Darling Of The Day
I listened to a new musical the other day. Or rather, a half-century old musical, but new to me. Darling Of The Day, by the somewhat unexpected team of E.Y. Harburg and Jule Styne, ran for a month on Broadway in 1968, and since then has more or less faded into obscurity with the occasional attempts to revive it generally being met with indifference. And after listening to it and studying a bit, I can see why. It's not that great. It's not bad. It's just sort of fine.
But I still want to talk about it. I was trying to think of a good reason to talk about it. Then I remembered that this is my blog, and I can just talk about things if I want. So here's a write-up of Darling Of The Day. (Cast album available on Spotify and Youtube and probably other places too.)
The story, in a nutshell, is about Priam Farrl, a famous painter played by Vincent Price. He is tired of being a famous painter. One day his butler dies. Vincent Price decides to fake his death with the butler's body and take the butler's place. The butler is buried in Westminster Abbey as Priam Farll. Hijinks ensue, and when it almost comes out that Farll is actually alive and masquerading as his former butler, he points out that if it gets out that a butler is buried in Westminster Abbey, it would destroy the entire social fabric of England. Therefore Vincent Price must be the butler, and the buried body must be Priam Farll. There is an entire song about how "if word gets out there's a butler in the abbey, mud will be England's name!" Some people compared this last-minute plot-resolving loophole to those used by W.S. Gilbert, but Gilbert usually had the good sense to keep them to a quick bit of dialogue before the finale.
From the start, Darling Of The Day does not sound like Jule Styne. Jule Styne's most popular shows are probably, in descending order, Gypsy, Funny Girl, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. And so there's a sort of big-brass, vaudeville-influenced, Ethel Meman/Barbra Streisand/Carol Channing-ness you expect from a show with his name on it. This Darling Of The Day does not have. What we begin with is Vincent Price, not known for his singing ability, rhythmically speaking his way through an opening number full of trick and internal rhymes about the state of art in England in the present day (1905 in this context).
This feels more like a Lerner and Loewe musical is what I'm getting at. Famous non-singing actors speaking rhythmically through songs about class and posh stuff is their territory. I wouldn't be surprised if Styne and Harburg made a conscious effort to replicate the success of My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot. Or it could be that they happened upon this story at this time and decided to set it in this style. Regardless, the show was not timely. My Fairy Lady closed in 1962 after a six year run, and Camelot closed in 1963, five years before Darling Of The Day opened. And if the fact that Lerner and Loewe didn't produce anything of note after 1960 is anything to go by, this style had gone out of fashion. Which is a little ironic even, as the title of the musical, Darling Of The Day, refers to the characters' frustrations at how quickly the public moves from one artistic fad to the next.
But that is likely not the main reason the show closed after 31 performances. William Goldman, in his book The Season, offers a much more succinct reason the show might have failed despite positive reviews from critics. It may be that, as Goldman says, "The show stunk." Without access to the script, I cannot say for certain, but what I gather is that the script (for which writer Nunnally Johnson refused to be credited) was a muddle, the direction was even worse, and opinions were strongly divided on Vincent Price, with many people finding his singing too poor to carry a show. Of all the responses to the show, the only consistently positive aspect that everyone agreed on was Patricia Routledge's performance as Alice Challice, the love interest. And sure enough, she has four solos on the cast album, all sung marvellously, and any of which would make a wonderful addition to a soprano's audition book.
The first of those four solos, "It's Enough To Make A Lady Fall In Love," doesn't do Darling Of The Day any favors distancing itself from My Fair Lady. It sounds suspiciously similar to "Wouldn't It Be Loverly." The A sections are near-identical harmonically, and though the harmonies diverge in the B section (Lerner goes into the dominant, Styne goes into the parallel minor) the rhythmic similarity is even more pronounced. Both songs even start in the same key, although both later modulate into different keys.
Another song that sounds suspiciously like one from an earlier musical is "Gentleman's Gentleman," which strongly evokes "Consider Yourself" from Oliver! But this similarity isn't so much structural and harmonic as it is stylistic and lyrical. The song is lead by Alice, and includes several of her friends, as well as Priam Farll, now disguised as his own butler. Because of the subject matter of the song (the Putney characters are singing about how essential butlers are to the fabric of the empire) the style of both the music and the lyrics take on a sort of mocking faux-posh character of which the Artful Dodger is the undisputed exemplar. The most striking moment, however, is when Alice rhymes "uppity" with "cup o' tea." Like most trick rhymes, it draws attention to itself, and I expect most people listening would immediately associate that rhyme with Oliver! regardless of whether E.Y. Harburg came to it on his own or not.
