Footlight Parade

This is pure Hollywood, not written for, not adapted from, not conceived for the stage. Although it is the world of the stage musical that Footlight Parade explores. Specifically it looks at Prologue productions, which were short live presentations given between movie screenings. I believe they were the way movie theater owners drew audiences to their movie house while their competitors might be showing the same film. "We're Air Conditioned!" "We have more comfy seats!" "We have a waterfall and scores of bathing beauties that swim in a tank that could never really fit in this movie house!"

If I'm wrong on the history lesson, I'm sure someone will correct me, or point me to a good source--Oscar Brockett never covered it in the text book he wrote for my theater history courses in college.

Well, Footlight Parade is a "let's put on a show" variant. They put on three Prologues at three different movie houses in one evening. Different Prologues, same cast. Realistic? No.

While you get a taste of some singing and dancing during the course of the film, you have to wait to the end to see the three ultra-elaborate Prologues presented back-to-back-to-back at the end of the film. The waterfall/pool number is particularly stunning to watch, if you can get past the idea that this is supposed to be seen in a live stage show. Exactly how would an audience experience the overhead and underwater shots as created by Busby Berkeley (see above)?

Jimmy Cagney is rough and tumble as the man who dreams up the Prologue themes and then rallies the team. He also performs one of the Prologues. It's a good preview of the more nuanced and worthy performance Cagney will give as George M. Cohan nearly a decade later in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell round out the cast.

I didn't care for any of the music, which is written by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, although "Shang-hai Lil" is somewhat catchy. It is surprising to see a cast of all shades in this one number--Black, Asian, White. Did it cause a sensation?

Oscar Brockett doesn't know.

Footlight Parade
Music by Harry Warren
Lyrics by Al Dubin
Film released in 1933 by Warner Bros.
DVD released in 2006
Cast: James Cagney, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell

The Seven Deadly Sins--film on DVD

I have had a love affair with Kurt Weill for most of my life, ever since I was in a production of Threepenny Opera my freshman year of college. It was wonderfully dark, and really appealed to my inner goth, which rarely appeared from underneath my outer Preppy. I'm not certain when I first discovered Weill's Seven Deadly Sins, but I have several recordings of it at this point. I've never seen it performed live, although I believe it has been performed at Orchestra Hall in Chicago sometime in the last decade. Imagine my thrill at realizing that there is a version of the work on DVD.

Sins comes from Weill's Wiemar era. Created five years after Threepenny Opera, it was Weill and Bertold Brecht's final collaboration. The creators call this piece a sung ballet, and while it may not be obvious what the piece is by those words, that is a pretty accurate description of it. More theatrical than a cantata. Not opera, although some of the singing needed is on that level, but a different sort of music theater. The cast includes a male vocal quartet, a singing woman (soprano or mezzo, as the work exists in two different keys), and a female actor/dancer.

While this production was co-produced by The Lyon Opera, this is clearly a version for television or film. There is much outdoor film footage edited in between scenes of the theatre piece. And while the theatre section of the work may be based on a stage production, it is filmed with too many close-ups to be a stage work in this version.

Director Peter Sellars obviously had many ideas about this work and its meanings, and he puts every one of them into this video version. I found the whole thing too cluttered with images and messages to take away much of anything. The editing is very quick, and all the performers are presented almost exclusively in close-up. Nora Kimball seemed underutilized as Anna II. I wanted to see her actually dance.

For me, this work is a discussion of whom is allowed the luxury of a virtuous life. Weill and Brecht clearly felt that only the rich could afford to steer clear of sinning. With a scene dedicated to each of the seven sins (sloth, pride, wrath, gluttony, lust, greed, envy), we see Anna I and Anna II--really a singer version and a dancer version of the same person--go from city to city trying to feed themselves and send something back home to the family.

The singing is first rate. Stratas (who became a bit of a Weill specialist in her later career) is particularly good--musical and still emotional. The male quartet sings very well, although is asked to do some ridiculous action. There are parts of the libretto that are funny for Americans to read. Neither Weill or Brecht had been to America, but each scene in Sins is set in a different US city, as the Annas make their way in the world.

I just read that there is a translation of the libretto by WH Auden. I must check that out.

