Word: cohans
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Died. Bert Wheeler, 72, vaudeville, Broadway and Hollywood comedian; of emphysema; in Manhattan. Gifted with a rubberized grin, a quavering voice, and a talent for leaking torrents of tears on cue, Wheeler was a comic fixture ever since 1911 when he played in George M. Cohan's 45 Minutes from Broadway. He went on to the Ziegfeld Follies, then to Hollywood, where he teamed with the late Robert Woolsey in some 30 comedies...
Most "original" musicals are cribbed from something else these days, but one exception this year is How Now, Dow Jones, a Wall Street flyer by Max Shu!man with tunes by Hollywood's Elmer Bernstein. There will also be slices of several lives: George M., with Cohan's own songs and Joel Grey (Cabaret) in the title role; Dumas and Son, with score based on themes by Saint-Saĕns; and Fagade, starring Vienna's Marisa Mell as Mata Hari and staged by Vincente Minnelli...
...songs of the twentieth century can be lumped into three major groupings. There are the professionally written bolsterers of homefront morale whose archetypes are Iver Novello's Keep the Home Fires Burning and George M. Cohan's Over There; World War II entries include such never-sufficiently-to-be-studied classics as There'll Always Be An England and Johnny Got A Zero. Then there are those songs which, although unconnected with the war effort, become popular anyway and are ever after associated with the period, like Lili Marlene, Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else...
...dancers--Robert Cohan, Matt Turney, William Constanza, and chorus--turned in performances that I will long remember. Mr. Cohan, the director and choreographer, combined the forms of Near-Eastern folk, and modern, dance into scenes that left the audience breathless. The music was well suited to their dancing though it paradoxically did not give the singers enough good material to turn in convincingly dramatic performances, or even very interesting ones. The sung portions of the score were not particularly difficult, and the singers did not make too much of them. For the sake of continuity, I wish the spoken dialogue...
...Sequins. Sy is custom itself. He drapes David Niven aloofly and John Wayne toughly. He is the author of Bob Hope's tweeds. If Donald O'Connor wants to look like George M. Cohan, which for some reason he does, Sy cuts him a checkered vest. But he won't do just anything. He designed Liberace's first gold lame suit, but when the big Lib began demanding sequins for it, Sy sent him to a costume house...