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[0:09] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:25] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and this is the first part of my recent conversation with Geoffrey Block, whose latest book is titled A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway to Hollywood in the Studio System Era.

[0:37] David Armstrong: This fascinating new book explores the sometimes successful but very often rocky relationship between hit Broadway musicals and the movie studios that brought them to the big screen.

[0:49] David Armstrong: Block accomplishes this by taking an in-depth look at 12 shows and their film adaptations, including very famous and familiar titles such as Show Boat, Oklahoma!, West Side Story, and Cabaret, as well as several that are less often discussed or seen, but are no less interesting, such as The Cat and the Fiddle, Cabin in the Sky, and Flower Drum Song.

[1:13] David Armstrong: Along the way, he analyzes how and why these musicals were changed and revised in sometimes disappointing and controversial ways, at least for fans of the stage versions, and he even suggests that a few of them were actually improved in the process.

[1:29] David Armstrong: This is my favorite kind of book, filled with new information and often surprising insights, along with some strong opinions as well.

[1:37] David Armstrong: Geoffrey Block is distinguished professor emeritus of music history and humanities at the University of Puget Sound and the author of nine books, including Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber and The Richard Rodgers Reader.

[1:55] David Armstrong: This episode is made possible in part through the generous support of our patron club members, including our newest patron, Larry Spinelli.

[2:04] David Armstrong: Welcome, Larry. If you would like to help support the creation of this podcast, I'll have information at the end of the episode about how you too can become a patron.

[2:13] David Armstrong: Here we go. Welcome, Geoffrey Block.

[2:16] David Armstrong: It's such a great pleasure to have you today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway to Hollywood in the Studio System Era.

[2:26] Geoffrey Block: Thank you, David. Thanks for having me. This is really a pleasure.

[2:29] Geoffrey Block: It's been my pleasure to read this book. Thank you.

[2:32] Geoffrey Block: This book is from Oxford University Press, and you are the editor of the Oxford Broadway Legacies series. Tell us about that series.

[2:45] Geoffrey Block: Well, the series started in 2010, and I need to mention that there was another series called Yale Broadway Masters that had seven volumes, and we sort of moved the series to Oxford Broadway Legacies.

[2:58] Geoffrey Block: The earlier series only focused on the creators, mainly composers and lyricists. But the Oxford Broadway Legacies also has individual volumes on shows.

[3:09] Geoffrey Block: So we have Show Boat, On the Town, we have Music Man, as well as the creators. We have choreographers, Agnes De Mille, Tommy Tune, Bob Fosse, and we're expanding to cover a lot of the creatives and also individual shows.

[3:26] Geoffrey Block: And I think we have about 18 volumes now, with things in the pipeline. And so it's just a great thing to be able to work with all these scholars. In fact, they helped me an enormous amount.

[3:34] Geoffrey Block: In my acknowledgments, they were my main acknowledgments because a number of the books that have published so far overlap with some of the musicals I'm doing, and they were some of the sharpest writings of anything. They just helped me enormously.

[3:50] David Armstrong: So let's talk about those shows. Your book uses 12 examples. In essence, it provides us with an in-depth view of the entire history of Broadway musical film adaptations during the studio system and a little bit beyond. What are those musicals that you cover in this book?

[4:12] Geoffrey Block: Okay. The stage versions actually begin in 1927 with Show Boat, and then the film versions begin in the 30s.

[4:19] Geoffrey Block: Absolutely. Well, in the studio system era, sometimes it's considered a golden age of both film musicals and Broadway, but it's not considered a golden age of adaptation.

[4:30] Geoffrey Block: Nothing is. That's one of the things that I discovered, and I've known this all my life. But adaptation is frowned upon. Most people, I've talked to many people, and you ask them, are there any good adaptations? What are the best adaptations? And the same two or three come up.

[4:45] Geoffrey Block: Show Boat does come up all the time, Sound of Music comes up all the time, Cabaret comes up all the time. But after that, most critics and scholars before me have put down adaptations, and they regard original musicals as the only true kind of musical. Like Singin' in the Rain is not an adaptation.

[5:05] Geoffrey Block: So that's an example. And why is that? Where did this prejudice come from?

[5:09] Geoffrey Block: The prejudice comes from... Well, I address this a lot. Do I actually know where the prejudice comes from? You have to be carefully taught. It's actually, I'd like to come back to that.

[5:21] Geoffrey Block: Uh, that's okay. Because what I want us to do now is do some spoiler alerts. So you can turn this off. I mean, it's not like a novel, so I'm not like telling you that the Titanic sank or something like that.

