Anything Goes
January 21 – February 2, 2003
Book by Guy Bolton, P.G.Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse
Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter, Originally staged by Howard Lindsay

Press Release

Anything Goes – An Historical Perspective
By Daniel Hahn

In the summer of 1934, Vinton Freedley, a highly motivated Broadway producer with a penchant for ducking creditors, conceived the notion of creating a Broadway sensation which in a matter of months would become one of the most enduring musicals ever fashioned: Anything Goes. The ensuing creative journey was thrilling, yet hardly smooth sailing. The first composer Freedley envisioned for the project was Jerome Kern, but Kern was working exclusively with Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II at the time. George Gershwin, another possible candidate, was occupied with an operatic adaptation of the play Porgy. Freedley turned to a star composer with whom he had never worked but had openly admired, Cole Albert Porter.

Two years before the creation of Anything Goes, Porter’s musical Gay Divorce was all the rage. Starring Fred Astaire and featuring the hit “Night and Day,” the musical played for 248 performances on Broadway, first at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, then transferring to the Shubert. The famous Porter song needed less than two months after opening night to spawn best-selling recordings from two separate artists on two different recording labels (Leo Reisman on Victor and Eddie Duchin on Brunswick). The film version, known as The Gay Divorce, opened in 1934 and added Ginger Rogers to the mix. But Porter’s shining star was about to shine even brighter.

Freedley knew the stars he wanted for his musical. The comedy team of William Gaxton and Victor Moore had recently shared accolades for their performance in George and Ira Gershwin’s 1931 satirical musical comedy Of Thee I Sing at the Music Box Theatre. At his own theatre, the Alvin (named after producing partner Al Aarons and Vinton Freedley himself), another Gershwin piece, Girl Crazy (1930) provided the debut of a young talent whose “peculiar song style,” according to New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson, “was brought from the night clubs to the stage to the vast delight last evening of the people who go places and watch things being done.” The young lady was Ethel Merman, and although she propelled quickly to Hollywood directly after Girl Crazy, the undeterred Freedley proceeded as though all three celebrities were enlisted in his project.

The writing team Freedley most wanted were abroad, so he arranged a European meeting between Porter, himself, and the two librettists he desired: Guy Bolton, whose more than sixty professional writing credits include Girl Crazy, Zeigfeld Follies (1946) and Easter Parade (1948, uncredited); and P.G. Wodehouse, whose more than forty professional writing credits include lyrics to the song “Bill” from the 1936 musical Showboat (uncredited). Wodehouse, it may be noted, had been referred to by Porter multiple times over the years as his favorite librettist and had twice before collaborated with Bolton. Although a bout of appendicitis kept Bolton from attending the gathering, Wodehouse took the reigns and the initial voyage towards the creation of Anything Goes was underway.

Upon recovering from peritonitis, Bolton met with Wodehouse and the two created an outline centering upon the concept of a gambling ship which wrecked at sea. They entitled the piece Hard to Get and sent the completed script to Freedley, who received it on August 15, 1934. Shortly thereafter, Porter received the book, and in no time arrived in London with dozens of songs for Freedley’s perusal. It is not known precisely how many of those songs had already been in Porter’s untapped file, and how many he composed during that summer, but the producer was captivated by the tunes, and the project was quickly on course. Rehearsals were scheduled to begin the tenth of September.

Freedley successfully enlisted his desired stars for their roles. William Gaxton was cast to play the role of Billy Crocker (the character’s name was a nod to Porter’s former Yale classmate William Crocker, who helped finance some of the songsmith’s earliest theater endeavors). Victor Moore was signed to play Reverend Dr. Moon. (This character’s name was altered during Boston previews from Moon Face Mooney to Moon Face Martin when an ominous message personally delivered to the theater’s general manager revealed that an eccentric mobster from New Jersey was not pleased to share his name, Moon Face Mooney, with a musical comedy character.) Ethel Merman agreed to star as Reno Sweeney, but did not actually sign her contract until late September. These agreements bound Fielding to pay the acting trio a minimum of two week’s salary (approximately $14,000) even should the venture never enter its first rehearsal. In the heart of the Great Depression, this was a considerable sum, but as the project seemed perfectly on course, Fielding saw no cause for alarm. Then, unexpectedly, an American tragedy struck one early September morning.

