Starring Barbara Cook, Keith Andes, Carmen Matthews, and Paul Ford
Directed by Alex Segal
Music by Harold Arlen; Lyrics by E.Y Harburg
Operetta was not normally Harburg and Arlen's turf, but Harburg in particular was a passionate liberal who supported his many causes in his music. Cook was the next big thing on Broadway when this show debuted, having just come off the short-lived but well-remembered Candide and a year before her breakthrough in The Music Man. How well does she do in this recording of the 1944 Broadway hit about the fictional niece of real-life feminist and early black rights supporter Amelia "Dolly" Bloomer (Matthews)? Let's begin with the five older Applegate sisters and their mother Serena (Nydia Westman) and maid Daisy (Patricia Hammerlee) as they wait for their hoopskirt salesmen husbands to come home to Cicero Falls, New York in 1861 and find out...
The Story: Those five older Applegate sisters may be content to marry salesmen and sit around in hoopskirts, but that's not enough for youngest sister Evelina (Cook). She thoroughly believes in her Aunt Dolly Bloomer's (Matthews) views on women's and black rights, including the right to more comfortable clothing. Her frustrated father (Ford), the owner of a hoopskirt factory, encourages southern gentleman Jeff Calhoun (Andes) to court her. Evelina will have nothing to do with him until he frees his slave Pompey (Rawn Spearman).
Jeff's more than happy to do so at first, until his brother Hamilton (Frank Overton), who thoroughly believes in the right to own slaves, protests. Evelina's father is even more upset when his daughter turns up in bloomers on a Sunday and insists on her aunt's right to perform Uncle Tom's Cabin with her girls. The women end up in jail, until Governor Newton (Paul McGrath) admits he supports their cause and lets the show go on. The show - and Evelina and Jeff's relationship - is disrupted by the Civil War. The war, however, brings many positive changes, including making Jeff see the light about the importance of freedom for all.
The Song and Dance: By far the best things about this are the period-perfect costumes and the rare chance to see Cook in her prime and Agnes deMille's original choreography, including the dramatic and much-lauded "Civil War Ballet." Cook is an adorable whirlwind, coquettish with Jeff, then easily standing up to her father and the sheriff in defence of her aunt and the causes she supports. Matthews is just as strong-willed as her aunt, and Ford is a blustery delight as her conservative father. Considering how wonderful the dancing is here, I really wish more of it had been retained. Love the costumes, too. We have full-on, period-accurate hoopskirts and bloomers for the ladies, tight suits and Civil War uniforms for the men, and tattered clothing for the slaves and black men who sing "I Got a Song."
Favorite Number: We open with "When the Boys Come Home" as the Applegate sisters and mother await the arrival of their salesmen husbands. Jeff sings about his "Evelina," but Evelina isn't impressed. Dolly, Daisy, and the Bloomer girls who work at Dolly's newspaper claim "It Was Good Enough for Grandma," but they want a lot more than sitting at home in a lively, adorable dance. Pompey declares "The Eagle and Me" equally deserve freedom. For Jeff and Evelina, everything is "Right as the Rain."
"Sunday In Cicero Falls" starts off quietly for the chorus, until Dolly and her girls come high-stepping along with an encore of "Good Enough for Grandma" to advertise Uncle Tom's Cabin. "I Got a Song," says Pompey and two of his friends as they explain that they can't laugh, but they can sing. Dolly and Evelina sing a "Lullaby" to the ladies while in prison. Daisy prances to the upbeat "I Never Was Born" while dressed as Topsy for the Cabin production, blackface and all. The brief "Man for Sale," with an auctioneer (David Aiken) "selling" off a black man during the show. It's interrupted by the announcement of the Civil War, which leads into the stirring "Civil War Ballet." James Marshall leads the dance corps, many from the 1944 show, as they depict the men going to war, and what happens when they come home.
Trivia: Bloomer Girl ran a year and a half on Broadway in its original production, respectable for the time. Celeste Holm played Evelina; Dooley Wilson was Pompey. Its only New York stagings since then were a brief City Center revival in 1947, an off-Broadway revival in 2000, and an Encores! concert in 2001.
Brock Peters has a small role as Pompey's friend Alexander; he can be heard in "I Got a Song" and "Man for Sale." He would go on to star as Crown in the 1959 Porgy and Bess, the wrongfully accused Tom Robinson in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, and as Joseph Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Amelia "Dolly" Bloomer was a real-life feminist and abolitionist who lived in small-town upstate New York and advocated freer, looser clothing for women and did run a newspaper advocating her causes in the 1850's. By 1859, she'd actually moved to Iowa and had resumed wearing longer skirts, since hoopskirts and heavy petticoats were being replaced by that point by crinolines.
What I Don't Like: There's a few reasons this is rarely seen nowadays, despite the wonderful music and dance and still-relevant subject matter. Some of the dialogue, especially concerning African-American rights, comes off as condescending or overly stiff today. There's also the second half hinging around a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Though it's downplayed from the original show, where it was a major set piece that included an expanded "Man for Sale" and a sequence derived from Eliza crossing the ice, we still get Hammerlee's too-goofy blackface "I Never Was Born" number.
The Uncle Tom's Cabin sequence wasn't the only one to be cut down for television. Most of the other dance routines were dropped as well, along with numbers for Evelina's brothers-in-law and the men in Cicero Falls ("The Farmer's Whiskers," "Pretty as a Picture"), a solo for Daisy ("T'Morra, T'Morra"), and a third duet for Evelina and Jeff ("Rakish Young Man With the Whiskers"). Also, basic warning that this is a fuzzy black-and-white recording of a show originally broadcast live and in color. Considering how many such shows have been lost to time, we're lucky to have this at all.
The Big Finale: The terrific music and ballets and the fact that this doesn't turn up often onstage nowadays makes this rare program worth checking out for fans of Cook, Harburg and Arlen, or the folksy Americana shows of the 40's and 50's.
Home Media: It's in print, but like all VAI International DVD releases, is expensive online. You're better off checking eBay or other used venues for this.
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