[5:34] Geoffrey Block: So you don't know. But I really believe that scholars should also be critics. So this is a critical study as well as a historical study. And starting right off, I don't do this exactly like this, but for the sake of this interview, there are four critical categories of the 12: 12 stage versions and 12 adaptations.

[5:55] Geoffrey Block: And there are four that are almost universally considered really fine quality musicals. You have to do them. Show Boat, Oklahoma!, West Side Story, Cabaret. Those are sort of like your starting core.

[6:08] Geoffrey Block: Almost every musical that's popular gets adapted. That's like a given. Going out of order here, but one basic difference is that a show is two and a half to three hours. Almost every film adaptation has to be about two hours.

[6:21] Geoffrey Block: There are exceptions. West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, there are exceptions, but by and large, it's been really pretty consistent. And the earlier ones are even a little bit shorter.

[6:29] Geoffrey Block: Yeah, a lot of those movies are like an hour and a half, aren't they?

[6:32] Geoffrey Block: Exactly. Exactly. Something has to be cut. That's your starting point. You can't be entirely faithful unless it's My Fair Lady, which there are some that were really quite faithful. But those are rare. Almost every musical is going to be different. You know, the film's going to be different somehow.

[6:50] Geoffrey Block: So those four, to me, are both of comparable quality, the stage version and the film. They're really fine stage versions, and there's fine adaptations, in my opinion. So that's one category.

[7:01] Geoffrey Block: Okay. And those are the extremes, too, from Show Boat to Cabaret. And a lot of people think the film versions are better of those, but I don't. They're not my category of that.

[7:10] Geoffrey Block: Okay. The second is they were modestly successful as adaptations, but successful in their own right. That's another kind of a category. Meaning if you're only judging it as a faithful adaptation, it might fall short, like On the Town.

[7:25] Geoffrey Block: On the Town is a really good musical, but as an adaptation, when you've cut all the songs of Bernstein, let's face it. As an adaptation, it doesn't sort of measure up. And a lot of people feel that's an outrage and are horrified by that.

[7:39] Geoffrey Block: But I think you and I actually both agree on this. The movie On the Town is very entertaining and very successful on its own terms.

[7:42] Geoffrey Block: On its own terms. If you're not mortified by the fact that they cut most of the score. A lot of people didn't know Bernstein's On the Town then. Even the cast album was incomplete, and people don't know it.

[7:57] Geoffrey Block: The three that are in that category are The Cat in the Fiddle, which is like nobody knows that. I understand it. Cabin in the Sky, nobody knows that one either. And On the Town, which people know, but they know the film a lot better.

[8:09] Geoffrey Block: But the films, which are not faithful adaptations, are still really good films, I think. I only have one of the 12, one that I think is unsuccessful. I mean, a lot of them are unsuccessful, but only one that I did that I chose to do, and that's Brigadoon.

[8:24] Geoffrey Block: People shut me off right now. Okay. If you love Brigadoon, I'll explain why at some point. It's not, I don't think it's like a disaster. I think it's not a successful adaptation.

[8:33] Geoffrey Block: And as you say in the book, it has some fantastic sequences in it. It has some wonderful moments. Wonderful moments that as an adaptation, and I'm prepared to explain if we have time.

[8:44] Geoffrey Block: But the biggest shock to people who think that all adaptations are terrible is that four of them I think are actually superior to the stage version. And I make this as a critical argument.

[8:55] Geoffrey Block: So they were improved by this adaptation process. Yeah, actually improved. I'm not putting stage versions down by any means, but I actually think they're improvements.

[9:03] Geoffrey Block: And those are Roberta, which was a Fred Astaire and Jerome Kern film, the only one of their series that was an adaptation. They did mainly original, like Swing Time and Top Hat.

[9:15] Geoffrey Block: Okay. So Roberta, Call Me Madam, which starred Ethel Merman both on stage and film. I think is superior as a film. Silk Stockings, which in the film version stars Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. I think that's an improvement.

[9:29] Geoffrey Block: And finally, Flower Drum Song, which is another musical that's not staged very much anymore. So that's the good news is that actually none of these four musicals you see on stage very often.

[9:40] Geoffrey Block: Next thing in my preface, I have three confessions that I make. Two at the beginning of the preface and two at the other. And I want to share those because that's just the context. And I think there'll be a lot of people in the same confession booth as me.

