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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. This is the second of a three-part series featuring noted musical theater historian Alfred Simon, paying tribute to composer Vincent Youmans. This program originally aired in 1981 and featured many Youmans songs from shows like Hit the Deck, Smiles, and Through the Years. Which brings us up to the next Youmans stage show, Hit the Deck, in 1927. A big hit at the time. A very big hit. It was based on a play called Shore Leave by a man named Osborne. The two hits from the show, oddly enough, had been written much earlier.

[1:00] Alfred Simon: Alleluia was the first song he'd ever written. During his Navy days, right?

[1:05] Paul Lazarus: That's right, yes. He called it a march. I wouldn't say it's exactly a march, but it could be done in a march rhythm. It's a very rousing song. And then he just forgot it. And then when Hit the Deck came along, which had a naval setting, a battleship, he dug it out again and had lyrics set to it. Clifford Gray, I think, wrote the lyrics. And Leo Robin. Yeah, we should mention that Youmans served at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station during the First World War, and that's where he had first written this song. It's a very rousing number, I think.

[1:38] Alfred Simon: Terrific number. We have a version of it by the Robert Shaw Chorale. Those are full justice. And also from that score, the other hit was Sometimes I'm Happy, which also has a similar story. It started as a song called Come On and Pet Me, with a lyric by Oscar Hammerstein to be sung in a musical called Mary Jane McCain, and was discarded before the show's opening, then went into a show called A Night Out, which never made it to New York, but it ended up as the hit song of Hit the Deck.

[2:35] ♪ Musical number: "Hallelujah" — performed by the Robert Shaw Chorale ♪

[5:36] ♪ Musical number: "Sometimes I'm Happy" — performed by Stanley Holloway and Ivy Tresman ♪

[7:47] Paul Lazarus: Two songs from Hit The Deck. The Robert Shaw Chorale performed Hallelujah, and Stanley Holloway and Ivy Tresman from the original London cast performed Sometimes I'm Happy. And you're listening to Anything Goes with a birthday tribute to George Gershwin and Vincent Youmans. Al, you made a recording, I believe you said in the early 50s, middle 50s, of the songs from Rainbow, which was Youmans' next show, and I thought we'd feature your playing of The One Girl, which was the one song that really stood out in that score.

[8:21] Alfred Simon: That's right. It was a very good show, but it had some opening night difficulties, and it didn't go up on time. It was a wonderful piece of Americana, but it only ran about three weeks, unfortunately. It was written with Oscar Hammerstein and Laurence Stallings, and it seemed like Oscar Hammerstein just making good on that promise that he started with Showboat, of the real integrated musical once again. I saw it. I was very lucky to be able to see it, and I thought it was marvelous.

[8:54] Paul Lazarus: You said it was a great favor to Brooks Atkinson.

[8:58] Alfred Simon: It was. In fact, he gave it a rave, of course, in the Times, and he kept referring to it, wishing that some producer would revive it sometime with appropriate changes if necessary. So here's a hint to any producers who may be listening in. It's worth doing.

[9:13] Paul Lazarus: Okay. Maybe the Goodspeed Opera House will take you up on that someday, Al. This is Al Simon at the piano, performing The One Girl, a song by Oscar Hammerstein II and Vincent Youmans from the show Rainbow.

[9:48] ♪ Musical number: "The One Girl" — performed by Al Simon ♪

[10:50] Paul Lazarus: My guest today on Anything Goes is Al Simon at the piano, performing "The One Girl" from the Youmans score to *Rainbow* in 1928. Youmans' next show was not so successful either. It was dubbed at one point *The Great Delay*, but its real title was *Great Day*, and it was called *Great Delay* because they had so much trouble out of town. They were trying to fix it. I think it took something like four months to bring it in, which is a long time in those days.

[11:21] Al Simon: I had several leading ladies, I know.

[11:22] Paul Lazarus: Vincent, you saw it, Al, didn't you?

[11:24] Al Simon: I saw it, yes. The songs were very good, and some of the cast was good too. But the book?

[11:30] Paul Lazarus: It was one of those late 20s shows without a book, and it had the dubious distinction of opening 12 days before the great crash, and it really only ran 36 performances. But it had some wonderful songs in it, including three that we're going to play for you. "More Than You Know," a wonderful version by Judy Garland, "Great Day," the title song played on duo piano, and Lawrence Tibbett in a period recording of "Without a Song."

[12:04] ♪ Musical number: "More Than You Know" — performed by Judy Garland ♪

[15:19] Paul Lazarus: Judy Garland singing "More Than You Know." This is Anything Goes with special guest Al Simon paying tribute to composer Vincent Youmans.

[15:49] ♪ Musical number: "Without a Song" — performed by Lawrence Tibbett ♪

[19:09] Paul Lazarus: More than you'll ever know.

[19:27] ♪ Musical number ♪

[20:22] ♪ Musical number ♪

[21:39] Alfred Simon: Program based on Ring Lardner, I found out that he had written a couple of songs of Vincent Youmans on this show, and they're very rare and very hard to come by, but Ring Lardner, Jr. graciously provided the sheet music, and Chip Zion, who is currently starring in William Finn's March of the Falsettos, sang a song called If I Were You, Love, and Chip Zion is accompanied by Bruce Coughlin at the piano.

[22:33] ♪ Musical number: "If I Were You, Love" — performed by Chip Zion ♪

[23:21] Alfred Simon: Chip Zion, with Bruce Coughlin at the piano, performing a song written by Vincent Youmans and Ring Lardner, called If I Were You, Love, from the show Smiles in 1930. The real hit, in fact, the only hit from Smiles was Time of My Hands, which didn't make much of a flurry when it was on Broadway, but the show went to London. I don't think it did too well there, but the song Time of My Hands was quite a hit there, and it was brought back to New York, and suddenly became a hit very belatedly.

[23:56] Alfred Simon: Yeah, we didn't mention that that show featured Marilyn Miller and the Stairs.

[24:00] Unknown speaker: Oh, yes, that's right.

[24:01] Alfred Simon: Fred and Adele. The next show Youmans did was Through the Years, which was based on a very famous old Jane Cowell drama, Weepers, it's called, Smiling Through. The title song, Through the Years, was a beautiful song, and it was said to be Youmans' own favorite of all the songs he wrote, and I think it's a very good choice. It would be mine, too. And we're also going to feature another great Youmans tune, Drums in My Heart, from that score. Youmans, with this show, tried his hand at playing both producer and composer again. He'd tried unsuccessfully before, but once again, this is a lavish production with a 45-piece orchestra, but audiences didn't react too positively.

[24:51] Alfred Simon: You know, as I think back to all the things we've said as we've done this birthday tribute to Vincent Youmans, his shows were not tremendously successful, apart from No, No, Nanette and Hit the Deck.

[25:01] Unknown speaker: That's right.

[25:03] Alfred Simon: Just about every show we've talked about was fairly disastrous, apart from those two.

[25:09] Unknown speaker: Yeah, but the songs really live on.

[25:13] Alfred Simon: Right. Every show practically had a standard in it, which kept going. Yeah. Two songs from the score to Through the Years. The title song, performed by the Robert Shaw Chorale, with an arrangement, by the way, by Robert Russell Bennett, who also, I neglected to mention, arranged Hallelujah, which we played before, followed by Drums in My Heart.

[26:06] ♪ Musical number: "Through the Years" — performed by the Robert Shaw Chorale ♪

[26:29] ♪ Musical number: "Drums in My Heart" — performed by the Robert Shaw Chorale ♪