Word: fella
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...joyous rate of some 10,000 a day-or at about the clip of a good-selling pop single. Equally gratifying to showfolk was the advance order for two versions, single LP and big (3 LP) album, of Broadway's latest hit musical. The Most Happy Fella, which, at more than $500,000, was even bigger than My Fair Lady's had been. The figures added up to robust new evidence that the recorded...
...albums represent the two current extremes of show styles: Lady is a descendant of Oklahoma! and South Pacific, with its pretty songs separated by plenty of action and dialogue. Fella comes from Italian opera buffa out of such frankly operatic efforts as Porgy and Bess -only 20 of its 140 minutes are filled with spoken words, a percentage which compares favorably with Mozart's Magic Flute. Putting such works on records required very special abilities, e.g., coaxing people whose first impulse is to mime and pose into playing entirely for the ear, and then creating in sound the invisible...
Second Fiddle (Kay Starr; RCA Victor). A thrush with powerful pipes tells how she got her present fella because both were castoffs. From her unhappy tone, Kay seems uncertain that that is the best reason to set up housekeeping...
...Fella is fortunate in having music that so often sweeps all before it, for there is a good deal that needs to be swept. The small human story with the wise human moral that Sidney Howard, in They Knew What They Wanted, neatly packed into one room has been wildly scattered and in places quite submerged all over the Napa Valley countryside. For all that is folkish in Fella, something plaintively simple is missing; as there is sentiment and to spare but no pervasive current of emotion. For in excess of any proper musical's quota, Fella has been...
...things that are suitable are Baritone Robert Weede in the title role, Susan Johnson in a comedy role, much of Joseph Anthony's lively staging and the best of Jo Mielziner's sets. But in working toward something more varied and spacious than the standard Broadway musical, Fella at its worst is a misstep forward; while the music itself is among Broadway's most resplendent in years...