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[Jack Clowes]

I would like Ken's view on the following theory of mine.

When considering the Broadway Musicals it strikes me that most composers who were still alive, wrote their greatest Broadway scores in the dozen or so years after the 2nd World War - even those who had been writing songs for many years such as Irving Berlin (Annie Get Your Gun) and Cole Porter (Kiss Me Kate). Other examples are Harold Arlen (St Louis Woman), Burton Lane (Finian's Rainbow), Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls), Fritz Loewe (My Fair Lady), Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story) and Jule Styne (Gypsy) plus others which I've omitted. Could it be that they were all inspired to greater heights by the example of Rodgers and Hammerstein with Oklahoma! and Carousel or could there be other reasons?
I eagerly await Ken's views (and anyone else's!) on this subject.

[KEN BARNES]

Just to start off, I must apologies to all the supporters who have posted messages over the last week about Citizen Kane and the great musicals. I'm up to eyes in work at the moment - but I'll try to cover everything in this one response.

I'm hard at work digging up research facts and all of the material I can get hold of to make the best possible DVD of Citizen Kane. I'm also busy scripting a 50 minute documentary for it - working title "Anatomy of a Classic"
which will be hosted and narrated by Barry Norman. I hope to include some features on this outstanding film that have not been fully explored on DVD before and I hope the finished results will prove worthy of the subject.

On the subject of "Let's Dance," this is not among Fred Astaire's best films and one could sense little chemistry between him and Betty Hutton. Having said that, the film does have its moments and while the Frank Loesser songs are not among the composer's best, the project is an interesting curiosity. In any case, a second rate Astaire film is better than no Astaire at all.

In regard to Jack's remarks about the great composers doing their best work in the post-WW 11 period, I think it's possible that they may have been spurred by the success of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma whiich, in itself, was a groundbreaking production. You could not really include Jerome Kern in this theory because he died in 1945 - and his greatest triumph was back in 1927 with "Show Boat."

Musicals are still very much a part of today's theatre scene but mostly due to revivals of things like "Kiss Me Kate," Oklahoma" and,currently, "Anything Goes." But it seems unlikely that we will ever experience new musicals of this calibre again - because there aren't the writers to be found today.

It would be nice to see a return to the screen musical. People think that "Chicago" may be leading the way. I saw it the other day and, while it's a pretty good piece of picture-making, it still falls way below the standard of things like "Singin' In The Rain," "7 Brides for 7 Brothers" or the best of the Astaire-Rogers pictures. But we can live in hopes.

Thanks to everyone for getting in touch.

Ken

[Dominic McHugh]

Hm. I'm not quite sure what your theory really is. There is no doubt that 'Oklahoma!' revolutionised the genre completely, and if all you are saying is that in the years immediately following R&H's first success many composers started to write along these lines, you are quite correct, although not particularly original in your thoughts: it is a widely documented subject.

At first I thought you were attributing the war to the freshness of the music in this period (!) and even though I now think you're not (?) I wouldn't disagree, because victorious post-war sentiments abound in the majority of late 1940s/1950s musicals.

However, if it comes down to the opinion of what makes 'greatness' in a musical score, then I wonder whether all the examples you have stated are really the composers' greatest? In particular, I would query Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, because although Kiss Me, Kate and Annie Get Your Gun are brilliant shows (I like the former particularly) I don't think that they contain either man's best songs. What I would say is that the scores possess more dramatic unity and awareness of the contexts in which the songs are to be sung than was the case in shows before Oklahoma! In fact, I think it was the attention to the drama, the extension of the emotional range of musicals and the integration of dance and movement to progress the storyline (the so-called 'ballets') that Rodgers and Hammerstein really contributed to change the genre, rather than a compositional change in the music. The R&H collaboration was a uniquely successful one, sparking off a new kind of more serious show after the frivolity of the 1930s.

Are not songs such as 'Anything Goes', 'I Get a Kick out of You', 'Blow Gabriel, Blow', 'It's De-Lovely, 'You're the Top' and 'Friendship', all written by Porter before the war for one work (Anything Goes, now playing at the National Theatre and well worth a visit!) really of a lower standard than 'Too Darn Hot' and 'Why Can't You Behave' from 'Kiss Me, Kate'? The later work extends the emotional range to include the elegiac 'So in Love' and the quasi-Viennese waltz 'Wunderbar' - both fabulous songs - but they are not all standards in the way the songs from Anything Goes would be recognised by 'the man in the street'.