Two days before the first scheduled rehearsal, the pleasure ship U.S.S. Morro Castle was returning to New York from the final night of its Havana cruise. A storm of hurricane strength was building up throughout the day off the New Jersey coastline, and that evening the captain died of a sudden heart attack. At three in the morning, with the ship only twenty miles from the entrance to New York Harbor, a fire broke out, and within minutes the ship was hopelessly aflame. One hundred and thirty five passengers and crew lost their lives in the catastrophe. The following morning, the still smoking ship was clearly visible from Asbury Park, only yards from shore. Highly publicized, it was one of the greatest maritime disasters in American history, and suddenly nautical calamity in any form became a topic not suitable for use in a contemporary musical comedy.

Freedley’s project was slated for an early November tryout in Boston and a subsequent Broadway engagement, so the musical was in immediate need of a new libretto. But both Bolton and Wodehouse had begun other commitments and could no longer offer contributions. Freedley did what any resourceful producer might in this situation: he went to the director.

Howard Lindsay had just directed Porter’s Gay Divorce on Broadway, but although he was also know as a dramatist, he had never written a book for a musical before. Refusing Freedley’s plea to take on rewriting the entire libretto alone, Lindsay did agree to co-write if suitable collaborator could likewise be enlisted. But finding such a partner proved more difficult a task than Freedley had hoped.

Both Porter and Freedley offered multiple suggestions for co-authors, but Lindsay was comfortable with none of them. In a story told by Ethel Merman, Neysa McMein, the highly successful magazine and advertising illustrator and friend of Cole Porter, contacted Porter revealing that the name Russel Crouse had emerged to her in a dream. Crouse (born in Findlay, Ohio), who would go on with Lindsay to help write the book for The Sound of Music (1959) had already worked on two musicals and the pair had worked together once before. Crouse’s name was taken to Lindsay, who moreover respected the writer’s columns in The New York Post. At last, Lindsay approved of a suggested co-author. But Freedley had a problem. Crouse had taken a leave of absence from the Post, and despite calls all over town, could not be located.

As it turns out, Crouse was working as the press representative for The Theatre Guild, and his offices were directly across the street from Freedley’s own at the Alvin Theatre. One afternoon, Freedley was looking out his office window and remarkably spotted Crouse looking out of a window on the upper floor of the Guild building directly across from him. He yelled for Crouse to come over to the theater and asked, “How would you like to do a musical with Howard Lindsay?” He replied, “I’d love it.” They jumped into a cab and drove to Lindsay’s home on West 10th Street. That afternoon, Lindsay and Crouse became professional partners, and their celebrated pairing continued for decades.

They wrote the first act of Anything Goes in ten days. The second act was written while the actors rehearsed the first. The Friday before opening night of the Boston tryout, Donald Oenslager, the scenic designer whose celebrated set would receive abundant accolades, frantically questioned how he could design for the second act without knowing so much as the scenic location, let alone without having seen a completed script. Crouse replied, “Oh, but you can do that at the rehearsal in Boston.” His final design for the concluding act was conceived, drawn, built and shipped to Boston, its paint still wet, in just three days.

The rehearsal process was likewise strewn with madcap adventures. The musical did not even have its title until well into the rehearsal process. Crouse tells a story of how the show was christened:

Billy Gaxon finally baptized it accidentally. In answer to a question as to whether he would mind making an entrance a minute after the curtain went up, Mr. Gaxton replied ‘In this kind of a spot, Anything Goes!’ We all leaped on the last words and an electrician started spelling them out in electric lights. Mr. Porter dashed off to write a title song. He came in with it the next day – as gay a melody as any I’ve heard and with a shrewd, sharp, biting, brilliant lyric.

