chosen to discuss the filmic version for two reasons. First, it is the way most people know the show, and second, because it allows me to discuss the actual blocking, as I was unable to witness the original Broadway production. 9Quoted in Christopher Breyer, "Vision & Revision : Collaborating with the Past." Performing Arts Magazine, October 2001, 8.

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musical was unproduceable as written. When Hwang's revisionist project was first announced, however, there was a flurry of protests from a segment of the public that did not think the musical should be tinkered with at all. Prior to the show's Los Angeles opening, angry letters appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times. The message boards of "All That Chat," an online theater community, also lit up with critiques of the revisions. Responding to these criticisms-mostly from people who had not seen his version of the musicai-Hwang says, "What I found interesting is that they don't mention other cases in which white people rewrote white people's musicals- Anything Goes being revised by John Weidman and Timothy Crouse, or Crazy for You being a rewrite of Girl Crazy. But, somehow, the idea of a person of color doing it and having some sort of political agenda all of a sudden made it a big, PC, artistic-freedom issue."lO In this statement, Hwang identifies the primary subject of criticisms in both musical versions of Flower Drum Song: representation . Or more accurately, who gets to represent whom? Since no Asian Americans were involved in the production process for the original musical, there is a perceived inaccuracy in regards to its representation of Asians. Conversely, since Hwang is Asian American, there is a perception that he has an agenda to make the musical politically correct, while sacrificing what some perceive to be the charming simplicity of a different era. Hwang's Flower Drum Song rode into Broadway with considerably favorable buzz, having won over critics in Los Angeles. However, as Daily Variety writer Robert Hofler suggests, "Between L.A. and Gotham, Hwang may have given one too many interviews on the political correctness of his script."ll Reviews from the major New York dailies were mixed to negative, with Ben Brantley of the New York Times commenting, "Certainly you can feel the honorable intentions behind the creative team's effort to resuscitate a work regarded as terminally out of date. But equally evident is the strain in transforming cute and cozy ethnic types from the Broadway production of 1958 into a set of positive Asian role models that might be introduced into a public school presentation in 2002."12 Like Brantley, most critics went out of their way to commend the project of revising the musical, while at the same time denouncing
lOPersonal interview with David Henry Hwang, 26 October 2001. 11Robert Hofler, "Gotham Crix Beat New 'Drum"' Daily Variety, 21 October

2002, 2.
12Ben Brantley, "New Coat of Paint for Old Pagoda." New York Times, 18 October 2002, El.

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the new production. Hofler may be correct in surmising that New York critics were pre-disposed to dislike some of the changes as a result of Hwang's numerous interviews. However, there are also other mitigating circumstances that no doubt affected the ways the musical was differently received in Los Angeles and New York. In Los Angeles, the show was performed on a thrust stage, in a relatively intimate house with no balconies. In contrast, Broadway's Virginia Theater features a proscenium stage with two levels of seating. Much of the staging that I had admired in the production at the Mark Taper was flattened out in New York. In addition, the New York critics identified legitimate flaws in the production; several of the jokes fell flat; Salonga in the lead role sang prettily but was not as strong in the acting department; and the stereotypical gay character, Harvard, minced about with a swishiness and flamboyance that was in direct contrast to Hwang's progressive re-writes in other areas. On the other hand, Hwang made several adjustments to the musical's book during the interval between the two cities' engagements that were quite strong but relatively overlooked by critics. The most striking change was the transformation of Mei-Li's secondary love interest, Chao. In the Taper production, the part was written for an older actor and was an undeveloped and easily dismissible role that served only to show that Mei-Li had completely given up on Wang-Ta and would settle for a quiet, loveless life. Hwang significantly re-wrote the part for the Broadway debut, which featured the virile Hoon Lee in the role. From his first introduction, there is tension between Chao and Wang-Ta. Chao is also now Mei-Li's coworker, as opposed to her employer, which was the case in Los Angeles. He comes from peasant stock, and his presence highlights the different access to wealth and opportunity between him and Wang-Ta . Disillusioned with life in America, Chao tries to convince MeiLi to move to Hong Kong with him. The effect of this change is to make Mei-Li's decision between her two suitors a tougher one and to add dramatic weight and meaning to the story. The Taper production Chao quietly gives up Mei-Li in favor of the younger, more suitable Ta; the Broadway Chao is not so polite about it. This character development is in line with Hwang's stated intention of making his musical version more in keeping with the bittersweet tone of C.Y. Lee's original novel, from which both musicals were adapted.13 Unlike the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Lee's book contains neither an arranged marriage nor a nightclub setting. A devastating subplot in the novel about the heavily pock-marked Helen Chao and her doomed romance with Wang-Ta is almost entirely erased from Oscar Hammerstein and Joseph Fields's script. Furthermore, the
13Persona l interview with David Henry Hwang, 26 October 2001.

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Lea Salonga as Mei-Li in Flower Drum Song

credit: Joan Marcus Photo Courtesy of Boneau/ BryanBrown Publicists

Rodgers and Hammerstein musical deletes the novel's focus on class and the political backdrop of communism. The novel depicts May Li14 and her father as new refugees from communist China who find work as servants to the wealthy Wang Chi-yang in San Francisco. The elder Wang initially does not approve of his son's romance with a servant girl, despite the fact that he becomes quite fond of both May Li and her father. However, after May Li is falsely accused of stealing, Ta leaves his father's house to make his future with May Li. Hwang takes elements from both the novel and the original musical, in addition to providing a substantial amount of material of his own. His version of Flower Drum Song keeps the nightclub and completely eliminates Helen Chao. Additionally, the political backdrop of communist China and the element of class is reinserted. While MeiLi is not a servant to the Wangs, she finds work at a fortune cookie factory under bitter working conditions. Mei-Li and her fellow workers sing an ironic reprise of "I Am Going to Like It Here"; the song's happy lyrics serve as counterpoint to the dismal and unjust situation that many new immigrants find in place of the warm dreams and fantasies
14"May Li" is the spelling of t he character's name in t he novel, which was changed to " Mei-Li" for the musical.

