 This show was a breakthrough for Dorothy Fields and is well preserved here.The two romantic leads, Johnny Johnston and Marcia van Dyke have fine voices and deliver the ballads well, even if we lose most of the irony in the bold declarations and promises in songs such as I'm Like a New Broom and I'll Buy You a Star; on stage we know this feckless dreamer will never deliver. Dorothy's lyrics found a new sense of dramatic place and character for this show; there is a real feel for the lives of the working class Brooklyn characters, dominated by payday and the pawnshop. Shirley Booth is superb, even though, as on stage, it feels as though she is in a different show. Fields delights in the characters' colloquial reflections on romance in Love Is The Reason and Look Who's Dancin' - loony and spoony, all moonlight and mush.He Had Refinement stands with Loesser's Adelaide's Lament as the archetypal comic character song. Growing Pains could be charming, but is killed here by the tuneless performance of the juvenile. (See the page describing the show for the background to the young actress's involvement in the show.) Highly recommended. Fields tracks: Payday, Mine 'Til Monday, Make The Man Love Me, I'm Like A New Broom, Look Who's Dancing, Love Is The Reason, If You Haven't Got A Sweetheart, I'll Buy You A Star, That's How It Goes, He Had Refinement, Growing Pains, Is That My Prince?, Don't Be Afraid |
Stars in Your Eyes gets half of this disk; the other half belongs to Red, Hot and Blue, the Cole Porter show from 1936 which also starred Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante.
This score is pleasant but is much lighter than that of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Shirley Booth is Shirley Booth, which is fine, but her material is not quite up to the standard of the earlier show. One of the finest songs is the touching Alone Too Long, but it is given a bravura operetta-style delivery here by Wilbur Evans which does not flatter the song. Seek out Nat King Cole's version in preference.
Perhaps minor Fields but a tremendously enjoyable disk, with treasurable performances from Gwen Verdon and rich-voiced Richard Kiley, and a tuneful, vigourous score from Albert Hague. This recording has real energy. The lyrics are more playful and contrived than Fields normal work, not just in Erbie Fitch's Twitch, but also in The Simpson Sisters, which is crammed with inventive rhymes for door. The music hall feel is reinforced by the frequent spoken interpolations in several numbers.
Gwen Verdon's greatest role in Fields' greatest success is preserved in this classic recording. There are no poor tracks here, although some songs, notably There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This, have less energy here than on other recordings.
This is really a terrific cast recording. Although there's very little wrong with the excellent OBC or indeed with the JAY studio album, I would give this album a clear edge on the songs which are included. The Alyn Ainsworth orchestra has fantastic punch from the first few bars of the overture, and all the tracks leap at you with wonderful verve and energy. The performers are all wonderful with Juliet Prowse perhaps a slightly less vulnerable than average Charity. This works fine however, and my only criticism would be her jarring deafening intakes of breath in Where Am I Going?
Carol Channing recorded her Dolly in 1964 and 1994. Yul Brynner set down his King on vinyl in 1951 and 1977. And now Josephine Blake joins the company by revisiting her Nickie from the original London cast of Sweet Charity twenty-eight years later in 1994.
There are certainly some interesting songs in this score, but some major faults with the recording make this disc difficult to listen to. Among the problems are limp work by the chorus which fail to bring even It's Not Where You Start to life, pounding brassy arrangements of many songs, and an over-strident performance by Michele Lee.