[9:54] Geoffrey Block: The first was I was born too late. If you think I was born too late, some of you folks are really born too late to see these musicals on stage before you see the film. That's just what happened. You know, because I was born in the late 40s, early 50s, and yet even now I've only seen half of the musicals on stage.

[10:13] Geoffrey Block: I've only seen six out of the 12. It's so interesting because I'm with you there. I've never seen a production of Silk Stockings on stage.

[10:19] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[10:20] Geoffrey Block: There are so many of these. I think I'm unusual. I was in a production of Roberta when I was in college.

[10:25] Geoffrey Block: Okay. So I actually have some experience of that stage production, but I know that's very, very rare.

[10:32] David Armstrong: Yes, yeah, right, right, exactly.

[10:34] Geoffrey Block: Yeah, yeah. My third confession, I've already said it already, but I was saying it was a confession, is that four of the films I think are improvements. To me, that's a big critical confession to make.

[10:43] Geoffrey Block: I think there is a bias against adaptations, no question. And it's true, so many of the major acclaimed films are original, like The Wizard of Oz. It's adapted from a novel, but it's not adapted. It was not on the stage prior to that.

[10:56] David Armstrong: Right.

[10:57] Geoffrey Block: Yeah. Singin' in the Rain. I mean, that's a classic, of course, Band Wagon. Well, Band Wagon was borrowed from original stage, but it doesn't use the stage version except some of the songs.

[11:07] Geoffrey Block: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, that's an original film musical. And then the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, 42nd Street. I mean, so many of the great films that were musicals were originals.

[11:18] Geoffrey Block: And a lot of the adaptations in the 30s, they weren't very good. And they're not shown very much. Show Boat's a real exception in that. And do you think maybe the prejudice started then because the adaptations in the 30s and the 40s were so inferior to the original musicals that were in the world?

[11:35] Geoffrey Block: That's right. So it's interesting. Sondheim is... I love Sondheim. You know, obviously, I mean something. But Sondheim, one of the things that troubles me about Sondheim, and I've written about it, because he was the last man standing, he revised the whole history of the musical to make him at the center.

[11:51] Geoffrey Block: In a way, he is at the center, but the way he puts down West Side's story and things like that are a little bit trouble. I don't think he's the unreliable narrator of history. But what's interesting, he hates all films, film musicals, both original and adaptations. In fact, he was in an interview in 2007. He actually said he thought by then, first he said there were no good adaptations. By 2007, he came across one film adaptation that he liked. That was Sweeney Todd. You know, you know, so that I thought that was okay. I think that's interesting. But there were only three films that he likes that are musicals, and they're all between 1930 and 1932. And though, even though he was born in 1930, he stopped watching musical films after he was two.

I mean, so anyway, and one of them is Love Me Tonight. Which is a great movie. It's a great movie. And it's an original. I mean, obviously. Rogers and Hart, original. And I have a quote: Sondheim is not alone in thinking that stage musicals are for Mars and their film adaptations from Venus. So I'm not arguing with just Sondheim, but with everybody, but he's really articulate about it. He sees them as completely different things. He doesn't acknowledge that both have music, even. I mean, that's a common denominator of the stage musicals and the film musicals. So if you deny that, I think you have a bias. I would say this even if he was alive. So I think there's a bias, and film critics, Janine Beisinger wrote this magnificent book on film musicals and adaptations, except for about two or three, in a 700-page book, are just really put down.

And one of the things that she accuses, and everybody says the problem with these film musicals is they're not cinematic enough. Okay, you ought to I'd like you to jump in on this, dude. I just find that argument so ridiculous. And I think you know, you address that in the book, but they are afraid of the theatricality of a Broadway show. Critics and filmmakers are often, it just scares them to death. And yet when they do it, when somebody just acknowledges that we're going to adapt this form and make it work, it's fantastic. But there is some fear of that. Right. Like Oklahoma, the whole film's filmed outdoors, for goodness sake. You're not going to get that out of it. It's all on location.

Yeah. So okay, so you get the point. But the best film critics for me, the ones that I really admired the most in doing my research, like Altman, for example, he's very good, Rick Altman. He wrote a whole article about the problem with film critics is they see film entirely as visual. And then they don't acknowledge when music can tell a story, too. That's really a serious issue, critical issue. If you don't get the music and the role music can play dramatically, then you're missing things. And there's also a bias among the real elite, old-fashioned elite film critics is that let's face it, once films had sound, forget it. You know? Right. So, you know, that happened in 1927. That's part of the bias.

