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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now, the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. Today, the conclusion of a three-part visit with legendary writer and Broadway social conscience E.Y. Yip Harburg. Harburg is best remembered for "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" and his masterwork "Over the Rainbow." This program was originally broadcast in 1980.

[0:38] Paul Lazarus: Flahouli was a show in 1951 that you wrote with Sammy Fain. First of all, why do you think Flahouli didn't enjoy much success on Broadway?

[0:48] E.Y. Harburg: Came in at a very bad time during the height of McCarthy period, and I had already gotten in the doghouse with Finian, and they thought that this was a dangerous anti-capitalist show, and anything that's anti-capitalist or anti-economics is unpatriotic. I don't know why economics has to do with patriotism, but somehow or other, these two funny ideas have been cemented in people's minds. I mean, as soon as you say, let's have a better economic system where people don't starve, or people don't...

[1:34] Paul Lazarus: You're unpatriotic.

[1:35] E.Y. Harburg: You're unpatriotic. I don't know why that should be unpatriotic. I don't think it'd be unpatriotic with God in heaven, but there you are. McCarthy was at his height, and all the newspapers and all the columnists, before we even came in, said that this was a red commie show. And all we were doing there was showing up in an explosively humorous way at production and super production in our system.

[2:12] E.Y. Harburg: I mean, what was letting me cake of the guy singing? I don't understand that.

[2:16] Paul Lazarus: Yeah. Well, the audience at that time was seeing red. They were seeing communism under every bed and frightened, and they saw this as a terrible show, which said... All it said was, if we were to ever find a genie here who could make all the things we needed for almost nothing, that this genie would become public enemy number one, because he'd reduce the price of everything. The price would fall, so we couldn't make profit. We would have all the material goods we want, but we wouldn't have the profit.

[3:07] Paul Lazarus: Is Flahouli another example of one of those word plays? The word Flahouli, does that come from a mixture?

[3:12] E.Y. Harburg: Yes, it comes from an Irish thing. It's anybody who talks to little people, you know, is a Flahouli. And we had our main central character was a genie, a puppet genie, and the heroine was a girl who knows how to talk to puppets, see. And it's this puppet that rubs the genie out of the old Aladdin lamp, so the whole thing tied up.

[3:40] Paul Lazarus: Do you have a favorite song from that score?

[3:42] E.Y. Harburg: Oh, that was a beautiful score. Sammy Fain wrote some darling songs, and I especially loved "The World Is Your Balloon."

[3:56] ♪ Musical number: "The World Is Your Balloon" — performed by E.Y. Harburg ♪

[6:25] Paul Lazarus: I'm going to move on to Jamaica, which is a score I really love too. And that's once again back with Harold Arlen. As with most of your ideas, there was a song in Jamaica way ahead of its time called "Leave the Atom Alone," which I think could be used today for the anti-nuclear movement as a theme song.

[6:41] E.Y. Harburg: It should be. And I'm using it in my new show The Retrospective, what I'm doing with Arthur Delugoff. It's fabulous, absolutely fabulous. I think it'll have play now.

[7:01] Paul Lazarus: Oh, no question. It bothers me that people aren't aware that a song was written like that in 1957 when it wasn't quite the thing to be against the nuclear movement.

[7:06] E.Y. Harburg: Right. Well, all these songs were. See, I was always politically aware and conscious of what was going on. And my main concern in writing was to hook up real life with the humor of it and maybe the betterment of it.

[7:53] ♪ Musical number: "Leave the Atom Alone" — performed by E.Y. Harburg ♪

[11:02] Paul Lazarus: On top of his numerous scores for Broadway and Hollywood, Yip Harburg has found time to pen two volumes of light verse. The first, Rhymes for the Irreverent, appeared in the early 70s. The second, At This Point in Rhyme, was printed by Crown Publishers in 1976. A short piece from At This Point in Rhyme seems a perfect introduction for another song from Jamaica called "Napoleon." The selection of light verse is entitled, "Nostalgia Ain't What It Used to Be" and goes. Things used to be fair and fine and good and nice and sweet and yummy. Now they're colossal, terrific, stupendous, sensational, super and crummy.

[11:51] ♪ Musical number: "Napoleon" — performed by E.Y. Harburg ♪

[14:29] Paul Lazarus: I wanted to know how "The Happiest Girl in the World" happened because this time you didn't use a collaborator, well you used a collaborator, but he wasn't around. Offenbach provided you with all your music. Was that your idea to do that show?

