Word: darion
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Shinbone Alley (book by Joe Darion & Mel Brooks; music and lyrics by George Kleinsinger & Joe Darion) celebrates Don Marquis' reasonably immortal archy and mehitabel. Supreme among literary cockroaches is the archy who typewrote free-verse memos to his newspaper-columnist "boss" by hurling himself head-downwards on the keys (though he could never manage capital letters). Gamest and gamiest of cats is the mehitabel that archy reported on, who insists that she was once Cleopatra and though bedraggled and back-alleyish now, is always a lady and toujours gai. The two friends are an easy pair to feel tender...
Librettist Joe Darion fairly faithfully followed the saga of archy, described by his creator, the late Columnist Don Marquis, as a sensitive cockroach who had to express himself or die. For archy, writing was even more painful than for most poets: he had to type each letter by diving headfirst from the frame of the machine to the keys (his works were all in lower case because he was unable to land simultaneously on the shift key). His bruised outpourings are mostly about mehitabel, the life-battered but life-loving cat ("toujours gai, toujours gai") who is pretty sure...
...like proportions, made a fine, feline mehitabel; diminutive Baritone Jonathan Anderson made the best-voiced cock roach in history, and a vocal quartet called the Four Heatherstones supplied bacchanalian backgrounds. This spring Columbia Records will release an archy and mehitabel album, starring Carol Channing. But Kleinsinger and Darion expect the bulk of their royalties to result from the opera fever that has broken out across the U.S. among amateur and semi-pro groups. University workshops in particular have eagerly seized on such short works as Gian-Carlo Menotti's The Tele phone and Kurt Weill's Down...