After the title tune was composed, Lindsay and Crouse were still stuck on finding a way to get the second act started, and opening night was quickly approaching. Crouse revealed that he and Lindsay “telephoned Mr. Porter and told him there wasn’t going to be any second act unless he could find a way to get it started musically.” Porter arrived the next morning with “Hymn to the Public Enemy” (“Public Enemy Number One”), a tune Crouse called “one of the finest bits of satire, both musically and lyrically, I’ve ever heard.”

On November 5, 1934, Crouse and Lindsay composed the musical’s final scene. They were riding on the train from New York en route to the Colonial Theatre in Boston. It was opening night.

After a spectacular tryout, the musical moved to New York, opening on November 21, 1943, and delighting critics and audiences alike. It played for 420 performances. In his New York Times review, critic Brooks Atkinson declared “Cole Porter…has written a dashing score with impish lyrics,” and “If Ethel Merman did not write ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ and also the title song of the show she has made them hers now by the swinging gusto of her platform style.” (Of Merman’s performance, another critic quipped, “She may well be trying to establish contact with Mars.”) According to Merman herself, Porter referred to her often as “La Merman” and “The Great Ethel,” and once noted “She sounds like a band going by.” Without question, a classic musical comedy was born. But even after its birth, the show was not immune to further changes.

After Porter’s songs were completed, they were not always left in tact. For example, his own favorite song from Anything Goes, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” was originally written in 1931 for a musical which was not produced, Stardust. Originally, the closing lyric read:

I get no kick in a plane
I shouldn’t care for those nights in the air
That the fair Mrs. Lindbergh goes through
Yet I get a kick out of you.

However, after the famous Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932, the second and third lines of that strain were revised to:

Flying too high with some guy in the sky
Is my idea of nothing to do…

Perhaps the most famous alteration to this legendary song occurred after the show was already a hit. According to the authorities of the day, the line “Some get a kick from cocaine” was not suitable for radio play. (Imagine such protests today!) Porter supplied multiple modifications, including “whiff of Guerlain,” “perfumes of Spain” and “bop type refrain.”

Other changes to the production transpired after the Boston tryout’s opening night as well. The chorus routine, “There’s No Cure Like Travel,” was shortened to “Bon Voyage.” “What a Joy To Be Young” (in the Boston program noted as “To Be in Love and Young”) was removed prior to the move to Broadway. And “Buddie, Beware” was substituted a few weeks after the New York opening with a reprise of “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Furthermore, Porter himself altered multiple lyrics of “You’re the Top” (a song which caused a sensation in America, spawning numerous spin-offs) for the 1935 London run. Such references as “a Bendel bonnet” suddenly became “an Ascot bonnet,” and “a dress for Saks” became “a dress by Patou.”

With so many changes occurring to Anything Goes during its very creation and after its opening, it is little wonder that today there are countless debates regarding which version holds the most authenticity. Furthermore, there are numerous additional factors which contribute to the confusion encircling this debate.

In the 1920’s and 30’s, full orchestra scores were not published nor copied. With precious few exceptions, composers did not even orchestrate their own musicals. The full scores for musicals of this era existed in but one copy alone, and vigilant preservation of these scores by their composers was scarce at best. Furthermore, all orchestra parts had to be copied by hand. If any materials were lost, the original orchestration likewise vanished. Because most of a publisher’s income from a musical which had completed its run came not from later productions, but rather from sheet music, record, and piano roll sales, little attention was given to maintaining the original orchestrations. Subsequently, musical theater purists diverge greatly on the question as to which rendering of Anything Goes holds the most validity. Contemporary audiences have several soundtrack versions from which to choose.

