Word: merman
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Happy Hunting (book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Grouse; music by Harold Karr; lyrics by Matt Dubey) opened to a $1,500,000 advance sale and may take in a few pennies more. For it boasts Ethel Merman, who is known to be fun no matter what she appears in. Happy Hunting proves it: as musicomedy, it is more than just not out of the top drawer, it is from a discontinued line of furniture. Even what is most up to date about the show-its background of the Grace Kelly wedding-is satirically, by now, down to peanuts...
...Musicomedienne Merman goes at her work in much the same way, whether she is peddling peanuts or pearls. She plays a rich, uninhibited Philadelphia widow who, unwelcome in society and uninvited to the Monaco nuptials, vengefully bags bigger game from the royal preserves. Where she can, Ethel outflanks her material; where she cannot, she outstares it. Just watching her handle a third-rate song can compensate for its third-rateness. Whatever her stage environment-riding an ocean liner or bucking the Main Line, singing of a dead husband or chatting with a live horse-she has the urgency...
Hers is a real triumph in Happy Hunting, but-as Merman triumphs are measured-a minor one, what with a book that has at best a routine brightness, and a score that sometimes lacks lilt even where it seems reminiscent. There is just one really good song, Mutual Admiration Society, and one lively ditty, Every One Who's "Who's Who." The dancing, except for a tango number, suggests the hotcha of a generation ago. The romantic lead, Cinemactor Fernando Lamas, has a voice and good looks; the Jo Mielziner sets have lightness and good looks...
...Philadelphia: Shelley Winters stars in Richard Nash's comedy "The Girls of Summer" at the Walnut Theatre, and Ethel Merman and Fernando Lamas appear in "Happy Hunting" at the Schubert. Anastasia, the story of Russian aristocracy in search of a crown, closes tonight at the Abbey Playhouse. Eugene Ormandy conducts the Philadelphia Symphony in Kabalesky, Gliere, and Brahams...
...Medical College. Soon, while others there tittered nervously, Jack and Margaret Kelly learned the worst: Happy Hunting not only satirized the wedding of Grace and Prince Rainier, but also used everybody's real names and even called Monaco Monaco. One ditty in the show, starring Ethel Merman, gaily spoofed "social climbers, wisenheimers" and informed listening Mainliners that they are "snooty snobs." Grace's sister Lizanne made her exit before the first-act curtain-"to get home to the baby-sitter." Thunderous applause burst out when one line of the script grudgingly allowed: "All the Kellys are nice people...