Broadway Revisited

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Hi, this is Art Hilgart and this is Broadway Revisited, a weekly exploration of the songs and shows, composers and lyricists, and performers who created the American musical theater.

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1. Happy Days Are Here Again 1:37

That song introduces our subject for today, the Great Depression of the 1930's as covered in musicals. Although inextricably linked to the Depression years, the song was written for a 1929 movie musical, just before the stock market crash that was one of the Depression's causes. It became Franklin Delano Roosevelt's campaign song, although that was premature-- the Depression didn't end until World War Two, with military spending on a massive industrial revival. An early Broadway recognition of the times appeared in the 1932 revue Americana, for which Jay Gorney and Yip Harburg wrote our next song. The show flopped, but recordings and radio made the song a standard. Here's how Bing Crosby sang it.

2. Brother Can You Spare a Dime 3:12

That 1932 record by Bing Crosby helped spread Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney's song. During the 'thirties, unemployment was as high as 25%, there was no welfare, no Social Security, and no unemployment insurance. However, many of the songs looked on the bright side.

3. Ain't We Got Fun / Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee 4:15

In their 1951 recording of Ain't We Got Fun, Bob Hope and Margaret Whiting revived a song of denial, popular during the Depression . Irving Berlin wrote Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee for his 1932 Broadway revue, Face the Music. Herbert Hoover was still president, promising that prosperity was just around the corner. The 1977 show Annie was set in 1933, and in one of the Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin songs some homeless people expressed their opinion of Mr. Hoover.

4. We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover 2:25

Of course later in the show, Little Orphan Annie assures President Roosevelt that better times are coming--- tomorrow. Families fearing disaster spoke of keeping the wolf away from the door. Here are three Depression era songs dealing with the fear.

5. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf / Never Gonna Dance / Sweet Music 9:27

We began that wolf medley with the Ann Ronnell song on the soundtrack of Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs. Then Fred Astaire sang a Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields song he introduced in Swing Time. In 1931, Astaire had also introduced the Dietz and Schwartz song Sweet Music on Broadway in The Band Wagon, playing the accordion, but we heard Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant, recorded for the movie of The Band Wagon. The Harry Warren and Al Dubin movie musical Gold Diggers of 1933 had two takes on the Depression. First we'll hear Ginger Rogers celebrate escape from hard times, then a production number about the losers.

6. We're in the Money / Remember My Forgotten Man 5:59

7. Who Cares / Let 'Em Eat Cake 4:27

We heard Larry Kert with those George and Ira Gershwin songs. The desperate times led many to seek radical solutions. In a another song from Let 'Em Eat Cake we'll hear a fellow who denounces the left, right, and middle.

8. Union Square / Sign Here 6:35

We heard a radical for all seasons from Let 'Em Eat Cake, then from the original cast of Flora the Red Menace, we heard Bob Dishy and Liza Minnelli. Writers Kander and Ebb set that 1965 show in 1933. In Marc Blitzstein's celebrated 1939 show, The Cradle Will Rock, he took the situation seriously. Here are two of the songs. In those pre-Starbucks days, coffee was a nickel, and a dime bought coffee and a doughnut.

9. The Nickel under Your Foot / The Cradle Will Rock 4:48

From the 1985 revival of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock we heard Patti LuPone and Randle Mell. In the songs Harold Rome wrote for the long-running 1937 show Pins and Needles, he used a lighter touch.

10. Sing Me a Song of Social Significance / It's Better with a Union Man 5:50

Members of the Ladies Garment Workers Union were the original Broadway cast of Pins and Needles. On these records we heard Rose Marie Jun and the show's composer, Harold Rome. In 1962, for the musical version of Jerome Weidman's I Can Get It for You Wholesale, set in 1937, Harold Rome returned to the Depression. In her first Broadway show, Barbara Streisand led a chorus of garment workers who had just been downsized.

11. What Are They Doing to Us Now 4:20

On that cheerful note, we come to the end of our sampling of how musicals have viewed the Depression.

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Join us again next week for another Broadway Revisited. National distribution is funded by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and it's produced with the assistance of Martin Klemm, in the WMUK studios of Western Michigan University. I'm Art Hilgart.

Promo: (12 ) The Depression of the 1930's hit Broadway hard, and some of the songs of the period reflected the national condition. This week on Broadway Revisited we'll have some songs of despair and some of denial. Singing through the Depression, on Broadway Revisited.

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