The first major revival of Anything Goes opened Off-Broadway at Manhattan’s Orpheum Theatre on May 15, 1962, starring Eileen Rodgers, Hal Linden and Mickey Deems. It was billed “A New Musical Production of Anything Goes,” and indeed it was. The producers of this revival interpolated six additional Cole Porter tunes which were not present in the Broadway premiere: “It’s De-Lovely” (Red, Hot and Blue, 1936); “Heaven Hop” (Paris, 1928); “Friendship” (DuBarry Was a Lady, 1939); “Let’s Step Out” (Fifty Million Frenchmen, 1929); “Let’s Misbehave” (Paris, cut from New York production); and “Take Me Back to Manhattan” (The New Yorkers, 1930). Moreover, about half of the songs from the Broadway premiere had been replaced to accommodate the new additions.

Furthermore, the hit “I Get a Kick Out of You” was displaced from its original position directly following the Overture to the sixth song in the show. Mr. Porter’s reason for the song’s original placement is telling. Although a standard convention of musicals of the era held to the tradition of an opening chorus, Porter insisted on putting the show’s biggest hit within the first five minutes of the first scene. Apparently, his high society friends found it appealing to sashay into the theater fifteen to twenty minutes after the curtain had gone up so that their peers could observe what they were wearing. Porter considered this behavior discourteous not only to the audience, but to the performers as well, and warned his friends weeks prior to opening that they had best arrive on time lest they would miss the biggest song in the show. Writer Miles Krueger noted that years later, Porter confided in him with a wry smirk that his friends “never forgave him.”

The second major revival of Anything Goes occurred in 1987 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre starring Patti Lupone, with revised book by Timothy Crouse (Russel’s son) and John Weidman. This production restored a number of songs from the 1934 version, including “The Gypsy in Me” and “Easy to Love,” while also maintaining the 1962 additions “It’s De-Lovely” and “Friendship,” as well as two additional songs. The production garnered the Tony Award for Best Revival. It is this 1987 arrangement being presented tonight. A 1989 recording by the London company replaces Patti LuPone with Elaine Paige, but the arrangements are identical.

In 1988, a recording was produced which attempted to restore Anything Goes’ orchestration as closely as possible to that of the 1934 production. Kim Criswell led the international company, supported by the London Symphony Orchestra with arrangements painstakingly reconstructed with the help of one of the original arrangers, Hans Spialek. The recording goes so far as to include three of Porter’s songs which had been cut from the 1934 production.

There is no original cast recording for Anything Goes. Ethel Merman and Bing Crosby starred in a 1936 film version (unavailable), but Paramount discarded all but four of the original songs and turned the film into somewhat of a Bing Crosby vehicle by acquiring several songwriters to compose numerous new songs especially for him. Other alterations include rewriting the lyrics to "You're the Top” and the retention of but two lines from the title song. However, Ethel Merman, Cole Porter and the Foursome Quartet did record “The Gypsy in Me” and “Sailors Chanty,” which remain the only creator and original cast versions from the original. Recordings of the production’s famous Porter songs were carried out by Merman later in her illustrious career and are readily available.

Indeed, the songs of Cole Porter have so stood the test of time that many of today’s contemporary artists have recorded and re-recorded volumes of his compositions. Whether it is Neneh Cherry singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” U2 crooning “Night and Day,” or Sinead O’Connor offering her rendition of “You Do Something to Me,” (Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter, Capitol Records), Mr. Porter seems to have enchanted vocalists as well as listeners through the years.

Regardless of which version of Anything Goes is deemed to be most authentic or most pleasing, it is beyond question that the brilliant tunes and madcap adventures in Porter’s musical are bound to inspire joy in audiences for years to come. As New York Times theater critic Frank Rich noted in his October 20, 1987 review of the Lincoln Center revival, “Indeed, yesterday’s performance by the stock market may allow the show to serve the same escapist mission in 1987 that it did in 1934, when it tickled those Depression audiences...” Whether or not the same can be said for 2003 audiences, one thing remains certain. For a night of merry musical celebration, there is no surpassing the ingeniously witty and musically adventurous Mr. Cole Porter, who truly is the top.

Daniel Hahn is Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Director of Education and has been with the Festival since 1995 when he served as an actor-teacher. Mr. Hahn holds an M.A. in theatre from The University of Akron.

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