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of great riches that led them to America in the first place. This is not to say that Hwang's book is as in-depth as Lee's novel in demonstrating the complexity of the new immigrant situation-it is a musical comedy, after all. However, as opposed to the saccharinely sweet view espoused in the Hammerstein and Fields libretto, Hwang's version is successful in capturing the conflicted feelings of new Asian immigrants as they try to find their place in the U.S.A. Hwang also utilizes the nightclub setting, introduced into the story by Hammerstein and Fields, to pay tribute to Asian America's own rich performance history. The inspiration for such places is drawn from the popularity of New York's China Doll and San Francisco's Forbidden City during the 1940s and 1950s. Affectionately known as part of the "Chop Suey circuit," these clubs enabled Asian American performers of all ethnicities to have their chance to shine, as the larger entertainment industry still discriminated against non-white talent. The acts they performed were all-American fare, often modeled after popular entertainers of the time. For example, Paul Wing and Dorothy Toy were known as the "Chinese Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers," while Toy Yat Mar was the "Chinese Sophie Tucker." The clubs even played a role in securing cast members for the original run of Flower Drum Song on Broadway. C. Y. Lee recommended that original Broadway director Gene Kelly visit the Forbidden City to find Asian American actors. According to Lee, Kelly was particularly impressed by a comedian named Jack Suzuki, who shortened his name to "Jack Soo" and appeared in the Broadway production as host of the Celestial Bar, and in the movie version as Sammy Fong.1s In a way, the 2002 production continues in this tradition. Jodi Long, who portrays Madame Liang, is the daughter of Larry and Trudy Leung, who were stars of the Chop Suey Circuit. Appropriately, it is Madame Liang who oversees the transformation of the Golden Pearl Theater into Club Chop Suey. Since Hwang's revision is set in 1960, there is a historical discrepancy in that the idea of a nightclub with all-Asian talent would no longer have been new. Indeed, the era of the Chop Suey circuit was already on the wane by then, and within a few short years, all of the clubs would be gone. However, the nightclub setting in the new Flower Drum Song is more than just historical flavor; it also serves an important dramatic purpose. It heightens the generational conflict between Wang-Ta and his father at the same time as it helps to contextualize potentially problematic songs like "Chop Suey." Now serving as the second act opener, the song begins with "Sammy Fang" emerging out of a giant Chinese take-out box. Dancing chopsticks and
15This story was related by Lee at a Flower Drum Song symposium, held at New York University on 12 October 2002.

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chorus girls in take-out cartons complete the ridiculous proceedings. A tongue-in-cheek commentary on the need to play upon Asian stereotypes in order to make it in the entertainment biz, the number includes both the onstage presentation to the audience at the Club Chop Suey, as well as the backstage arguments between Wang-Ta and his father about the indignity of the representations. The lines from the song, "Boston, Austin, Wichita, and St. Louie ... Chop Suey" illustrate how "Sammy" and Madame Liang plan to open up a chain of Club Chop Sueys across the country, once again using the old lyrics in a new way. As is evident from the preceding description, Robert Longbottom's musical staging draws upon Orientalizing visual representations of Asian culture, even as the musical questions and critiques these representations. Hwang relies on the audience's understanding the irony involved in utilizing these stereotypes. The characters themselves argue and debate on whether or not they are appropriate, but in the end they are still presented. It is a strategy that has worked for Hwang since his first play, F.O.B. and reached its highest level with his Tony Award-winning work, M. Butterfly. In a conversation with former New York Times lead critic Frank Rich, Hwang notes that his most successful plays "had gongs and dragons and sticks," and he wonders if he "was creating Orientalism for the intelligensia."16 This self-awareness in regards to the way his plays feed into readily perceived stereotypes of the Orient captures the seemingly contradictory nature of the playwright's work. Hwang has often been chastised by other Asian American writers, such as fellow playwright Frank Chin who accuses Hwang of selling out to a mainstream audience through the use of stereotypical devices that are not grounded in "authenticity."!? Hwang is by no means the only writer ever to be criticized in this fashion. The idea of authenticity is often used to critique works by Asian American artists, placing writers such as Hwang in the position of having to continually defend themselves against an impossible standard. Inevitably, they are judged by how "true" their works seem to ring in the ears of other Asian Americans. Ironically, this is the same debate at the heart of the revisions of Flower Drum Song. Is Hwang's version more "authentically" Asian American than
16David Henry Hwang, "A conversation with David Henry Hwang," facilitated by Frank Rich of the New York Times as part of the "David Henry Hwang 20 Year Retrospective," hosted by the New York University Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program. 14 November 2000. 17See Frank Chin, "Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake." in Frank Chin, Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, eds., The Big AIIEEEEE!, (New York: Meridian, 1991).

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Sandra Allen (center) as Linda Low with the chorus girls of Flower Drum Song
Photo credit: Joan Marcus Photo courtesy of Boneau/Bryan-Brown Publicists

the book by Hammerstein and Fields? The simple fact that Hwang is an Asian American writer is not sufficient to make a definitive claim on the truthfulness of his depiction of Asian American characters. In many ways, authenticity is not even a useful concept when considering racial representations. A more constructive framework is suggested by Lisa Lowe, who argues that Asian American literature should be viewed through the multiple axes of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity. lB This means that rather than valorizing one authentic Asian American perspective, it is necessary to examine the differences within the Asian American community, acknowledge how any ties to the root culture are already affected by the fact that the artist is producing work in America, and interrogate the many contradictory factors that go into the formation of racial identity. Asian American cultural production is by its very definition a syncretic creation-Asian and American at the same time. Rather than trying to discover a mythical singular identity, it is more important to see how the works function in relation to existing discourses, communities, and representations. The question should not be " Is Hwang's version more authentically Asian American than the book by Hammerstein and Fields?" Rather, it should be "Are the representations of the characters
lBLisa Lowe,

Immigrant Acts.

(Durham and London: Duke University Press,

1996), 67.

