Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by Block, Geoffrey (good story books to read .TXT) 📕

filmed Show Boat a dramatic improvement on the 1927 stage original (or other versions), the opportunity to see so many actors associated with this musical in one film will help give a new generation of film viewers a renewed appreciation of this show. The characters understand and believe in their material. Charles Winninger’s enactment of The Parson’s Bride, assuming all the roles when his cast was scared off the stage by a backwoodsman who thought the villain was real, may be reason enough to seek out this film, one of the great film adaptations of a stage classic.

Anything Goes (1936)

Those who come to expect earlier musical film adaptations to abandon the original stage book and most of the songs will only be half mistaken when it comes to the first movie version of the 1930s hit show Anything Goes. For starters, viewers of the 1936 Paramount film will only hear about twenty seconds of the title song at the film’s beginning, albeit sung by Merman, followed by instrumental fragments of “All through the Night” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” After that tantalizing morsel, the only Porter tunes from Anything Goes, or from any other Porter show for that matter in the film will be “I Get a Kick Out of You” sung by Merman, “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair” sung by the Avalon Boys quartet, and “You’re the Top,” a duet for Merman and rising film star Bing Crosby. Due to the controversial nature of some of Porter’s lyrics, “sniffing cocaine” was not an option as a “kick” in “I Get a Kick Out of You,” replaced by “that perfume from Spain.” The new lyrics for “You’re the Top” were assigned to Ted Fetter. Joseph Breen, the new enforcer of the Hollywood Production Code, objected to suggestive lyrics such as “you and your love give me ecstasy,” which resulted in the total removal of the show’s central love ballad, “All through the Night.” The rousing “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” which might be interpreted as a slur on religion (and knowing Porter, perhaps also intended as a sexual double entendre), also bit the dust. If it was once shocking to catch a glimpse of a stocking (as the verse of “Anything Goes” went), when adapting a 1934 stage hit into a Hays Code–era Hollywood film in 1936, the phrase “anything goes” did not necessarily apply.

Anything Goes, 1936 film. Billy Crocker (Bing Crosby, left), Reno Sweeney (Ethel Merman, upside down center), and Rev. Dr. Moon (Charles Ruggles, right).

The Paramount film does offer a lot to be thankful for. Although she’s confined in a slow-moving swing in a nightclub, it’s a treat to see and hear a young Merman convey the words and the rhythms of “I Get a Kick Out of You,” including the tricky half-note triplets that pervade the opening of each A section over a rumba beat.11 Even with the altered lyrics it’s also a delight to see and hear Merman and Crosby share “You’re the Top.” Crosby—replacing the original Billy Crocker, William Gaxton, who never enjoyed much of either a recording or film career, and displacing Merman as the star of the show—was a marvelous singer, a natural actor, and well suited for the part. The comic role of Public Enemy No. 13, originated onstage by the bumbling Victor Moore, was played in the film by comedian Charles Ruggles in the non-singing role of Reverend Dr. Moon (Moore got to “Sing like the Bluebird”).12 The Avalon Boys’ rendition of “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair,” joined by Crosby in a reprise, is another highlight; performed at about half the speed of the John McGlinn reconstructed recording, the film rendition of this song belies the myth that 1930s tempos are always faster than modern ones, a valuable lesson in historical performance practice.

Since Crosby, not Merman, was the big screen star, he needed more material—new songs. Merman’s songs, “Anything Goes” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” were textually out of bounds as was Billy’s “All through the Night,” while “Gypsy in Me,” sung in the Broadway show by his inamorata Hope Harcourt, was not the right song for Crosby. Lewis Milestone, who had previously directed the Academy Award–winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) but no musicals, brought in three interpolated songs expressly written for Crosby to sing in the film: “Sailor Beware” (Richard Whiting and Leo Robin), “My Heart and I” (Frederick Hollander and Robin), and “Moonburn” (Edward Heyman and Hoagy Carmichael). They may not have possessed the lyrical wit of “You’re the Top”—neither did the new and rewritten lyrics of this song in the film—but all three are top-tier songs, engagingly crooned by Crosby.

The 1936 Paramount Anything Goes may have less of Merman and significantly less of Porter than the stage original, but it does offer a book that, aside from a few twists here and there, is remarkably similar to the stage plot from two years earlier. Even more remarkably, despite a number of plot deviations that will go unmentioned here, the film retains a considerable portion of the original dialogue, including many of the corny jokes. That they go over as well as they do—even the silly misunderstanding of “in door” China for Indo-China—is due to Ruggles’s impeccable delivery. The “putting on the dog” joke is retained in the film script. So is the scene that leads to “calling all pants” that director Jerry Zaks found incomprehensible but kept in the 1987 Vivian Beaumont version because people still laughed. The 1936 film clears this matter up once and for all. During the strip poker game with the surprisingly adept Chinese missionaries, Billy bets his coat and Wang bets his pants. When Moon asks Billy if he calls pants, Billy calls pants, the missionaries call pants, and Moon calls pants. This exchange fully explains why Moon concludes the scene by shouting, “CALLING ALL PANTS.” Even though only the relatively ancient viewers of the film (or trivia buffs) would make the connection between calling all pants and