[14:56] E.Y. Harburg: Yes, yes. I was intrigued by the fact that Offenbach was always writing about Greek mythology. And you know Offenbach, he must have had some great collaborators, a fellow by the name of Levy and another fellow, who were the forerunners of Gilbert and Sullivan, and therefore my roots, which were in Gilbert and Sullivan, went further back to Offenbach. I went to his operas and found them, had all the kind of fun and the humor that was needed for satire. So when I thought of Lysistrata as the oldest comedy in the world, something like 2,500 years, 450 B.C., and at that time that Aristophanes was concerned with reducing war to absurdity, that of course you could see that there was a kinship there.

[16:05] ♪ Musical number: "The Happiest Girl in the World" ♪

[18:41] Paul Lazarus: The one last show I wanted to talk to you about was the show you wrote with Julie Stein, "Darling of the Day." And I had the good fortune to hear Julie Stein perform "Let's See What Happens," which I only...

[18:53] E.Y. Harburg: Where was this?

[18:54] Paul Lazarus: At that evening, his evening at the YMHA.

[18:57] E.Y. Harburg: Oh, he did it. I didn't see that.

[18:59] Paul Lazarus: Yeah. Oh, I'll play it for you.

[19:01] E.Y. Harburg: Did it go?

[19:02] Paul Lazarus: Oh, wonderful. Well, I don't know if it went for everybody else, but it went for me. We've got a great score. Nobody's ever heard it.

[19:08] E.Y. Harburg: I know.

[19:09] Paul Lazarus: Because to do it now, it should be done. It costs a million dollars.

[19:12] E.Y. Harburg: You know what, though? It's not such a great recording. I don't like the recording of it.

[19:17] Paul Lazarus: And that song in particular was, I thought, not a good arrangement.

[19:20] E.Y. Harburg: Oh, the recording is very bad because we had Vincent Price who couldn't sing.

[19:25] Paul Lazarus: Yeah.

[19:26] E.Y. Harburg: He couldn't sing. He should never have recorded it.

[19:28] Paul Lazarus: When I heard "Let's See What Happens" the first time I heard it on the record, it had a very string-oriented arrangement. And it somehow or other, it killed the sentiment because it was too mushy. And then when I heard Julie Stein playing it with just piano, it was so wonderful and so charming. And your lyric just took off.

[19:52] ♪ Musical number: "Let's See What Happens" — performed by Julie Stein ♪

[21:15] E.Y. Harburg: I think every writer has some theme that runs through everything he does. I think you can recognize it in Shaw, you can recognize it in Gilbert, you can recognize it even in some of our lyric writers like Cole Porter, Gershwin. And each one contributes his own hallmark. And I don't think they can be compared as to who is the better. Each one has his own technique and his own contribution. I think what moves me, of course, I'm very conscious of social injustice and the use of satire and humor as a weapon against these follies and foibles. But I suppose like everybody else, I think basically we all go around trying to find out who we are. The kids today think they're the only ones that are in quest of that search.

And I think we all want to know how we're related to the universe and how we are related to people. And when my little guru book doesn't tell me, I sometimes go up to the Empire State and look at the stars and see how I'm related to the universe. Well, I can't reach those stars. So I go down and I try to see how I'm related to people and there are too many people, too many stars. So I go home. And no one's at home. My thesaurus is gone. So I tiptoe into that bedroom where the lady of the thesaurus usually has it and I find her in bed asleep with her arms folded over, George Bernard Shaw. Well, there's a man I'm never jealous of. And she has a benign look on her face so I know she has just been able to tell Andrew Cleese how to handle that line.

And her face is usually one that makes me feel that behind those eyelids are the stars that I finally can touch that I couldn't reach, but now that I can touch. And behind those eyes are always the people I couldn't reach, but now I can touch. And I think it's summed up in this song.

[23:53] ♪ Musical number: "It's Only a Paper Moon" — performed by E.Y. Harburg ♪

[25:08] E.Y. Harburg: Thank you.

[25:39] ♪ Musical number: "That Great 'Come-And-Get-It' Day" ♪

[26:23] ♪ Musical number: "Over the Rainbow" ♪

[28:31] Paul Lazarus: For more information, visit anythinggoespl.com. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us. Thanks for listening.