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left
Photo courtesy of Boneau/ Bryan-Brown Publicists

more complex, and do they provide more accurate and/or multiple expressions of the Asian American experience?" Hwang's revision of Flower Drum Song is heterogenous in that it presents characters with different relationships to their Asian American heritage-some want to exploit stereotypes, others want to preserve tradition, still others allow their own internalized racism to keep them from fully accepting themselves for who they are. Towards the end of the musical, Linda leaves San Francisco to try her hand in the movie business by moving to Los Angeles. She confronts Ta for a final time, and the two reach a bittersweet understanding. He accuses her of only dating white guys, while she hits home by noting how he does not like to date girls who are fresh off the boat. "You and I are too much alike," she tells him. "Neither one of us wants to love someone that reminds us too much of ourselves."t9 It is Linda's observation that forces Ta to take a close look at himself and see that he has been unable to realize his love for Mei-Li because he has not yet learned to love himself. Hybridity is at the heart of the new plot. Wang-Ta originally seeks to transform his father's Chinese Opera Theater into a nightclub, but eventually comes to recognize the importance of preserving the
19Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, with revised libretto by David Henry Hwang. Flower Drum Song, Virginia Theater, New York City, opened 17 October 2002.

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Chinese Opera form. In the closing scene, Wang Chi Yang informs the audience that Ta and Mei-Li now do public performances utilizing Chinese Opera traditions to tell stories about life in America. They have, in essence, created a hybrid form of entertainment that pays tribute to both cultures that have shaped their lives. In regards to multiplicity, the musical presents assimilation as both desirable and problematic. The characters define themselves in relation to both their experiences in America and their ties to China. Reconciling these two aspects is marked by sacrifice and compromise. As Chao and Mei-Li prepare to leave for Hong Kong, they sell Mei-Li's prized flower drum, which had been given to her by her father and represents all of her hopes and dreams. Chao does not recognize the significance of the drum, but Ta does. After discovering it for sale in a pawn shop, he buys it back for Mei-Li. Rushing to present it to her before she sets sail for Hong Kong, he gives up his chanceto go to Los Angeles with Linda. It is this gesture that finally wins Mei-Li back, and instead of leaving with the disillusioned Chao, she opts to stay and make her dreams of America a reality. The multiple and often contradictory representations of Asian Americans in the musical give the lie to narrow conceptions of authenticity and open up the work to a fuller and more richly layered theatrical life. Through his work, Hwang demonstrates an obvious affection for Flower Drum's previous incarnations. He likes to view his "revisal" as a "collaboration with Rodgers and Hammerstein.''20 Despite the radical changes he made to the show's book, the playwright has kept the charm of a traditional romantic musical comedy intact. Moreover, his new version of the musical functions as a corrective to one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's lesser works in the sense that the new libretto integrates the existing songs more closely with the show's book. Hwang also made sure to secure the blessing of original author C.Y. Lee before proceeding with his revisions, and Lee has repeatedly praised Hwang for his efforts. In an interview with USA Today, Lee stated,"The version that Rodgers and Hammerstein and Fields did was a lot of fun, but my original idea was to show both the cultural conflict and the closeness of the Chinese family. That's easier to do in a book than on stage, but David managed to simplify it. He added feeling, so that you really see the relationships and the love between these characters."21 It is to Hwang's credit that he was able to take so much from the previous versions of Flower Drum Song and
20Quoted in Christopher Breyer, "Vision & Revision: Collaborating with the Past." Performing Arts Magazine, October 2001, 10. 21Quoted in Elysa Gardner, "Flower Drum Song budding on Broadway." USA Today, 17 October 2002, 140.

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transform it into something that pays tribute to the past while remamrng a unique creation in its own right. His project is best summed up by Mei-Li in Hwang's revised script: "If we want to make something new, we first have to love what is old."22

22Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, with revised libretto by David Henry Hwang. Flower Drum Song, Virginia Theater, New York City, opened 17 October 2002.

Journal of American Drama and Theatre 15 (Spring 2003)

SONG AND DANCE MEN: NEW YORK MAYORS IN MUSICALS

GARY KONAS Jimmy Walker was so image-conscious that he changed clothes three times a day. Fiorello La Guardia loved to chase fire trucks and pick fights with anyone who disagreed with him. Ed Koch owned hundreds of videotapes-all of himself on camera. These three of New York City's 107 former mayors have each been the subject of a musicai-Fiorello! and Jimmy on Broadway, Mayor Off-Broadway. By contrast, no president has yet been the sole subject of a musical. Why this fascination with mayors? The most obvious answer is that Broadway audiences are naturally curious about their local heroes. Just as importantly, these three mayors were all colorful showmen, and the musical is a good dramatic form to tell the story of extroverted political figures. Whereas the straight play tends to be representational, treating its audience as eavesdroppers, the musical is presentational, campaigning for the audience's attention. Driven by a brassy orchestra, the musical has long been ideally suited to handle biggerthan-life characters ranging from the King of Siam to P . T. Barnum. Politics becomes just another song and dance, and Broadway becomes a metaphor for New York, the city which may be the world's largest piece of performance art. Because of the city's demographics, New York mayors have traditionally played to the "Three I's": Italy, Ireland, and Israel. Conveniently, the Italian La Guardia, Irishman Walker, and Jew Koch cover all three I's. But I believe it is a fourth mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who makes it worthwhile to consider the other three now, in the wake of the terrorist attack on the city and Giuliani's rise from feared and controversial lame duck mayor to political sainthood. His leadership on and after September 11 reminded us that in times of trouble, New Yorkers have looked to their mayor perhaps more than residents of any other city, whether it be during the Great Depression, the city's nearbankruptcy in the 1970s, or the World Trade Center catastrophe. Few if any other large cities have the same sort of dependent, if sometimes dysfunctional, relationship with their mayor. Our three musicals take very different approaches to showing that relationship; two of them succeed. Fiorello! is a show that is apt to frustrate those who seek seek historical accuracy while delighting those who appreciate well-crafted musical comedy. It stands behind only Gypsy as the best musical of 1959. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's impressive score paints a

