Word: operettas
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...Allegro, with all its faults, is an impressive effort in a good cause: it is the latest sortie in that well-nigh-won revolution against cloak-and-daguerreotype operetta and June-moon musicomedy. In that revolution, Oscar Hammerstein is certainly one of the heroes. He put something like real people into Oklahoma! and Carousel; but Allegro is by far the most realistic of his librettos, by far the most deliberate manifestation of the New Look he gave to musical plays...
...continue in the manner of Weber and Fields and other footlight pranksters: a little man who speaks softly and brings down the house. Viewed apart from Clark and the situation comedy he provokes, "Sweethearts" is not worth the few tunes that motivate its singers. All too often the usual operetta tomfoolery involving disguised counts and misplaced husbands is a little hard to stomach. Clark, however, patches things up nicely by injecting enough innuendo and thigh-gazing into the proceedings to make even the merry widow drop her mask. Snatching at apron strings and pinching fannies, Bobby Clark makes no bones...
Died. Sophie Paschkis Lehar, 69, wife of Operetta King Franz Lehar; of angina; in Zurich, Switzerland. Lehar refused a Nazi demand that he leave Sophie (a Jewess), escaped persecution in Germany because his Merry Widow was Hitler's favorite operetta...
...June 13, 1946, I was in Vilna† and saw, with my own eyes, 3,000 men being transported from the central prison camp to the central station. They were to be shipped to Siberia. After seeing faces like theirs, you don't feel like going to an operetta in the evening." In Tallinn, every five years, the people used to gather for Laulupidu (singing festivals), with 15,000 singers and 3.000 orchestra members (see cut). Now, there are no more Laulupidu; Estonians explain that it is hard to find enough male voices...
There was no suitable role for him in the operetta, based in part on the Barbara Frietchie story.* So the manager wrote in a speaking part for him. Sugar Chile, already a movie veteran (No Leave, No Love), brought the house down when he fell on his knees and burst into tears before Barbara Frietchie. But most of the audience had really come for Sugar Chile's between-the-acts boogie-woogie. Last week My Maryland did an unexpected business at the box office...