All I'm saying is that perhaps greatness is impossible to identify. It's a matter of opinion. For me, the 1920s and 1930s were the decades of great songs: As Times Goes By, Cheek to Cheek, April in Paris, Autumn in New York, But Not For Me, etc, all belong to this period. Some of the most enduring shows are indeed post-Oklahoma, but I think more for dramatic reasons than musical reasons. People like Bernstein and Styne were hardly at their most active anyway before the war, so perhaps we should just acknowledge the fact that a new generation of composers came on after the war, to take over from Porter, Berlin, Gershwin and Kern, all of whom had their heyday before the war.

You ought to know better than to raise the subject of musicals.....I can't resist...

Dominic

[Jack Clowes]

Once againI've not made myself clear.
First of all I wasn't suggesting that the Second World War had anything to do with the subject I should simply have referred to the dozen or so years from 1946.
Secondly, neither It's De-Lovely nor Friendship were in the original score of Anything Goes they were from Red Hot and Blue and Dubarry Was a Lady respectively even though they may have been interpolated years later into a revival of Anything Goes.
There is no doubt that the great composers wrote many of their greatest songs in the 30s but I was not talking about individual songs. There are not many Broadway Shows from the 30s which have more than about 3 or 4 really good songs whereas I believe that the Post War Shows which I referred to, in my opinion, show a consistently high standard of score and feature at least 6 or 7 really good songs.
Bearing in mind your lack of knowledge about the score of Anything Goes perhaps you would care to give me examples of Scores by Irving Berlin and Cole Porter before Annie Get Your Gun and Kiss Me Kate. After all they had both been writing songs for well over 20 years when they wrote these scores.

[Dominic McHugh]

OK, so I'm not old enough to remember the premiere of Anything Goes. Nor did I look up the songs. It was all off the top of my head. I was very wrong in matching these songs with the show. The recent revival was based on the 1987 New York version which admittedly smoothed out some of the rough spots and interpolated one or two better songs. This is now the standard performing version. It was still a great score before this however, and the other songs I mentioned were in the show originally. I was suffering from a lapse of concentration rather more than a lack of knowledge.

I did not wish to be acrimonious during a supposedly friendly discussion of this sort. Clearly I did not make myself clear. I wondered what your point really was. If it was that the post-war years represented a golden era of musical-writing, then obviously that is the case. My point therefore was that this is not a particularly enlightening thing to say. One only has to watch That's Entertainment to be told that the last great musical was Gigi in 1958. I wonder, could you perhaps expand on the point a little.

It was not the fashion to write full-blown serious musicals before Oklahoma. That is why Showboat was an exception. If you really want to know pre-1946 Irving Berlin scores, then I suppose we must mention the less than enduring 'The Coconuts', 'As Thousands Cheer', 'Louisiana Purchase' and 'This is the Army'. However, Berlin's post-Annie scores were hardly the greatest to have ever graced the stage either: Miss Liberty and Mr President are unlikely to be revived often.

If I was allowed SCREEN-scores, then 'Top Hat' would be a dead winner for multi-wonderful songs, and Follow The Fleet and Carefree were not too bad either. And they were before the war.

As for having 6 or 7 really good songs, there are few musicals that could boast that. Most composers only write 6 or 7 really good songs in their lifetime. When you become fond of musicals you perhaps stop weighing up how good each individual song is. The only way to experience most musicals now is via the films - and if they are really good then a less than good song can be carried off well. I fell in love with musicals via The Sound of Music like many people, and it is still PERHAPS my favourite musical (Who could be without My Fair Lady?). But from a cold analytical point of view, I know that several of the songs are not really good. Can you name 7 really good songs from it? Or indeed from your own favourite musical?

[Jack Clowes]

Yes , if you're going to be patronising it's better to be sure of your facts. I would not attempt to name 7 good songs from *The Sound of Music" because (a) It is not one of the "nasterpieces" I quoted and (b) It is my least favourite R & H Score - although I could name 7 songs from it if you insisted. As for Irving Berlin (and the others), my point was that each wrote his Masterpiece during this period even though they also wrote inferior scores during the same period. Anyway I am going to end this correspondence because it obviously is going to get nowhere.

[G.Winslow]

I found the recent debate and the ensuing exchanges beyween
Jack Clowes and Dominic McHugh stimulating,irritating,refreshing,frustrating,intriguing and,in the final analysis, irrelevant to this website. While I don't doubt the sincerity of both guys, I do feel they got off the subject of films. I love musicals but I also love dramas, westerns and classics like "Citizen Kane."

I loved the recent DVD of "Holiday Inn" and now I'm looking forward eagerly to this forthcoming DVD of "Kane." So,please, let's get back to movies and leave stage shows out of it.