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portrait of the man whom Hal Prince, the show's co-producer, described as "a little Italian opera singer of a mayor."1 Fiorello! debuted on November 23, 1959. Although the political and social climate of the waning Eisenhower years seemed conducive to a show like Fiorello!, co-producer Prince was worried. Everything that had worked brilliantly in New Haven and Philadelphia tryouts fell flat during previews at the Broadhurst due to the different theater configuration, acoustics, audience dynamic, and miscellaneous intangibles. "It was frightening. We didn't get the show back until opening night."2 Fortunately for those involved, 794 performances and a Pulitzer Prize followed that night. In 1959 many New Yorkers still fondly remembered Fiorello La Guardia, who had died twelve years earlier, and many no doubt wished they could have their "Little Flower" back in the flesh as well as in the theatre. In his day he had been a tireless fighter against wrongdoers and frauds; even as a first-term Congressman in 1917, he hounded unscrupulous meat packers. The day his musical biography opened forty-two years later, the front page of the New York Times happened to include the headlines "Short-Weighting of Poultry Found in Surprise Raid" and "New Arrests Due in Meat Scandal; Inquiry Widened"-as if to salute the spirit of La Guardia. But he was unable to compromise, seeing all issues in terms of black and white and often missing the big picture. Fiorello! covers the two decades leading up to La Guardia's election as mayor, the year after Walker resigned. The opening number, "On the Side of the Angels," is a thirdperson variant of the "I am" song, and like most good openers, it tells us what the show is about. First the devoted, idealistic law clerk Neil shows his devotion to Fiorello: We're marching forward Incorruptible, he and I Battling with evil Fighting till we drop What a way to die! The glum office manager Morris, by contrast, takes over to kvetch about his long hours: "That line of poor and friendless- 1 Endless!" He recognizes his boss's tendency to pursue every small problem, even a kitten stuck up a tree: "And what does he use for a ladder? I Me?"3 Here is the first hint that Fiorello exploits his
lHarold Prince, personal interview with author, New York, 29 December 1992. 2Interview. 3Jerome Weidman, George Abbott, and Sheldon Harnick, Fiorello! (New York: Random House, 1960), 9-10. Page references will be given parenthetically in the text.

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employees, albeit for noble purposes. Yet Morris stays on, for when he looks at the bench filled with poor clients, "a regular wailing wall," he knows that "Each poor soul I see there I Could be me there" (11). Bock and Harnick spoof local politics in "Politics and Poker." At the Ben Marino Association, Ben and his group of political hacks play five-card stud, while singing about their ignoble enterprise: Politics and poker Politics and poker Playing for a pot That's mediocre. Politics and poker, Running neck and neck. If politics seems more Predictable that's because usually you can stack the deck. (26) In 1914 New York ballot shuffling was all too real a game. La Guardia actually lost the election, albeit by a surprisingly narrow margin; after serving as a New York Deputy Attorney General for two years, he ran again in 1916 and won . Giuliani would later follow this path, moving from crimebusting D.A. to mayor in his second run for the office. Fiorello's secretary Marie secretly loves her boss, but he is smitten by her friend Thea. Marie fantasizes about gaining control over men in the proto-feminist song "Marie's Law," which combines legalese with romance: In re, my law Ad hoc, to wit, to woo ... When a lady feels affectionate Then the man must follow through (47) And MARIE: We are going to rid the country Of contempt of courtship MoRRis: Legally replacing it With davenportship. (50) The latter rhyme shows Gershwinesque wordplay. Before he goes off to war, Fiorello discusses marriage with Thea, who confesses, "I do admire you so much-you know that-and

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I respect you. But is that enough for marriage?" Undaunted, Fiorello promises to capture her home town of Trieste for her. The next scene marches through Fiorello's war experience by means of a newsreel-compiled by Prince largely from archival footage-that shows fighter pilot La Guardia shooting down a German plane with the accompanying caption, "The Major's First Scalp!" At the end of the film, Fiorello appears onstage to greet a cheering crowd. This leads into the rousing "Home Again," a song that, appropriately, resembles Paint Your Wagon's " I'm on My Way," since Fiorello seems headed toward his ultimate success. Fiorello hurries down the gangplank to reach Thea, passing but ignoring the adoring Marie. He hands Thea a key to the city of Trieste to seal their marriage bargain. Thea replies "Yes!" and confetti falls, along with Marie's hopes and the Act I curtain. Although the first act faithfully showed Fiorello as a man of action, most of his actions were either specifically romantic or nonspecifically political. Prince acknowledged that "the show examined [Fiorello's] almost cruel treatment of people close at hand .... He sacrificed them to his larger responsibility for the large family, which was the city of New York."4 The storybook romance between Fiorello and Thea doesn't disintegrate in Act II, though: like many men of the period, he is a workaholic married to a dutiful wife. Ten years have passed as the curtain comes up. After Thea sends her husband off to work for the day, she sings a poignant ballad, "When Did I Fall in Love?" in which she confesses, Out of the house ten seconds and I miss him And no one's more astonished than I. I never once pretended that I loved him When did it start This change of heart? ... How could the moment pass Unfelt Ignored Where was the blinding flash Where was the crashing chord? (95-96) The song is doubly poignant for those who know that Thea died in 1921 of tuberculosis, eight years before this scene is set. Just six months before Thea's death, the La Guardias' daughter, who is not even mentioned in the musical, died of the same disease. The period from 1919 to 1929-when La Guardia was the most flamboyant, outspoken man in Congress-is never even alluded to. Librettists Weidman and Abbott clearly chose to create an upbeat musical
4Interview.