That's part of the bias is that musical films have sound. So they're less good because they have music and they have sound than if they were just a visual medium where you still have a lot of action movies. You could take the sound away and still understand what was going on. Yes, because it's all made up of visual action. Yeah, good point. The good point. Yeah. Well, one of the things when I was doing my proposal and everything, my editor said, Well, what makes a good adaptation? You're gonna talk about that. Yeah. So what do I think makes a good adaptation? Okay, first of all, there's no set rule. I mean, well, actually, there are commandments. There are some commandments, but aside from that's like artifact, they're not real commandments, okay.

But in other words, you can break the commandments and still be okay. And fidelity is like a big issue in adaptation theory. I found that really interesting how that's evolved. In the beginning, that is in the beginning of the criticism, you wanted faithful adaptations, but now the whole theory is that fidelity is not a guarantee of a good one or a bad one. You know, fidelity is not the main issue, it's not a non-issue, but it's not the main issue. Well, and in fact, in your book, you show us examples of movies that are really faithful and not successful, and movies that veer widely far from the original and are great. Right. Cabaret is like a really good example because that's the least faithful of all my musicals, and it's one of the best.

But it also does a lot of the things, fits a number of other parts of the component of what makes a good adaptation. I discovered in all my travels of reading everything is that I found two critics who basically agree with me, or at least really agree with me. One I really like a lot is Ethan Morden. He's written about 30 books. He's a popular writer, but he's like really the smartest person in the room. I mean, he's a really good critic and he knows everything. He doesn't document like as much as other scholars, but he's really good. And one of his many books is a book called When Broadway Went to Hollywood. And his is a much more comprehensive survey than mine. You know, he deals with dozens of adaptations.

But he's willing to share the idea that there are good adaptations. Another was Richard Berrios, another very good scholar, wrote the book on the silent era. He's written other books on film, but he has a book on the 50 great or must-see films. And he includes a lot of adaptations. And what he says in there about them, he's very understanding about why they make these changes and just the whole notion of adaptation. So those were two people that I cite. But almost everybody else, I mean, there are except you know, there are some other exceptions, but anyway. But these are the commandments. These are Ethan Morton's commandments in the new book. And I added a fourth commandment. The commandments in terms of how you adapt something successfully.

Exactly. The adaptations go into effect. It's interesting, the 1940s, because I'm a classical historian too, and the Baroque was begun on September 1st, 1600. These things are gliding scales because you're going to have non-faithful musicals in the 50s and so on. Right. But in 1949, On the Town is the last major unfaithful musical. The next year, Call Me Madam is the first great faithful music. I mean, basically, the change really came in the 50s. If you look in the musicals in the 40s, are still by and large in the older school of 30s. Well, one of the things that changed though is like Oklahoma's from the 40s, but it was so successful, they didn't film it until the 50s. Likewise, a lot of the musicals that were really good adaptations in the 50s are really from the 40s as stage works.

Well, in fact, Oklahoma and On the Town are on stage at the same time. That's right. Good point. But one gets made a lot earlier than the other, a very different idea from the studio to how to do that. Can we back up for a second and talk about that? Okay, sure. If that's okay. Absolutely. Or do you want to do the commandments? We skipped the commandments. Yeah, let's do the commandments. Yeah, yeah. Thou shalt cast by talent rather than by fame. The film musicals before you picked your star. Now they could be good singers like Ben Crosby, but they're chosen because they're a star, not because they were a stage star. And Ethel Merman is a really good example of that because she was a stage star.

We'll get into Anything Goes in a few minutes, but she was cast on the movie. But when she was cast of the movie, they cut most of her songs and gave them all to Ben Crosby. That kind of thing. Because he's a movie star. She was not a movie star. So that's one. So rather talent by fame, if practical, with the original Broadway star. And that was one of the reasons things changed. Ethel Merman stars in Call Me Madam. You have in the 50s. Rex Harrison. Rex Harrison. That's great. Yeah. Rex Harrison. Oh, yeah. So many of the. They're not all. Like Oklahoma, the movie didn't cast stars. You don't need to do this. These are commandments, you know, take the greatest hole. Second one is thou shalt retain the original narrative structure and all or most of the score without interpolations.

An interpolation is a song by somebody else. It could be by you too, but it's normally was a song written by somebody else. In Anything Goes, a good chunk of the songs in the film were written by somebody else, not by Cole Porter. And so that changed. There's a really good reason. Well, get to the reason. There's really good reasons why it changed. And fine, all right, thou mayest interpolate, but thou shalt let the original creators make the new numbers. So in Call Me Madam, there are two interpolations, but both are by Irving Berlin. Right. So that's okay. And that's Cabaret. Candor and Ebb wrote all the new songs in Cabaret. So even though it's not faithful, you know, it still takes that thing.

