This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[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 conclusion of a three-part program saluting Hoagy Carmichael, one of my favorite songwriters. This program originally aired in 1982.

[0:29] Paul Lazarus: Together with my guest Dick Sudhalter, we featured many Carmichael rarities and little-known recordings of his most famous songs like Stardust and Skylark. Carmichael's first experience in the theater was with the 1936 review, The Show Is On, and together with Ted Fetter, he wrote the title song, The Show Is On, and but probably most memorable was his showstopper, Little Old Lady, which he wrote together with Stanley Adams, and it was sung and danced by Mitzi Mayfair and Charles Walters in the original cast. Though the show wasn't a tremendous success, it had some memorable moments, particularly Bert Lahr singing Song of the Woodmen, a Kip Harburg and Harold Arlen song, B. Lilly was in the show, and many other nice moments including a waltz by the Gershwin Brothers by Strauss, which was sung by Gracie Barry, and it was certainly more successful than Carmichael's other effort in the theater when he wrote the entire score, Walk With Music. This is Hoagy Carmichael himself singing the showstopper, Little Old Lady, with the Casa Loma Orchestra.

[2:39] ♪ Musical number: "Little Old Lady" — performed by Hoagy Carmichael ♪

[4:21] Paul Lazarus: It's a little old lady from, and it was Hoagy Carmichael's first contribution to a Broadway show. The show was entitled The Show Is On, 1936 review. His next and final, I guess, effort on Broadway was an actual score with Johnny Mercer, and it was a show called Walk With Music. It was first called Three by Three.

[4:56] Paul Lazarus: Three After Three. Three After Three, excuse me, and it did not have much success. It ran 57 performances, which by today's standards is not altogether embarrassing considering how many shows close in one day.

[5:08] Dick Sudhalter: Well, I mean, consider Merrily We Roll Along and feel honored, you know.

[5:11] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, true. I mean, compared with Merrily. The Mooney Shapiro songbook.

[5:16] Dick Sudhalter: Right, exactly. So I guess Hoagy's first Broadway score didn't do that badly, we can say that. The only extant recording of most of these songs is on a Ben Bagley record Everyone Else Revisited, and here's four songs in a medley version from the show. And I have to just tell you one thing about, it's about, it was one of those old gold digger plots where three farm girls set out to marry millionaires, and one poses as a rich girl and the other two sisters act as their maid, and Hollywood made a movie of this with Betty Grable that was called Moon Over Miami. Except the book, which was unanimously panned on Broadway, was saved, and the songs which were unanimously praised were thrown out.

[5:57] Paul Lazarus: I'm glad everything was consistent in any case, you know. Show business would be too surprising if that hadn't happened.

[6:05] Dick Sudhalter: Exactly, exactly. Anyway, Arthur Siegel, Sue Law Haskin, Patty Wise singing some songs from Hoagy Carmichael's Broadway score to Walk With Music.

[6:40] ♪ Musical number: "I Walk with Music" — performed by Arthur Siegel, Sue Law Haskin, Patty Wise ♪

[8:06] ♪ Musical number: "Ohh, What You Said" — performed by Arthur Siegel, Sue Law Haskin, Patty Wise ♪

[10:04] ♪ Musical number: "Ooh, What You Said" — performed by The Martins ♪

[16:17] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to a salute to Hoagy Carmichael. I'm your host, Paul Lazarus. Come now to, I think, a sort of landmark in Carmichael's career. First time he played a film role. He played the role of Cricket, the piano player. And the film, of course, is To Have and Have Not, the 1944 film. And I was just saying to Dick how amazing this film is. It was directed by Howard Hawks, based on a Hemingway novel with a screenplay by William Faulkner, who collaborated with Jules Firthman. And it featured three amazing Hoagy Carmichael songs with various collaborators and introduced Lauren Bacall and had Humphrey Bogart in one of his best roles. You can't really beat that, can you?

[17:00] Richard Sudhalter: You sure can't.

[17:01] Paul Lazarus: And it had Andy Williams in one of his least distinguished roles.

[17:05] Richard Sudhalter: That's right.

[17:06] Paul Lazarus: We'll tell you about that a little later. But here's several, well, here's all three of the songs that Hoagy Carmichael wrote. Actually, not for the film. The only song he wrote for the film was "How Little We Know," and the other two had been written previously, "Hong Kong Blues" and "Baltimore Oriole."

[17:22] ♪ Musical number ♪

[20:10] Richard Sudhalter: You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

[20:29] ♪ Musical number: "Baltimore Oriole" — performed by Hoagy Carmichael ♪

[24:10] Richard Sudhalter: And after all, how little we know.