Word: friml
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...only plausible explanation for this show. Fifty-eight songs follow each other with breakneck rapidity, and they date from 1840 to 1938. No discernible rationale governs the choices. They range from the martial patriotism of Battle Hymn of the Republic through the blatant silliness of Rudolf Friml's Something Seems Tingle Ingleing to the Hollywood beat of Lullaby of Broadway...
Died. Rudolf Friml, 92, prolific composer king of schmalzy, popular light opera in the 1920s (The Vagabond King, Rose-Marie, The Three Musketeers); in Hollywood. Trained in Prague as a classical pianist and composer, Friml moved to the U.S. in 1906 and within six years had written his first Broadway operetta. A master of the improbably plotted, swashbuckling romance, he eventually composed 30 major works that included a string of hit songs (Indian Love Call, Donkey Serenade). When Broadway tastes changed, Friml tried adapting his work to film, but with little success...
Died. Dennis King, 73, actor; in Manhattan. British-born King began his 60-year career in the theater at the age of 14 as a callboy, and by 1925 achieved matinee-idol status portraying François Villon in Rudolf Friml's musical The Vagabond King. When he starred three years later in The Three Musketeers, one critic wrote: "He has the voice of a canary, the grace of a swallow and the valor of an eagle." Equally at home in operettas and Shakespearean tragedies, the versatile baritone counted A Doll's House, Billy Budd, Rose-Marie...
When the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (A.S.C.A.P.) decided to celebrate Rudolf Friml's 90th birthday with a grand to-do at Manhattan's Shubert Theater, they couldn't locate him: he was on a concert tour in Europe. Deaf but spry, his hair still red, his piano playing still powerful, Friml gives his Chinese wife Kay, 56, credit for his fitness: "Some mornings I get up and she walks on my back." During the A.S.C.A.P. tribute, a chorus and soloists sang his hits, and Ogden Nash reminisced...
...would be a happier world if it were Friml...