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ON THE RECORD: Ernest In Love, Marco Polo, Puppets and Maury Yeston
By Steven Suskin
10 Aug 2003
THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO [DRG 19048]
Back in the early days of TV, programmers hit on the idea of presenting star-driven, abbreviated versions of musicals. These started in earnest not with Who's Ernest in 1957 but in 1953 (with a few early attempts as far back as 1944). Some were written for TV, most were existing shows; some telecasts were legendary (like Peter Pan and Cinderella), most are long-forgotten.
Max Liebman, a comedy-writer-producer, hit it big on television with "Your Show of Shows" (starting in 1950). This enabled him to produce a series of TV musicals, beginning with the 1954 color "spectacular" "Satins and Spurs," written by Livingston and Evans for Betty Hutton. (DRG has this on their schedule of future releases.) Liebman's thirteenth TV musical came in April 1956, when he presented Alfred Drake in "The Adventures of Marco Polo."
Before I go any further, let me say that for years and years I have been digging out my old "Marco Polo" platter this was one of those early, thick, Columbia long-playing records, that came enclosed in double cardboard covers simply to play one spectacular song. So I am exceedingly glad (albeit rather surprised) to have "Marco Polo" on CD.
Drake followed his 1948 musical Kiss Me, Kate with Kismet, which he'd been playing since 1953 in New York and London. "Marco Polo" was clearly patterned on Kismet, with Rimsky-Korsakov replacing Borodin for the occasion. This was no accident, of course. While "Marco Polo" was produced under the "Max Liebman presents" banner, Drake's fingerprints are all over it.
Liebman's several Broadway credits were insubstantial; his one major production was Shootin' Star, a 1946 road flop about Billy the Kid (played by David Brooks of Bloomer Girl and Brigadoon). It was not a good idea, it turned out, to directly follow Annie Get Your Gun into New Haven; Billy lost his gun three weeks later, in Boston. Liebman's most substantial theatre credit was as director and sketch writer of The Straw Hat Revue, which lasted two months in 1939. This was the show that launched newcomer Danny Kaye, but the cast had a few other notable performers: comedienne Imogene Coca (whom Liebman was to match with Sid Caesar), dancer Jerry Robbins and singer Alfred Drake. In 1955, Drake by then Broadway's most important musical comedy star made his TV debut in Liebman's adaptation of Naughty Marietta.
Liebman set his in-house staff to work adapting Rimsky-Korsakoff to "Marco Polo." The music came from composers Clay Warnick and Mel Pahl, with musical direction by Charles Sanford and orchestrations from Irv Kostal. Liebman gave the libretto job to a pair of his comedy writers, guys with no conception of musical theatre named Neil Simon and William Friedberg. (Warnick and Sanford and Simon all came to the Broadway musical in 1962, when Sid Caesar surrounded himself with Liebman staffers for Little Me.)
Drake, for his part, brought lyricist Edward Eager to "Marco Polo." Eager had collaborated with Drake on the book for the 1950 musical The Liar, which Drake also directed; the 1952 adaptation of Ugo Betti's The Gambler; and, later, the Drake-directed 1964 musical Rugantino. Eager had worked with Warnick back in 1944, on the fast flop Dream with Music.
Drake also mandated the presence of Doretta Morrow, who played his daughter for three years in Kismet. (The relationship was not filial, or so I've been told.) The exquisitely voiced Morrow had made her debut as Billy's gal Amy in Liebman's Shootin' Star, moving on to impressive performances in Frank Loesser's Where's Charley? and Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I. Drake and Morrow first met when Alfred came in as vacation replacement for Yul Brynner.
"Marco Polo"'s score almost slavishly follows Kismet in style and subject, although the 13 songs are sung almost exclusively by Drake and Morrow. One can imagine Alfred having spent countless hours in his Kismet dressing room hearing some chorus boy sing "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" and Dick Kiley sing "Stranger in Paradise" decreeing that he gets all the men's songs, thank you very much.
The big duet ballad of "Marco Polo" was called "Is It You?" out of Scheherazade, and it's pleasant enough. (Dream with Music included at least one song derived from Scheherazade, "I'm Afraid I'm in Love.") But the song I especially like is something called "The Garden of Imagining" ("based on a theme from Le Coq D'Or"). This is Broadwayized harem music, Rimsky-Korsakov gone boogie. Totally wild, helped along by raucous trombones; sort of Rimsky meets Minsky. I don't know whether we should thank old Nikolai, or Warnick & Pahl, or Doretta; or maybe it's just Kostal working magic. Whatever the case, this number's a knockout.
Kostal didn't get his first official Broadway credit until West Side Story in 1957, but he knew his stuff, theatre-wise. While serving on Liebman's staff, he had been busily moonlighting. We know that Kostal did "Ohio," "Hey There" and "Trouble." Based on the brass growlings in "Garden of Imagining," I would wager that he did "Whatever Lola Wants" as well. Marco Polo seems to go on and on, with narration bridging the numbers; but Kostal has a field day with Rimsky-Korsakoff, mixing blaring colors with what they used to call schmaltz. The strong-voiced Drake, the delectable Morrow and those charts combine to make "Marco Polo" worth a try.
NOT YET ON THE RECORD
You have by now heard all sorts of positive things about Avenue Q, no doubt. The original cast album, which was recorded this week by Victor, will be in our hands by Halloween. In the meantime, let me add that the score is inventive and uproarious and lovely. Yes, the good-natured music is often matched with wildly ribald words; but somehow the combined effect is endearingly sweet. Definitely not for the children, alas. I can't help but feel sorry for all those children who will miss the joy and the theatricality and the downright good common sense of Avenue Q.
AND A CORRECTION
In discussing the reissue and revival cast albums of Nine three columns back, I mentioned Maury Yeston's involvement with The Queen of Basin Street (as La Cage aux Folles was originally called). I said that when director Mike Nichols and choreographer Tommy Tune withdrew from the project, "producer Allan Carr wasn't about to gamble on a new and untried songwriter without Nichols backing him up, so that was the end of Yeston on Basin Street."
This was inaccurate. After the departure of Nichols, Tune and librettist Jay Presson Allen, Carr had Yeston prepare a second New Orleans-based version of the musical (with Maury writing the libretto himself). Due to a fascinating tangle of legal complications, it ultimately transpired that the material could not be transplanted to New Orleans. At this point, Yeston with his Nine Tony Award already in hand was invited to collaborate with Harvey Fierstein on a third version. For a variety of reasons, the composer decided to step aside in favor of Jerry Herman (who 20 years earlier, get this, had been Yeston's summer camp counselor).
Yeston nevertheless did nicely by La Cage, as he retained a share of the royalties. More importantly, he retained the rights to his jazz influenced Basin Street songs which we just might, under favorable conditions, get to hear one day.
Steven Suskin, author of the new "Broadway Yearbook 2001-2002," "Show Tunes," and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached by E-mail at Ssuskin@aol.com.
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