Le monde des musicals

Genèse:

Résumé: Sing for Your Supper included a sequence about finances with the overall title “A Tisket A Tax It” which included the songs “Bonnie Banks,” “How Can We Swing It,” and “Oh, Boy, Can We Deduct”; another (“Papa’s Got a Job”) looked at an about-to-be-dispossessed family that gets a last-minute reprieve when the breadwinner lands a job; and “Leaning on a Shovel” praised the WPA and the jobs it created. A look at politics included the dance sequence “The Last Waltz,” which began with the traditional waltz “Blue Danube” and soon morphed into a goose-stepping march, and “Ping Pong on the Pacific,” which looked at the military (including a character named Admiral Stuffit). And John Latouche and Lee Wainer provided “Perspiration,” a spoof of Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock (among the characters were Mr. Bankbook and Mr. Zipper). The most memorable sequence from the revue was “Ballad for Americans,” in the program titled “Ballade of Uncle Sam” and sometimes known as “Ballad of Uncle Sam,” lyric by John Latouche and music by Earl Robinson. Later heard in the 1942 MGM film Born to Sing, where it served as the movie’s finale and was staged by Busby Berkeley, the song celebrated the American way and in many respects was a precursor to Robinson’s “The House I Live In” (lyric by Lewis Allen) from the 1942 Broadway revue Let Freedom Sing. This last was later popularized by Frank Sinatra, who performed it in the ten-minute film The House I Live In, which was released by RKO in 1945. In the same genre as “Ballad for Americans” and “The House I Live In” is “The Tenement Symphony” from the Marx Brothers’ 1941 MGM film The Big Store. It was sung by Tony Martin (with lyric and music by Sid Kuller, Ray Golden, and Hal Borne), and according to Clive Hirschhorn in The Hollywood Musical, the sequence was “one of MGM’s all-time worsts.” Another song of this type is “Home,” which was sung by Paul Binotto in the 1980 musical Swing, which closed during its pre-Broadway tryout (lyric by Alfred Uhry, music by Robert Waldman).

Création: 24/4/1939 - George Abbott Theatre (Broadway) - 44 représ.