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comedy instead of a factual drama, although later in the act, they do have Thea die during a crucial moment in Fiorello's campaign. Fiorello's bete nair Walker is celebrated in "Gentleman Jimmy," which brings Walker alive better than any song in Jimmy: Who's that dapper happy-go-lucky Son of Broadway We love James J. Walker. His motto is Live and let live Love and let love There are no finer sentiments than those. (101-2) The simplistic "be happy" sentiment of the song speaks to Americans of both the 1920s and the 1950s. As Prince notes, the song "showed people dancing on the edge of the volcano, so it was relevant in those terms,''S except that we rarely see the Vesuvius of the Depression in the show. Gaily ignoring the stock-market crash that had occurred just two weeks earlier, Walker beat La Guardia by half a million votes. Three years pass, and Judge Seabury's commission is investigating corruption. City officials on trial are asked to explain how, on a modest salary, they could afford a Wall Street brokerage account or a mansion. In the actual trial one defendant told of a "wonderful tin box" he kept on a kitchen shelf, supposedly to save his pocket change. This "Little Tin Box" represented graft in New York and provided the title for Fiorello!'s showstopping barbershop-harmony number, a slow soft shoe in which Ben and his boys imagine the cross-examination. A low-paid junior official, for example, answers the charge that he kept numerous women in the city's finest hotels: I can see Your Honor doesn't pull his punches And it looks a trifle fishy, I'll admit But for one whole week I went without my lunches And it mounted up, Your Honor, bit by bit MEN: Up Your Honor, bit by bit. It's just a little tin box.... (128) Such absurd explanations would return decades later when U.S. Attorney Giuliani prosecuted Paul Castellano and the heads of the other four Mafia families who claimed they were legitimate
srnterview.

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businessmen. The hearings led to Walker's resignation in 1932 (although the libretto oddly fails to mention this), leaving the job wide open in 1933. Yet Fiorello rejects Marie's gentle suggestion that he run for mayor again: "I can't. They turned their backs on me. They didn't want me" (141). La Guardia was in fact rejected not only in 1929, but in his 1932 Congressional re-election bid, although the show does not mention this fact. We are left with the impression that widower Fiorello has been simply practicing law for the past four years. His only doubt about running for mayor in 1933 seems motivated by a petulant annoyance over having been rejected by voters before. The climax therefore delivers less dramatic impact than it might. Marie counters that in 1929, "They were making too much money. They were having too much fun. But things are different now. The fun is over. People are starving. They'll listen now, Mr. La Guardia" (141). Eventually, he capitulates. When Marie admits that it was she who invited Ben over to persuade him, Fiorello fires her. He explains, "I can't court a girl who's working for me." He proposes to he~ with the melody of the discarded song "Where Do I Go from Here?" ironically underscoring his words. He says, I know it's kind of sudden. MARIE: Sudden! Yes, it is. FIORELLo: But, honestly, Marie, I think you can learn to love me. MARIE: I think I can. I've been practicing for fifteen years. (146) The story thus reaches a satisfying conclusion, with the two women in Fiorello's life representing complementary angles instead of a love triangle. After all, Thea married early and loved belatedly, whereas Marie loved early and married late. The curtain call shows Fiorello being sworn in as Mayor, ready to begin the job for which he is best known. Although Fiorello! tries to criticize La Guardia's enemies, it lacks satirical bite. Jimmy Walker, never seen onstage, comes across as an unflappable, fun-loving man whose chief crime is his laxity and association with the evil Tammany Hall C'Tammany spells tyranny," according to Fiorello in "The Name's La Guardia," and that's all the voters need to know). In reality, voters in La Guardia's district were very politically aware and did not need the campaign boiled down to a simplistic slogan. Even the "Little Tin Box" scene fails to name names

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or even mention Walker's resignation, thus turning a major scandal into just an entertaining eleven o'clock number. As a result, the audience could relax, laughing at past misdeeds they believed remained in the past. Despite a fine score, the show is rarely revived today, and to most people, the name "La Guardia" only denotes an airport in Queens. Arthur Penn, the show's original director, envisioned greater conflict in Fiorello! Producer Prince disagreed with this approach, opting, as he put it in 1974, for "a more nostalgic subject, a lament for a bygone, manageable New York, for the loss of heroes, of the innocence of speakeasys and payoffs and gang wars."G (Innocent gang wars?) This upbeat style was well suited for a man like George Abbott, who replaced Penn, and was consistent with the conservative worldview of the 1950s. Overall, however, Prince's comments reveal a thematic concept of the show that was not fully realized on stage. When it came time for the Pulitzer drama jury to submit its choice, they recommended Lillian Hellman's controversial Toys in the Attic. Jurors John Mason Brown and John Gassner did not even nominate Fiorello! in their letters to Columbia University's Pulitzer Advisory Board.? However, longtime Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler had strongly supported Congressman La Guardia. The Board overruled the jury and chose Fiorello! as Pulitzer Prize winner for drama . Murky circumstances notwithstanding, it seems a good choice. Despite its dramatic omissions, Fiorello! evokes the era vividly, gets true laughs from real-life political wrongdoing, and shows theatrical polish from the relatively inexperienced songwriters, who would soon write She Loves Me and Fiddler on the Roof. The show's strengths become even more apparent after considering the next mayoral musical. Ten years after Fiorello opened, La Guardia's roguish predecessor James Walker had his story told as a musical, Jimmy. The subtitle, "A Musical Play of the Life and Good Times of Jimmy Walker," points to the show's dramatic weakness: the score eagerly tries to give us a good time while downplaying Walker's culpability during one of New York City's worst times. Jimmy, produced by Jack L. Warner (who had known Walker), opened at the Winter Garden on October 23, 1969. It was a product mainly of Hollywood talent with no New York theatrical experience. Gerald Bordman says that Walker's "meteoric rise and tragic fall set against a Charlestoning, gaudy jazz age seems almost a natural. However, the authors lacked the ability or know-how to handle the story."s The numbers dealing
6Harold Prince, Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-six Years in the Theatre (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1974), 52. 7John Mason Brown and John Gassner, unpub. letters to Pulitzer Advisory Board, Columbia University, March 14, 1960.

BAmerican Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 724.

