Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s

History of the Broadway Musical #3

by Ethan Mordden

"Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline form its musical shows. The form had been running on empty for too long, as a formula for the assembly of spare parts--star comics, generic love songs, rumba dancers, Ethel Merman. If Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't existed, Broadway would have had to invent them; and Oklahoma! and Carousel came along just in time to announce the New Formula for Writing Don't have a formula.
Instead, start with strong characters and Oklahoma!'s murderous romantic triangle set against a frontier society that has to learn what democracy is in order to deserve it; or Carousel's dysfunctional family seen in the context of class and gender war.
With the vitality and occasionally outrageous humor that Ethan Mordden's readers take for granted, the author ranges through the decade's classics-- Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Phinian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific . He also covers illuminating trivia--the spy thriller The Lady Comes Across , whose star got so into her role that she suffered paranoid hallucinations and had to be hospitalized; the smutty Follow the Girls , damned as "burlesque with a playbill" yet closing as the longest-run musical in Broadway history; Lute Song , in which Mary Martin and Nancy Reagan were Chinese; and the first "concept" musicals, Allegro and Love Life . Amid the fun, something revolutionary occurs. The 1920s created the musical and the 1930s gave it politics. In the 1940s, it found its soul.

Genres: Theatre, History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, what a beautiful decade! As someone said, if the Broadway musical in the Twenties found a song and in the Thirties found politics, then in the Forties it found its soul. Ethan Mordden, very much at home here in the world of Broadway-musical history, brings his thorough documentation and occasional jolts of shocking wit to BEAUTIFUL MORNING', covering the decade that began with PAL JOEY and concluded with KISS ME KATE. In between are such gems as LADY IN THE DARK, OKLAHOMA! (the game-changer), ON THE TOWN, BRIGADOON and ALLEGRO (the first "concept musical," also out of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but a failure -- perhaps it was ahead of its time).

Mordden doesn't forget the tasteless shows, too, the borderline burlesque that entertained tired servicemen like "Ankles Aweigh." As always, the author is fun to read, informative, and VERY opinionated. A definite must-read for anyone interested in the history of Broadway, particularly its musicals. If, after reading this the reader wants more, consider his superlative 1950s survey, COMING UP ROSES.

[Paul Hasbrouck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is about the great transformation that hit the Broadway musical in the 1940's. Almost gone are the fairy tale plots of millionaires, royalty and collages, as the decades moves on the musicals are about cowboys, business women, a wife beater that goes to heaven and back, a goddess that comes to Earth, Shakespeare meets Hoods and love in wartime. Yes, OKLAHOMA, CAROUSAL, LADY IN THE DARK, ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, KISS ME KATE AND SOUTH PACIFIC are a few of the great shows, that spend the years.
This volume ends with the coming the cast recordings of the shows, so the American people can now hear the music/song of shows, were only a few could before.
The next volume deals with 1950's and the golden age of the musical.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably 4.5. I've read several histories of musicals, but this is one of the best. Its strength is that in addition to the big guns (Oklahoma, South Pacific, Kiss Me Kate) it also covers many failures and mediocre shows, which gives a better sense of the genre over all, plus trends that were dying like the "revue" show (think of a typical TV variety show and you've got a revue). Along with Oklahoma, which transformed the musical by giving it a serious, substantial storyline and characters, Mordden argues that the big turning points were the concept musical (e.g., Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro) and the development of the original cast album; releasing an album could determine whether a musical was remembered strongly enough to revive regularly, and shape how we think of it (on stage in South Pacific, "Younger Than Springtime" isn't romantic, it's the song Cable sings after his first night of sex). Very informative, and sometimes Mordden's quite funny.