All Entries in the "Pal Joey History" Category

Harold Lang’s “Pal Joey” Number on TV

The 1952 Joey Evans, dancer extraordinaire Harold Lang, appeared on a popular Sunday night variety show and with the Pal Joey company, performed “Happy Hunting Horn.” The number includes some startling dance moves by Lang. This rare kinescope speaks for itself.

Let’s Go Back…..

….back to Pal Joey, 1940’s…

These beautiful pictures come from the private collection of broadwayworld.com poster, “allofmylife”. I couldn’t identify each picture, so I numbered them for easy reference in discussions. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. And thank you, allofmylife, for sharing your precious collection with other Pal Joey fans.

Pick Your Favorite “Bewitched”

Here are three dynamite versions of Pal Joey’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” performed by three of the greatest female vocalists of our era: Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne and Linda Ronstadt. Which is your favorite of these?

Amazon Wheel

You may have noticed the “Amazon Wheel” on the right sidebar. When a CD, movie, or book is mentioned in this blog or may be of particular interest to readers, it is added to the “wheel” to make it easy for you to visit the Amazon site and purchase the items. Please feel free to “browse”. Let me know if I’ve missed any items, or if there’s something you’d like me to add.

Read the entire post for a brief description of each item.

Who was George Tapps?

We said in an earlier post that Harold Lang was the second Joey Evans (1952 production). This is not quite accurate. While it’s true that Gene Kelly was the first Joey in 1940, it is not widely known that Kelly left a couple of months before the show closed on Broadway at the end of November, 1941. His replacement was an accomplished dancer named George Tapps.

Pal Joey was Tapps’ fifth Broadway show but his first as leading man. Immediately before Pal Joey, in a widely-praised performance, Tapps had appeared in the Rodgers & Hart musical, I’d Rather Be Right, starring George M. Cohan.
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George Tapps was born in Washington Heights, New York, as Mortimer Alfonse Becker in 1911. He began his dance career at age 7, and appeared on Broadway for the first time in 1927 at age 16. He later became famous for his acclaimed interpretation of Ravel’s Bolero, which combined ballet with tap, a revolutionary approach.
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Tapps apparently did well as Joey, playing out the remainder of the Broadway run and then touring with the show. Lorenz Hart, however, never liked Tapps in the part and was forceful in telling director George Abbott how he felt, “How could you do this to the show with this terrible man, this Georgie Tapps? How could you do this to me?”
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Abbott responded, “We could afford him.”
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Below is a video of a nightclub number from the 1937 United Artists film, Vogues of 1938. Tapps appears about halfway through the video clip (at timecode 2:40). The song is Oscar-nominated “That Old Feeling,” sung in the film by Virginia Verrill. It is plain to see why Tapps was chosen to replace Gene Kelly in Pal Joey. His performance in this number is electrifying and displays the same type of graceful athleticism that characterized Kelly’s work.
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The Annotated ‘Zip’

The song Zip is one of the highlights of Pal Joey. It is a thinly disguised spoof of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, who had introduced a new “high-class” form of stripping: she recited intellectual patter while taking her clothes off. The song features numerous references to people and things much better known in 1940. We provide here an annotated Zip with the obscure references explained. (There are 18 Notes–you may need to click on the post’s title above to see all of them.)

Zip! Walter Lippmann (1) wasn’t brilliant today.
Zip! Will Saroyan (2) ever write a great play?
Zip! I was reading Schopenhauer (3) last night.
Zip! And I think that Schopenhauer was right.
I don’t want to see Zorina (4),
I don’t want to meet Cobina (5).
Zip! I’m an intellectual.
I don’t like a deep contralto,
Or a man whose voice is alto.
Zip! I’m a heterosexual.
Zip! It took intellect to master my art.
Zip! Who the hell is Margie Hart (6)?
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Zip! I consider Dali’s (7) painting passé.
Zip! Can they make the Metropolitan (8) pay?
Zip! English people don’t say clerk, they say clark.
Zip! Anybody who says clark is a jark!
I have read the great Cabala (9),
And I simply worship Allah.
Zip! I am just a mystic.
I don’t care for Whistler’s mother (10),
Charley’s Aunt (11), or Shubert’s brother (12).
Zip! I’m misogynistic (13).
Zip! My intelligence is guiding my hand.
Zip! Who the hell is Sally Rand (14)?