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with Walker's capitulation to the sordid politics of Tammany Hall paled in comparison to Fiorello!'s genial but memorable political songs. According to Ken Mandelbaum, an early draft of the script showed a more serious treatment of New York of the period,9 but what appeared on stage lacked Fiorello's mild political edge. What remained was mainly a love triangle between Walker, his long-suffering wife Allie, and frustrated mistress Betty Compton .1o Part of the problem may have been that the musical was based on Gene Fowler's 1949 upbeat biography Beau James,u which treated Walker's infidelity and speakeasy hopping mainly as examples of the mayor's high spirits (no pun intended). If you believe Fowler, Walker's guilt may have been inactive and indirect. His problem was not so much that he was corrupt, but that he created a breeding ground for widespread wrongdoing while apparently remaining unaware of it. His prolonged absences-including seven vacations in two years totaling 143 daysno doubt fostered corruption in his administration . Walker was nonetheless a colorful mayor and fair game for a musical treatment dealing almost exclusively with his years as mayor. The songwriters Bill and Patti Jacob, however, created a score that was melodic but lyrically only serviceable. In one song, Betty bemoans the fact that she may only get "That Old Familiar Ring" of excuses from Jimmy for not leaving his wife, rather than something to wear on her finger: JIMMY: Just give me a chance now to win your affection I'll throw the election, move in with your cat. ... We two could really make beautiful music, But I've found there's only one song single girls want to sing. BETIY: That's right.12 Jimmy's inability to commit to Betty leads to their "Squabble": BETIY: I wish I never ever ever let you talk your way
9Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops ( New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 246.
lO According to Mandelbaum, Jack Warner had once employed Compton (Not Since carrie 246).

llBeau James: The Life and Times of Jimmy Walker (New York: Viking,

1949).
12Unpublished lyrics t ranscribed from the original cast album Jimmy (RCA Victor LS0-1162), 1969.

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into my life. JIMMY: OK, OK. Don't worry, take it easy, everything will be OK. Just give me time to work it out, Isn't that a brand-new negligee? BrnY: Negligee! That's all you ever think about, You've got a one-track mind . No matter what the time of day You're never ever ever disinclined. JIMMY: You're too kind.

KONAS

Walker's wife Allie laments, in an Irish jig, that she will never possess the "Charming Son of a Bitch" either: Now I don't know who's been talking to you, but as for Jim and me, Well didn't I do as he asked me to? Let go and set him free. And wasn't I keepin' my silence while he flung his little flings? And didn't I let him have his way with his sweet young things? The score counterbalances the romantic strife with several valentines to New York City. In "The Darlin' of New York," Walker refers to the boroughs as "Five lovely ladies who mean the world to me," and in "Riverside Drive," Walker sings, You make your own rules You do as you please, And when it gets dark It's ten to one you won't play Parcheesi. Those boulevards on postal cards Could never compare. The Champs Elysee was never as gay As 72nd Street( ... ] and Riverside Drive. The corrupt politicians we met in Fiorello's superior song "Little Tin Box" have soured on the city: "It's a Nice Place to Visit," but they no longer want to live there and face justice: How's a guy to feel when they talk repeal? [ .... ]

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When you open shop, comes an honest cop, Next year, I hear, there'll be legal beer [ ...] Girls are C.O.D., now they're working free. What a great big fuss over little us, It's a shame what they're doing to New York. While the score reveals rhythmic and harmonic charms as it alternates between authentic 1920s and late 1960s styles, it often sounds more pop than theatrical, an impression intensified by Gorshin's popular singing style. He is best known as an impersonator, and his songs sometimes sound as if he has absorbed too much of his Dean Martin impression. When Walker announces his resignation before a ball game at Yankee Stadium (a piece of dramatic licensehe spoke but did not resign there), we do not feel the intended sympathy for him. He may not have been guilty of stuffing his own little tin box, but corruption flourished on his watch . As a romantic story, moreover, Walker's long-delayed reconciliation with Betty lacks the cathartic coupling of Fiorello and Marie.n Scott Fitzgerald might have been able to turn Walker's fall from grace into a Gotham tragedy, but in the hands of the Jacobs and librettist Melville Shavelson (who had also directed and co-written the film version of Beau James), Walker became just another victim of New York's power to seduce even the powerful and famous. The show closed after only eighty-four performances and sank into oblivion. Nevertheless, if you listen repeatedly to the brightly orchestrated original cast album, you may find yourself, like Betty and Allie, charmed by that SOB named Jimmy Walker. Although Ed Koch had numerous detractors too, Mayor, which opened Off-Broadway on May 13, 1985, could scarcely be more different than Jimmy. In contrast to its two predecessors, Mayor is a refreshingly-and appropriately-wicked treatment of its subject, a show which deserves the sort of spotlight that Fiorello had received on Broadway. Heretofore known only for his music, usually in big productions like Bye Bye Birdie, Charles Strouse also wrote solid and candidly amusing lyrics for this show, with Warren Leight (author of The I Hate New York Guidebook)14 as librettist. Moreover, even though it is ostensibly based on Koch's book of the same title, the musical presents a satiric, often unflattering take in its day-in-the-life story of Koch. Nobody could accuse the writers of airbrushing his warts. Surprisingly, Koch practically commissioned this musical and imposed
13Aithough Walker's political style bore little resemblance to Giuliani's, his openly secret affair with Betty parallels Giuliani's relationship with Judith Nathan while he was still married to Donna Hanover. 14New York: Dell, 1983.