My fourth commandment is thou mayest transform a singing character into a dancing one, but only if the metamorphosis dramatically credible and enhances the narrative and music. And this was where Brigadoon comes in. Because, okay, in Silk Stockings, the original woman, Nanachka, the woman who played Nanachka, was not a dancer. And neither was the leading Donamichi was not a dancer either, right? Right, exactly. Yes. Okay. But Reuben Mamoulian, who was also the director of Oklahoma and Carousel and Portuguese Bess, you know, he and Flow Me Tonight, like a major, major director. This is his last film, Silk Stockings. It's the last of everybody's The Last Fred of Stair, the last Sutherese, the last Cole Porter, the last Ruben Mamoulian.

And he wanted to make this a dance musical. He picked a stair and Sitch Sitcherist. He thought they were the greatest dancers of their era and still good and really ready to go. His challenge, he didn't want to do this unless there was a reason why Sitcherese wanted to dance in the first place. So he created a backstory, simple one that she used to be a ballerina in the Russian ballet, which of course Sutcherese was too, in real life. She that was dormant because she became, you know, a zealot for the communist regime. And Fred Asteri is going to bring that out of her, and she has to dance. So she dances a dance to silk stockings, which was a song in the stage, and now is a dance. In Brigadoon, still Citirese, she's still a dancer.

You're in the Scottish Highlands in the middle of nowhere, and you've got this woman, you know, who hasn't even been outside for a hundred years, and she has total mastery of you know classical choreography. And why is she dancing in the first place? Who knows? That to me is not great. So even though the dancing is great, okay, go on. I have a slightly different take on that. Although I think the effect you're describing is exactly right. The dancing in the movie of Brigadoon is much less successful than the dancing in the movie of Silk Stockings, even though some of the dancing is fantastic in Brigadoon. For me, none of those characters are dancing just like they're not singing. The dancing is an expression of their emotions and a musicalization of the story and the emotions.

When they sing Heather on the Hill, those characters are not singing. They don't think they're singing. Yeah. And in fact, I don't think they're dancing when they dance either. That is just the expression of their emotions. Yeah. So they have no reason, yeah. But movies are very literal, so sometimes that's very hard for audiences to. We somehow will accept that with the singing. And even there it bothers people. They try to make everything talk about diegetic or non-diegetic songs, which I won't get into that now, but I've rejected those terms in my teaching. I use acknowledged and unacknowledged. Okay. Oh, oh, right. Yeah. And then no student ever asked me again what it means. When I use diegetic and non-diegetic, I have to explain it for about 10 weeks.

I don't know if you notice it right. You had a few paragraphs about that. Absolutely, because it's so confusing and it's used so many different ways for different scholars. But anyway, I feel like the dancing in Brigadoon is also unacknowledged, just the way the singing is unacknowledged. The other issue with the dancing component, uh, and this is a you know matter of taste, and directors have to make these decisions, but in Oklahoma, a lot depends on how important you think the original choreography is.

[23:38] Geoffrey Block: When you do Oklahoma, you don't usually cut, you know, half the songs. I mean, usually you do most of the songs. Up until recently, until recent productions, if you did Oklahoma, you were likely to use Agnes DeMille's choreography.

[23:50] David Armstrong: Right.

[23:51] Geoffrey Block: And that's what the film does, the film version of Oklahoma, and it's really effective. Maybe if you're making a new film now, maybe you wouldn't do it. But in 1955, it was a very successful thing. Agnes DeMille also was the choreographer of Brigadoon because Gene Kelly actually had some issues with Agnes DeMille just in general. Plus, he was the dancer, and that's why he was chosen to do this whole thing in the first place. He and the director, Vincent Minnelli, rejected the dancing of Agnes DeMille, which was considered a high point of the stage work. Even though the dancing is, you know, really good, it doesn't really relate to Brigadoon very much. You know, it does a little bit.

[24:26] David Armstrong: Right.

[24:26] Geoffrey Block: And partly that's because they flipped the two singing leads into dancing leads.

[24:31] David Armstrong: That's right.

[24:31] Geoffrey Block: In the original, it was the supporting leads who all danced, but now they don't have any reason to dance because the leads are doing the dancing.

[24:38] David Armstrong: Right.

