Student Gypsy was a follow up to the successful Little Mary Sunshine by Rick Besoyan. It just seemed like it did not belong on Broadway. Don had written a wonderful background score for A Thurber Carnival, but his songs were not very appealing in this. It starred the unlucky Kaye Ballard and was written by James Costigan and Don Elliot. A Thurber Carnival, which is not a musical, had been successful, but this one certainly wasn’t. It was called The Beast in Me, based on James Thurber stories. The next musical was the worst of the season. (Another London cast recording of this musical, She Loves Me, can be found here!) I met Hal Prince, the director, a year or so later on the street and told him how I thought it was so sad that the musical had not had a longer run and he of course agreed. ![]() They got off to a wrong foot in the store that they both worked, but they were really meant for each other and the show ends beautifully. The ending of the show, when the two people finally get together after being lonely heart’s club members, is so wonderful. The score by Bock and Harnick is just about perfect. The next musical was a much happier affair: She Loves Me, with the always wonderful Barbara Cook. Outside of the rest of the score of Sophie being uninteresting but being well orchestrated by Sid Ramin. The other and only well known song by Steve Allen was “This Could Be The Start of Something Big”, made popular by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme ( Golden Rainbow). This show contained one of them: “But I’ll Show Them All”. Of this tremendous list of songs only two of them are worthwhile. Sophie, a musical about Sophie Tucker, it had songs by Steve Allen, who wrote and published a song almost every day of his adult life. I had no trouble walking in as the intermission was about to end but I found that there were no empty seats and no standing room so I had to leave and not see the second act for a second time. I was so happy to see any Broadway musical that at one point decided I would sneak in and see the second act the day the show was closing at a Saturday matinee. The score by Mary Rodgers was certainly nothing like Once Upon a Mattress (the London cast recording of Once Upon a Mattress can be found here). ![]() It was meant to be a hilarious spoof of a wacky girl in the peace corps but it was not really all that funny and she too it turns out was on the way to dying from cancer. Judy Holliday’s last musical which was a big disappointment. But there was! When she had to leave the show they brought in Eva Gabor and the show folded very quickly. As it turns out, she was in very bad health! The cast album was delayed and it appeared that maybe there would not be one. The show never really did all that well and she missed performances. In the only musical of her career, she was quite wonderful. ![]() Next was Tovarich starring the world famous Vivien Leigh. The first show of the 1963 season was Oliverwhich had an unbelievable score by Lionel Bart and the most incredible sets I had ever seen in a musical by Sean Kenny and the wonderful Georgia Brown.
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