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no restrictions on Strouse and Leight. Strouse's introductory note to the reader sets the tone for the show. It concludes, "Mayor really could be about any city-any city, that is, with aging highways, racial problems, and a downtown that's a mess. New York simply has bigger and better of these, and maybe we deserve the mayor we got."ls The Mayor begins his day in bed, listening to the day's problems on the radio news. While batting a Big Apple balloon around Ia Charlie Chaplin's globe sequence in The Great Dictator, he sings,

Sure the job gets manic, One day blacks berate me, But I never panic, Next day cops all hate me, Ev'ry cabbie here Ev'ry waiter there, There is nothing they don't know. Ban all trucks at night, Rent control ain't right, And the Westway has to go! (15) Koch did have his problems with his fellow New Yorkers, especially African Americans. Even though Koch had once been a civil rights activist, the authors of I, Koch assert that "for years [he] had been privately expressing animosity toward blacks." For example, he referred to Congressman Ron Dellums as a "Watusi," and in private he used terms like "poverty pimps" and "schvarzes." Other problems dogged him too: by the time his first term as mayor ended in 1981, crime had increased twenty-three percent, and the city had become measurably dirtier.16 Mayor is a portrait of New York as well as Koch. The songs are so full of references to the city's problems, quirks, and celebrities that the original cast recording's liner notes includes a tongue-in-cheek glossary of nearly 50 items. For example, the Board of Estimate is defined as "A powerful, all-white branch of city government," and the Village Voice is "A weekly paper filled with anti-Koch articles, listings and futon ads" (6-7). The song "You Can Be a New Yorker Too" cheerfully presents survival tips to a newcomer.
15Charles Strouse and Warren Leight, Mayor (New York: French, 1987), 8. Page references will be given parenthetically in text. 16Arthur Browne, Dan Collins, and Michael Goodwin, I, Koch: A Decidedly Unauthorized Biography of the Mayor of New York City, Edward I. Koch (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985), 197-200.

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CONSTRUCTION WORKER & NURSE: If you should get a parking ticket, Tell the policeman where to stick it! OuT-oF-TowNER: And if I'm feeling French, How's "Fuckez-vous?" VARIOUS OTHER BYSTANDERS: Beaucoup! ALL (making obscene gesture): Up yours! (19) In 1985, before Giuliani arrived to sanitize Times Square and create a virtual police state in some neighborhoods, visitors needed such verbal ammunition. Koch was famously unapologetic in the face of criticism, a quality Strouse translates into a song Koch sings to a reporter: What you see is what you get, Don't ask me to be what I'm not, 'Cause I'm not gonna change for you, If you don't like it, screw. (That's off the record.) (35) He also sings, no Hamlet, full of doubt I You want Hamlet, vote me out" (36). All three of our musical mayors share this willingness to act decisively, regardless of consequences or criticism. As one critic put it, "being Ed Koch means never having to say you're sorry."t7 Whenever Koch uttered his trademarked "How'm I doin'?", he fully expected the reply to be "Great," but the reply in Mayor is "Not so hot." When he sings "You all used to love me, I Why have you left me? I I'm your mayor," (62), he sounds like a forsaken Christ on the cross. Strouse has Fiorello La Guardia appear like a Christmas Carol ghost to confront Koch's Scrooge. LA GuARDIA: Look at the faces, Where are the good times? In fancy places, Not BedstuyKocH: You talk real pretty,
17Browne et al., 270.

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But this damn city, You couldn't love more Than I. LA GuARDIA: I know what you love. (sings) You love being mayor, The power, the spotlight. (62-63)

KONAS

This lyric speaks much truth. Unlike La Guardia, who used his power to defend the downtrodden, Koch seemed to enjoy most the attention and celebrity that came with the office, even though he did clearly love his lifelong home as well as admiring his famous predecessor. As soon as he took office, Giuliani took Koch's advice to move La Guardia's desk and portrait into his office, as had Koch . The Koch/ La Guardia dialectic reveals two contrasting ways to govern New York City. Browne et al. say of Koch, " Even his public fights were calculated-never did he pick on anyone who could do him real damage. As Koch himself said, blacks don't vote, so they were safe targets. So were the unions."l S For La Guardia, the more dangerous the enemy, the more vigorously he fought. Coincidentally, diehard Democrat Koch ran for his second term as a fusion candidate, just as Republican La Guardia had. The two men shared other similarities: both had begun their careers representing New York City in Congress, and both lost their first mayoral election, as did Giuliani. La Guardia was Koch's idol, and like his hero, "He had a lot of sheer, childlike glee at being the Mayor."19 Both men had the quality described in Yiddish as chutzpah. Indeed, Mayor's score even included a song in which former mayors John Lindsay and Abe Beame wonder how Koch gets away with so much. " Hootspa," Koch explains: It's nerve, it's verve, It's throwin' a curve When the suckers expect a fast ball. (29) Another Yiddish word needs to be mentioned, though. Koch's Comptroller Harrison Goldin once told him, "You're not a mensch [translation: A good and mature man]. A man is either a mensch or not a mensch and you are not."2o La Guardia, for all his problems with relationships, was a mensch. Although he was as loud and combative as Koch, La Guardia usually tried to do the right thing for the right
18227.
19Browne et al., 171, 174. 20Quoted in Browne et al., 292

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reason. The creators of Fiorello! present his warts, but it is the mensch who stays with us long after the show is over. Koch, by contrast, comes off as comically egotistical. As City Council president and Koch archenemy Carol Bellamy says to her mother, "yes I know he's funny... but there's more to running a city than being a stand-up comic" (40). Given the number of parallels between Giuliani and the musical mayors who preceded him, it is natural to ask whether we will ever see Rudy! The Musical on a Broadway marquee. It's possible, but I hope no one will try to take the Fiorello! approach with him. Giuliani the prosecutor and power broker bore little resemblance to the stirring eulogizer we all saw on television during his final months in office. As Wayne Barrett puts it, "Through force of personality and through a deliberate effort to centralize power in his office, he intimidated the reigning powers of New York. No one wasn't afraid of Rudy Giuliani."2t In musical theatre terms, Giuliani's first seven years as mayor more closely resembled Sweeney Todd than Destry Rides Again. I would therefore prefer to see Giuliani musicalized off-Broadway without reverence, like Strouse's Koch. Could Gerald Alessandrini be persuaded to write Forbidden Mayor? I'd pay to see that show. In the meantime, we can listen, with renewed appreciation, to the cast album of Fiorello! and get better acquainted with the mayor of them all.

21Wayne Barrett, Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani (New York: Basic Books, 2000), xii.