Music by Kurt Weill
Text by Bertold Brecht
First performed in 1933
Lyon Opera television production created in 1993
Directed by Peter Sellars
Conducted by Kent Nagano
Cast: Teresa Stratas, Frank Kelley, Nora Kimball, Peter Rose, Howard Haskin, Herbert Perry

As Thousands Cheer World Premiere Cast Recording

There must be a large and relatively untapped gusher of songs from revues from the early 20th Century. Sure not every song or sketch will have lasted the test of time, but there must be enough to fill many shows like Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer.

This is a reconstructed revue that opened in 1933. Created as a kind of "living newspaper," Mr. Berlin's music comments on and dramatizes newspaper headlines of the day. Interspersed are sketches by Moss Hart (although only one of them appears as a track on this recording, made in 1998 when the score was revived). According to the liner notes with the CD, the 1933 production had a cast of 50 with full orchestra. The 1998 production has a cast of six and an orchestra of two, piano and bass. Really, not much more is needed, for to have lines of chorus girls would seem ridiculous by current standards.

So it's another show where the songs and the cast are front and center, and fortunately all are accomplished. Mr. Berlin's songs have much verve and sing-ability and range from touching, to haunting, to funny. All six in the cast are good singers and give lively performances of the 14 songs and one sketch on this recording. The vocal standouts for me are Howard McGillin (whom I've just heard in Kiss of the Spider Woman) and Judy Kuhn, who is new to my Year. Both display true legato singing reaching into their upper registers.

I had heard two of the songs from this revue before: "Easter Parade", and "Heat Wave". Both are standards today. The song about lynching, "Suppertime" seemed familiar, but I may be confusing it with "Strange Fruit" which deals with the same ugly topic. In the original 1933 production, Ethel Waters (whom I've just seen in Cabin in the Sky) introduced "Suppertime." In this recording, Paula Newsome does some nice dramatic singing.

The song "Debts" is a funny (and still timely) song about government spending. There are songs about the pervasivness of the press, the weather, the comics, a Dear Abby-type column, and the social register--all still part of our newspapers today, even if we read them online. Perhaps its time for this revue to have new life.

As Thousands Cheer
Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin
Sketches by Moss Hart
Revival of original 1933 score in 1998
Cast: BD Wong, Howard McGillin, Judy Kuhn, Paula Newsome, Mary Beth Peil, Kevin Chamberlain

Roberta on film

Ol' fashioned American operetta meets new-fangled Hollywood movie musical with a dash of Borscht-belt humor thrown in for good measure in the 1935 film version of Jerome Kern's 1933 Roberta.

The title character is not the focus of the story, but the starting point. Roberta is a Parisian couturier, producing high-end women's fashion. When her nephew, John Kent (Randolph Scott, pictured) inherits the business upon Roberta's death, shop manager Stephanie (Irene Dunn) must learn to work with the former football player. Love blossoms among the swatches.

The comedic couple is band leader Huck Haines (Fred Astaire) with Ginger Rogers playing an American "faking it" as Comtesse Scharwenka. The comtesse's first name is Tanka, so she is Tanka Scharwenka. How long had this joke been used in the Catskills?

The score includes some of the best songs Jerome Kern ever wrote: "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", "I Won't Dance, Don't Ask Me" and "I'll Be Hard To Handle". If the songs don't really move the story along, be forgiving, this was before that was part of the plan for a musical. It is nice to know that Kern had a more swinging period of his song-writing; this was after Showboat.

The Broadway cast was really interesting, but I'm sure their performances were lost to the ages. Bob Hope originated the Astaire role. Ray Middleton, who would go on to originate Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun, played John Kent. It appears that the story of the stage play has been altered a bit in translation to film, so I'll look for a recording of a stage version to see if I can learn more.

Ginger Rogers is delightful in this film, singing, dancing and striking the right chords with the schticky humor. Astaire feels a bit heavy-handed at times with the humor, but has a tap routine that is not to be equalled. Irene Dunn has the waivery soprano voice that this era seemed to prefer--similar to Jeannette McDonald. Since Randolph Scott just stands around looking gorgeous, he doesn't sing. That's okay, too.

I think Lucille Ball has a brief appearance on screen as one of the "mannequins" in the big finale fashion show. She's a blonde.

Roberta
Music by Jerome Kern
Book and Lyrics by Otto Harbach
Film by RKO Pictures released in 1935

Based on the stage musical produced in 1933
Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, Irene Dunn