fected “a rapprochement between what
the plot was doing and what the music
was saying.”
Along theway, theauthoroffersavalu-
able anatomy of song genres—for exam-
ple, the establishing song, the wanting
song, the moon song, the new dance sen-
sation, or thecomicnoveltysong—andde-
scriptions of such long-forgotten hit plays
as
The Black Crook
(1866),
Evangeline
(1874)
, El Capitan
(1896),
The RedMill
(1906), and
GoodNews!
(1927).Although
he notes that
Good News!
“remained per-
haps the singlemost popular showamong
high school dramatic clubs into the early1960s,” this play, like
the other titlesmentioned, is rarely discussed today. Neverthe-
less, although forgottenevenbymost theater aficionados, such
showshave remainedvitally important to themost sophisticated
contributors to contemporary musical theater. For example,
JohnKander and FredEbb drewupon the conventions of bur-
lesque and the musical revue in both
Cabaret
and
Chicago
,
while Stephen Sondheim and librettists James Goldman and
JamesLapinedrewupon theseworks in
Follies
, addinganele-
ment of operetta in
ALittleNightMusic
.
Morddenalsobrings tobear anovelist’seye for character. In
AnythingGoes
wemeet such engaging theater personalities as
LydiaThompson, theactor-managerwho in1869horsewhipped
anewspaper editorwhohadpubliclychidedher for her “useof
disreputable language unrelieved by any wit or humor,” and
whoprecededMaeWest andSophieTucker as an“independent
wom[a]n who tested the legal limits of bourgeois protocols
about gender.” In addition, Mordden introduces us toDeWolf
Hopper, a successful comic who “nevertheless fielded a thun-
dering basso profundo to send every lyric to the top of the
house,” but whosememory has been overshadowed by that of
one of his several ex-wives, failed actress andHollywoodgay-
baiting gossipmaven Hedda Hopper. And then there’s libret-
tist-lyricist Harry B. Smith, who worked on over 300 shows,
someofwhose lyrics canstill becountedon to“toot alongwith
saucy charm” today.
Morddenoffers remarkablydetaileddescriptionsof the look
and feel of productions towhich fellowtheater historians have
littleor no real access. Ina recent interviewMorddendescribed
thewealthofmaterial archived in theNewYorkPublicLibrary
at LincolnCenter,whichhe spends several days aweek sifting
through. Since the early 1980s, for exam-
ple, it has become customary for produc-
ers to deposit in Lincoln Center’s
collection a taped performance of every
showthat opens inNewYorkCity, thereby
creatinganunrivaledarchive. But other of
the library’saudio-visual resourcesgoback
as far as themid-1940s, andMordden has
exhaustively studied every tape. He has
also succeeded in identifying the script of
Betsy
, a Ziegfeld show with a score by
Rodgers andHart long thought to be lost,
which he discovered among the yet-to-be
catalogedpapers of the great impresario.
He takes amoment in the introduction to express his grati-
tude to
theunique figureof thegaymentor,who inmycasewere for-
mer chorus boys and stagemanagerswho carriedwith thema
treasuryof anecdotes and recollections andweregladof anew
audience for them.Mydescriptions of shows that precedemy
own theatregoing owe everything to them, for, make nomis-
take, the chorus people have a larger perspective on a show
than the leading players do, distracted as they [the leading
players] are by the demands of their parts.And no one knows
a showlike its stagemanager.
Questionedabout this statement ina recent interview,Mordden
described the scene that he found inManhattanwhenhearrived
there fresh out of college in 1969 at a moment when some
Broadway shows could still afford to sport a full orchestra as
well asbotha singingandadancingchorus.Becauseadancer’s
career is necessarily shorter than a musician’s or a singer’s, a
male dancer oftenmorphed into the company’s stagemanager.
Such theater stalwartswouldshare theirprofessionalwar stories
duringgatherings at dinner clubs likeVoisin.
Ever anattentive listener,Mordden learnedhowFredStone
managed his impressive entrance in
The Red Mill
by falling
backward down an eighteen-foot ladder (“padded trousers ...
gripped the ladder’s sides tocontrolwhat appeared to the audi-
ence to be a sudden accident”), and howGertrude Lawrence
managed a seemingly impossible transformation during amo-
mentaryblackout in
Lady in theDark
(asher character’sdream
sequence“implodes in terror ...Lawrenceslippedoffstage, leav-
ingadouble in ... [aduplicate] costume todistract theaudience
whileLawrencebreathlesslychanged intostreet clothes toreap-
pear seconds after theblackout, back in thepsychiatrist’soffice
as if she had never left it”).
AnythingGoes
is a love song tomusical theater bya scholar
who has an encyclopedic command of the smallest details of
each production’s history. For example, Mordden records that
director-choreographerBobFosse himself hadwritten the first
draft of the book for
Sweet Charity
, “taking the sobriquet of
‘Bert Lewis’ (a play on his given names, Robert Louis). Real-
izing that heneededexperiencedhelp, he called inNeil Simon,
givingSimonsolecredit, but thisoccurredso late in the show’s
gestation that the first songsheets cameoutwith theBertLewis
billing.” Iwas repeatedlystruckby the justiceofMordden’sun-
expectedobservations, suchas thoseconcerning the rootsof
My
Fair Lady
’sAscot gavotte scene in Ziegfeldian extravaganza,
AnythingGoes:
AHistoryof American
Musical Theatre
byEthanMordden
OxfordUniv.Press.346pages,$29.95
ThePassionateAttention
of an InterestingMan:
ANovella andFour Stories
byEthanMordden
MagnusBooks.223pages,$19.99
14
TheGay&LesbianReview
/
WORLDWIDE
Sometimes a queer girl
summer in New York is just
what a straight boy needs.
“
Adam
is themost twisted,hilarious,
anddeeplygratifyingreadingexperi-
enceIhavehadina longtime.”
—ALISON BECHDEL