While "Gentleman's Gentleman" may have the excuse of comprising lower-class characters singing about the upper class, the song "Panache" is sung by the upper-class characters, and suffers greatly from being so overwritten as to feel more like a parody. Once again more like the Artful Dodger mocking posh people than the dialogue of actual posh people. The worst part of it is that the song seems to lose its direction very quickly, and ends up being more about how many ways you can rhyme the word "panache" depending on if you pronounce it to rhyme with "wash" or "ash." The song feels more about the word itself than what the word means.
On the flip side, there's also overwritten faux-cockney. "Not On Your Nellie" is overall a good song, and was considered by at least one review to be the biggest highlight of the show. But it does include the refrain "Not on your nellie, your bloomin' blinkin' nellie! Absolutely, positutely not!" Which can't help but feel at least a little silly.
Most of the rest of the songs are not conspicuously overwritten. They are at worst, bland, and at best, quite pleasant. "He's A Genius" has several clever lyrics, and is surprisingly catchy considering how few notes are actually sung.
For me, one significant highlight of the score is the splendid little waltz-aria "Let's See What Happens," which sounds like something straight out of a Viennese operetta. (I can't put a specific waltz to it, but there are so many waltzes from so many Viennese operettas that I'm sure this has a suspiciously similar tune to at least one of them. For what it's worth, the waltz "Days Gone By" from She Loves Me greatly resembles Ivan Caryll's "Pink Lady Waltz." A lot of Viennese waltzes tend to sound alike after you've heard two-hundred of them. Thanks Strauss.)
And I suppose I should adress "Butler In The Abbey." It really doesn't feel like it needs to be a song. The content is repetitive, and the tune is meandering and uninteresting, though it's suited to Vincent Price's voice. As I said above, this sort of loophole plot twist is generally best done in a quick line of dialogue. At the same time, the song does garner some laughs in its long list of how famous dead Englishman would react to the news. "Shakespeare will be shaken and awaken Francis Bacon" is a lyric that hits the ear wonderfully, but it doesn feel like more embellishment than is necessary to get the point across.
Without a satisfactory way to end this, I guess I'll leave you with this: Darling Of The Day is a musical that exists. It's not the best, but certainly not the worst. It's not original, and most everything you'd get out of this musical you could get just as well out of another one. But if you need pleasant background music for a forty-seven minute commute and you really like Lerner and Loewe, but none of their musicals are quite the right length for your extremely-precisely-timed commute, this is a good choice.
(Postscript to that, I have been known to use cast albums as timers for lengths of time between about forty-five and ninety minutes. The Original Broadway Cast of Silk Stockings is forty minutes on the dot. The Music Man is forty-five minutes, Vanities is fifty, City Of Angels is just under an hour, and if you need something shorter than forty minutes, The Muppet Movie soundtrack is just half an hour. I really think music apps should come with a "sort by album length" option. I feel like more people would use it than initially supposed. I guess that's the real takeaway here.)
But I still want to talk about it. I was trying to think of a good reason to talk about it. Then I remembered that this is my blog, and I can just talk about things if I want. So here's a write-up of Darling Of The Day. (Cast album available on Spotify and Youtube and probably other places too.)
From the start, Darling Of The Day does not sound like Jule Styne. Jule Styne's most popular shows are probably, in descending order, Gypsy, Funny Girl, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. And so there's a sort of big-brass, vaudeville-influenced, Ethel Meman/Barbra Streisand/Carol Channing-ness you expect from a show with his name on it. This Darling Of The Day does not have. What we begin with is Vincent Price, not known for his singing ability, rhythmically speaking his way through an opening number full of trick and internal rhymes about the state of art in England in the present day (1905 in this context).
This feels more like a Lerner and Loewe musical is what I'm getting at. Famous non-singing actors speaking rhythmically through songs about class and posh stuff is their territory. I wouldn't be surprised if Styne and Harburg made a conscious effort to replicate the success of My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot. Or it could be that they happened upon this story at this time and decided to set it in this style. Regardless, the show was not timely. My Fairy Lady closed in 1962 after a six year run, and Camelot closed in 1963, five years before Darling Of The Day opened. And if the fact that Lerner and Loewe didn't produce anything of note after 1960 is anything to go by, this style had gone out of fashion. Which is a little ironic even, as the title of the musical, Darling Of The Day, refers to the characters' frustrations at how quickly the public moves from one artistic fad to the next.