Zip! Toscanini (15) leads the greatest of bands.
Zip! Jergens Lotion does the trick for his hands.
Zip! Rip Van Winkle on the screen would be smart.
Zip! Tyrone Power (16) will be cast in the part.
I adore the great Confucius,
And the lines of luscious Lucius (17).
Zip! I am so eclectic.
I don’t care for either Mickey; Mouse or Rooney make me sicky!
Zip! I’m a little hectic.
Zip! My artistic taste is classic and dear.
Zip! Who the hell is Lili St. Cyr (18)?
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NOTES:
(1) Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), influential American writer, journalist, political commentator and adviser to Presidents.
(2) William Saroyan (1908-1981), Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright and author. Plays include The Human Comedy and The Time of Your Life. Gene Kelly was appearing in the latter play when he was cast in Pal Joey.
(3) Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 -1860), important German philosopher who believed that man’s desires (physical, sexual and emotional) could never be fulfilled.

Van Johnson, A True Broadway “Pal”

Van Johnson, who began his career as a chorus boy and understudy on Broadway, died Friday in an assisted-care facility in New York.  His boyish looks and earnest manner made him a Hollywood heartthrob in the 1940s and 1950’s.

Johnson was born August 25, 1916, to a plumber and housewife in Newport, Rhode Island. He was 16 years old when he left Rhode Island for New York City so he could forge a career in acting.

Johnson made his Broadway debut in 1936 in “New Faces of 1936″ before legendary director-playwright George Abbott hired him as a chorus member and understudy to the three male leads in Rodgers and Hart’s “Too Many Girls” in 1939.

The next year, Abbott cast him as a chorus boy and Gene Kelly’s understudy in Rodgers and Hart’s groundbreaking musical “Pal Joey,” according to TCM.com. His film debut followed in 1940 with a role in the chorus of “Too Many Girls.”

Johnson’s career stretched over six decades and across genres, from comedies and war films, such as “The Caine Mutiny” and “30 Seconds Over Tokyo,” to Broadway musicals and television shows, including a guest spot as the Minstrel on the campy 1960s series, “Batman,” according to Turner Classic Movies’ Web site.

The red-haired, freckle-faced actor’s youthful charm earned him a huge teen following in his heyday. He became known as the “voiceless Sinatra,” despite a singing voice that landed him roles alongside June Allyson and Judy Garland in “Two Girls and a Sailor” and “In the Good Old Summertime.” 

A private service will be held.

A Bit Of Rodgers And Hart History

I so enjoyed delving into the “Origin Of Pal Joey”, that I thought I’d continue in that vein with a brief history of Rodgers and Hart, without whom Pal Joey would be….well…just a play!

According to the Roundabout Theatre Company’s website, RICHARD RODGERS (Music; 1902-1979) and LORENZ HART (Lyrics; 1895-1943) wrote their first shows together when both were still students attending Columbia University. Their breakthrough came with the score for a 1925 charity show, the Garrick Gaities, which introduced the classic valentine to their hometown, “Manhattan.” Over the next five years they wrote fifteen musical comedies for Broadway and London’s West End before relocating to Hollywood in 1930, where they contributed songs and wrote the scores for several movie musicals, most notably Love Me Tonight starring Maurice Chevalier. In 1935 they returned to New York to write the score for Billy Rose’s circus musical Jumbo, launching a golden era which included On Your Toes, Babes In Arms, I’d Rather Be Right, I Married An Angel, The Boys From Syracuse, Too Many Girls, Higher And Higher, Pal Joey and By Jupiter, which collectively offered such classic songs as “There’s a Small Hotel,” “I Wish I Were In Love Again,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Where Or When,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Spring Is Here,” “Falling In Love With Love,” “Sing For Your Supper,” “This Can’t Be Love,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” “Bewitched,” “I Could Write a Book,” “Nobody’s Heart,” and “Wait Til You See Her.”

The Origin of Pal Joey

The character of “Pal Joey” was the creation of renowned American writer John O’Hara. Starting with its October 22, 1938 issue, the New Yorker magazine began running O’Hara’s Pal Joey short stories. The stories were actually a series of letters from a low wattage, social-climbing nightclub singer, Joey, to his friend, a slightly better off entertainer named Ted. Joey would address his letters to “Pal Ted” and sign the letters “Pal Joey.”

There were a total of 12 Pal Joey short stories. The series ended with the July 13, 1940 issue of the New Yorker — the Broadway production opened five months later with a book by O’Hara.

John O’Hara, author of the Pal Joey short stories and the book of the original musical

Interestingly, the plot of the musical Pal Joey is never captured in the short stories, although the next-to-last installment, “Joey and Mavis,” concerns a wealthy older widow (Mavis instead of Vera in the show) who begins seeing Joey and lines up a nightclub engagement for him.
Here are some excerpts from the first Pal Joey story as it appeared in the New Yorker, complete with the intentional misspellings and grammatical errors O’Hara included to flesh out his Joey character:

Dear Pal Ted:
Well at last I am getting around to knocking off a line or two to let you know how much I apprisiate it you sending me that wire on opening nite. Dont think because I didnt answer before I didnt apprisiate it because that is far from the case.