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CONTRIBUTORS

DAN BACALZO is completing his Ph .D. in Performance Studies at New York University. He teaches in NYU's Undergraduate Drama Department, and also works as a theater journalist. Additionally, he is the Artistic Director of Peeling, an Asian American writing and performance collective in New York City. HENRY BIAL is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of New Mexico. He is the editor of The Performance Studies Reader (Routledge, forthcoming) and co-editor (with Carol Martin) of Brecht Sourcebook (Routledge 2000). He is currently writing a book on Jewish performance in American theatre, film, and television . STUART J. HECHT is Associate Professor and Chair of the Theatre Department at Boston College where he teaches and directs. A onetime dramaturg for both the Goodman and Wisdom Bridge theatres, Hecht's scholarly articles have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre History Studies, Chicago History, Journal of Popular Culture, and Youth Theatre Journal, among others. He is also Editor-in-Chief of New England Theatre Journal. GARY KONAS is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He is editor of Neil Simon: A casebook, published by Garland in 1997, and has published numerous articles on musical theatre and literature. He also recorded a solo album of show tunes, Gary Konas... On Broadway, on the Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ. LYN SCHENBECK is Director of Choral and Orchestral Activities at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She has a doctorate degree in both Choral and Instrumental Conducting from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She has performed extensively as a singer and conductor throughout the United States and Europe. Dr. Schenbeck is the author of a number of articles in the Choral Journal, the Journal of the Conductors Guild, and the Journal of Experiential Education. She has written liner notes for companies such as ProArte, ProJazz, Quintessence, Intersound, Platinum Entertainment, and most recently, CC'nC Records in Germany. She is Editor of Choral Music Reviews for the Choral Journal, Southeast Regional Chair and on the Board of Directors of the Conductors Guild, and serves on the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Education Committee. LAURIE SCHMELING is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Theatre and Dramaat Indiana University. She received her MA in theatre history, literature,and criticism from the Ohio State University. This essay is part of her dissertation, "Defining an American Theatrical Genre: The Press and the Broadway Musical, 1927-1943."

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THE HEI,RS OF MOLIERE

The Heirs of Moliere

Translated and Edited by: Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four representative French comedies of the period from the death of Moliere to the French Revolution: Regnard's The Absent-Minded Lover, Destouches's The Conceited Count, La Chaussee's The Fashionable Prejudice, and Laya's The Friend of the Laws. Translated in a poetic form that seeks to capture the wit and spirit of the originals, these four plays suggest something of the range of the Moliere inheritance, from comedy of character through the highly popular sentimental comedy of the mid eighteenth century, to comedy that employs the Moliere tradition for more contemporary political ends.

POUR I'RENCH COMEDIES 01' THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES

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In addition to their humor, these comedies provide fascinating social documents that show changing ideas about such perennial social concerns as class, gender, and politics through the turbulent century that ended in the revolutions that gave birth to the modem era.

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Please make payments in U.S. Dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Mail checks or money orders to: Circulation Manager Martin E . Segal Theatre Center T he CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10016-4309 Visit our website at: web.gc.cuny.edulmestd Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868

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Pixerecourt: Four Melodramas

Translated and Edited by: Daniel Gerould &
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This volume contains four of Pixerecourt's most important melodramas: The Ruins of Babylon, or Jafar and Zaida, The Dog of Montatgis, or The Forest of Bondy, Christopher Columbus, or The Discovery of the New World, and Alice, or The Scottish Gravediggers, as well as Charles Nodier's "Introduction" to the 1843 Collected Edition of Pixerecourt's plays and the two theoretical essays by the playwright, "Melodrama," and "Final Reflections on Melodrama."

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DANI

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"Pixerecourt furnished the Theatre of Marvels with its most stunning effects, and brought the classic situations of fairground comedy up-to-date. He determined the structure of a popular theatre which was to last through the 19th century ... Pixerecourt determined that scenery, music, dance, lighting and the very movements of his actors should no longer be left to chance but made integral parts of his play." Hannah Winter, The Theatre ofMarvels

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Contemporary Theatre in Egypt, edited by Marvin Carlson, contains the proceedings of a Symposium on this subject held at the CUNY Graduate Center in February of 1999 along with the first English translations of three short plays by leading Egyptian playwrights who spoke at the Symposium, Alfred Farag, Gamal Maqsoud, and Lenin El-Ramley. It concludes with a bibliography of English translations and secondary articles on the theatre in Egypt since 1955. (USA $12.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign Sl2.00 plus $6.00 shipping)

Zeami and the No Theatre in the World, edited by Benito Ortolani and Samuel Leiter, contains the proceedings of the "Zeami and the No Theatre in the World Symposium" held in New York City in October 1997 in conjunction with the "Japanese Theatre in the World" exhibit at the Japan Society. The book contains an introduction and fifieen essays, organized into sections on "Zeami's Theories and Aesthetics," "Zeami and Drama," "Zeami and Acting," and "Zeami and the World." (USA $15.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign $15.00 plus $6.00 shipping)

Four Works for the Theatre by Hugo Claus contains translations of four plays by the foremost contemporary writer of Dutch language theatre, poetry, and prose. Flemish by birth and upbringing, Claus is the author of some ninety plays, novels, and collections of poetry. The plays collected here, edited and with an introduction by David Willinger, include The Temptation, Friday, Serenade, and The Hair ofthe Dog. (USA $12.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign $12.00 plus $6.00 shipping)

Theatre Research Resources in New York City is the most comprehensive catalogue of New York City research facilities available to theatre scholars. Within the indexed volume, each facility is briefly described including an outline of its holdings and practical matters such as hours of operation. Most entries include electronic contact information and web sites. The listings are grouped as follows: Libraries, Museums, and Historical Societies; University and College Libraries; Ethnic and Language Associations; Theatre Companies and Acting Schools; and Film and Other. (USA $5.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign $5.00 plus $6.00 shipping)

Please make payments in U.S. Dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Mail checks or money orders to: Circulation Manager Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10016-4309 Visit our web-site at: web.gc.cuny.edu/mestcl Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.cdu or 212-817-1868