Word: darlin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...spoofing, Texas, Li'l Darlin' is sporadic and seldom adept. It shines brightest in Johnny Mercer's lyrics, notably about private secretaries...
...musical at the Colonial, "Texas, Li'l Darlin'," starts off promisingly enough. After the overture, a lantern slide of the cover of a large picture magazine, similar to "Life," is flashed upon a screen, to the accompaniment of March of Time-type music and the pontifical voice of a news commentator. The idiocyncrasies of the Luce Press are favorite sport among the satirists this season anyhow, and so--you say to yourself, perhaps--here is musical comedy's own gay potshot at grey-eyed, balding China-born Henry Luce. But disillusionment, as occasionally it must to all theatergoers, came last...
Kenny Delmar, who appears on radio as Senator Claghorn, is making his stage debut in "Texas, Li'l Darlin'" as Hominy Smith, a dishonest, scripture-quoting State Senator in the Lone Star State. Mr. Delmar turns out to be a good actor and his Hominy Smith is a more toned-down characterization than Claghorn, and also more amusing. Unfortunately, Mr. Delmar can not sing, and this being a musical, he is occasionally called upon to do what...
...might be surmised from the title--"Texas, Li'l Darlin'"--and the foregoing commentary, the plot makes no noticeable effort to avoid the cliches apparently inherent in a Texas theme. Though I do not share in the anti-Texas feeling one hears frequently voiced, it does seem that a whole evening devoted to variations on this single theme is too much to ask of anyone. All of the other rural jokes are there, too: the Scars, Roebuck catalogue, the outhouses are good for two laughs, and so on. Several of the lines are of questionable taste, and one remark goes...
...Texas, Li'l Darlin'" is nicely costumed, has some good dancing and an energetic and talented cast. By a great deal of work some good may come of it. But as it stands now, it is considerably below the level of some of the less-successful Pudding shows, and a good deal like some of them in that it falls between two chairs. Of course, the girls are real in this...