But that is likely not the main reason the show closed after 31 performances. William Goldman, in his book The Season, offers a much more succinct reason the show might have failed despite positive reviews from critics. It may be that, as Goldman says, "The show stunk." Without access to the script, I cannot say for certain, but what I gather is that the script (for which writer Nunnally Johnson refused to be credited) was a muddle, the direction was even worse, and opinions were strongly divided on Vincent Price, with many people finding his singing too poor to carry a show. Of all the responses to the show, the only consistently positive aspect that everyone agreed on was Patricia Routledge's performance as Alice Challice, the love interest. And sure enough, she has four solos on the cast album, all sung marvellously, and any of which would make a wonderful addition to a soprano's audition book.
The first of those four solos, "It's Enough To Make A Lady Fall In Love," doesn't do Darling Of The Day any favors distancing itself from My Fair Lady. It sounds suspiciously similar to "Wouldn't It Be Loverly." The A sections are near-identical harmonically, and though the harmonies diverge in the B section (Lerner goes into the dominant, Styne goes into the parallel minor) the rhythmic similarity is even more pronounced. Both songs even start in the same key, although both later modulate into different keys.
Another song that sounds suspiciously like one from an earlier musical is "Gentleman's Gentleman," which strongly evokes "Consider Yourself" from Oliver! But this similarity isn't so much structural and harmonic as it is stylistic and lyrical. The song is lead by Alice, and includes several of her friends, as well as Priam Farll, now disguised as his own butler. Because of the subject matter of the song (the Putney characters are singing about how essential butlers are to the fabric of the empire) the style of both the music and the lyrics take on a sort of mocking faux-posh character of which the Artful Dodger is the undisputed exemplar. The most striking moment, however, is when Alice rhymes "uppity" with "cup o' tea." Like most trick rhymes, it draws attention to itself, and I expect most people listening would immediately associate that rhyme with Oliver! regardless of whether E.Y. Harburg came to it on his own or not.
While "Gentleman's Gentleman" may have the excuse of comprising lower-class characters singing about the upper class, the song "Panache" is sung by the upper-class characters, and suffers greatly from being so overwritten as to feel more like a parody. Once again more like the Artful Dodger mocking posh people than the dialogue of actual posh people. The worst part of it is that the song seems to lose its direction very quickly, and ends up being more about how many ways you can rhyme the word "panache" depending on if you pronounce it to rhyme with "wash" or "ash." The song feels more about the word itself than what the word means.
On the flip side, there's also overwritten faux-cockney. "Not On Your Nellie" is overall a good song, and was considered by at least one review to be the biggest highlight of the show. But it does include the refrain "Not on your nellie, your bloomin' blinkin' nellie! Absolutely, positutely not!" Which can't help but feel at least a little silly.
Most of the rest of the songs are not conspicuously overwritten. They are at worst, bland, and at best, quite pleasant. "He's A Genius" has several clever lyrics, and is surprisingly catchy considering how few notes are actually sung.
For me, one significant highlight of the score is the splendid little waltz-aria "Let's See What Happens," which sounds like something straight out of a Viennese operetta. (I can't put a specific waltz to it, but there are so many waltzes from so many Viennese operettas that I'm sure this has a suspiciously similar tune to at least one of them. For what it's worth, the waltz "Days Gone By" from She Loves Me greatly resembles Ivan Caryll's "Pink Lady Waltz." A lot of Viennese waltzes tend to sound alike after you've heard two-hundred of them. Thanks Strauss.)
And I suppose I should adress "Butler In The Abbey." It really doesn't feel like it needs to be a song. The content is repetitive, and the tune is meandering and uninteresting, though it's suited to Vincent Price's voice. As I said above, this sort of loophole plot twist is generally best done in a quick line of dialogue. At the same time, the song does garner some laughs in its long list of how famous dead Englishman would react to the news. "Shakespeare will be shaken and awaken Francis Bacon" is a lyric that hits the ear wonderfully, but it doesn feel like more embellishment than is necessary to get the point across.
Without a satisfactory way to end this, I guess I'll leave you with this: Darling Of The Day is a musical that exists. It's not the best, but certainly not the worst. It's not original, and most everything you'd get out of this musical you could get just as well out of another one. But if you need pleasant background music for a forty-seven minute commute and you really like Lerner and Loewe, but none of their musicals are quite the right length for your extremely-precisely-timed commute, this is a good choice.
***
(Postscript to that, I have been known to use cast albums as timers for lengths of time between about forty-five and ninety minutes. The Original Broadway Cast of Silk Stockings is forty minutes on the dot. The Music Man is forty-five minutes, Vanities is fifty, City Of Angels is just under an hour, and if you need something shorter than forty minutes, The Muppet Movie soundtrack is just half an hour. I really think music apps should come with a "sort by album length" option. I feel like more people would use it than initially supposed. I guess that's the real takeaway here.)
Comments
Post a Comment