[24:38] Geoffrey Block: The issue of converting dancers to singers, singers to dancers. I mean, On the Town is full of that, but even the four musicals that are, I think, the most successful, in every case, they converted at least one major character to a dancer.

[24:52] ♪ Musical number ♪

[25:12] David Armstrong: Welcome back to Broadway Nation.

[25:24] Geoffrey Block: The original Roberta male, the one who became Fred Astaire, there were two characters. One was a singer, one was a dancer. In the film, they combined it into one. And of course, there was no Ginger Rogers or no equivalent to Ginger Rogers. So then you want to feature them. So you create opportunities and even different contexts and a couple original songs.

[25:43] ♪ Musical number ♪

[26:01] David Armstrong: Don't go away, Geoffrey.

[26:02] David Armstrong: Geoffrey and I will be back right after this quick break.

[26:12] David Armstrong: Let's go back now to pre-Oklahoma. For Broadway fans like myself, one of the most frustrating and disappointing things you can do is I want to see get as close to the original production of, let's say, Anything Goes as I possibly can. And the movies are usually no help in that regard. Why? Why were the movies so different than the original Broadway productions?

[26:35] Geoffrey Block: Okay, that's just like a great question. And I addressed that a lot in the opening chapter, and I use Anything Goes as sort of a sample. It's not one of my 12, but it's just such a really good example. Before the 1950s, we've already agreed that's really the turning point, with some exceptions. These films all grew up during what's known as the studio system. MGM is the most famous, but there are about four or five other companies that produced a lot of musicals, and they really produced a lot of musicals. So to answer the question, we have to do a little bit about what the studio system was. I mean, you've all heard of studios, but the studio system now is really different than what it used to be.

It's not now. And the studio system was like the MGM was like a whole city. I mean, basically. Well, you think of all the things that you need to do to produce a film. I'll use MGM because it's like a really good example. It does everything. And what I mean by everything, well, they hire the directors, they hire the screenwriters, they hire, of course, all the actors who belong to them. Under contract to them. Like the early baseball days when you know you couldn't trade yourself from a team. So you had these contracts. And for musicals, they also had studio composers. They were even had publishing companies. Going beyond all that, and this is the really big thing, is they owned the theaters.

They were production and distribution. Sound like a monopoly? Well, the Supreme Court eventually thought so in 1948. But it took over 10 years to take into effect, you know, sort of like Brown vs. Board of Education. You know, it was decided in 54, but it took years to take into effect. Okay. So that's the starting point for all of this. Another thing is that this is true for both stage and film. And this did not change in the 50s, is that films it's a commercial business, the goal of which is to entertain customers, but to generate income. The simple answer is in the 30s, being unfaithful was profitable. More profitable than being faithful. And that's what changed. And that's because they could put songs into these movies that they got all the money from, as opposed to sharing it with Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, or whoever had written the stage version.

And just as Ethel Merman was slighted, Cole Porter was slighted. They cut a lot of his songs, and they were right because he was not as commercial. His songs were considered in his day too sophisticated for the film. Sort of a specialty product, in a way.

[28:59] David Armstrong: Yes.

[28:59] Geoffrey Block: And so they cut a lot of his songs, and they knew that the studio composers songs would be more popular. And the most popular songs in the 30s from films are all by these Richard Rogers, has only one or two. He doesn't have the top five of the most popular film songs. And he was extraordinarily popular on the stage. And then eventually he became popular on film too. That's what changed.

[29:23] David Armstrong: But what's interesting is those songs have mostly not lasted, but the stage songs have lasted.

[29:28] Geoffrey Block: That's right. That's right.

[29:29] David Armstrong: I can't even name these songs that are in the movie if Anything Goes.

[29:32] Geoffrey Block: Yeah, I know.

[29:33] David Armstrong: That aren't the Cole Porter ones.

[29:35] Geoffrey Block: No, it's interesting. And they're all given to Bing Crosby. When was Hoagie Carmichael? Sailor Beware. That's as good as a Cole Porter song, in my opinion. I mean, not saying it's better, but I think it's comparable.

[29:45] David Armstrong: They can be.

[29:46] Geoffrey Block: Some of the songwriters were really good. I know what you mean. I didn't know them until I really got to know the film. And also you don't even see the film much anymore. It's hard to get.

[29:55] David Armstrong: Have you seen the film?

[29:56] Geoffrey Block: I have seen that film, but it's so hard to watch. Because it's just no disappointing. Especially if what you want is to see Ethel Merman in Anything Goes. You don't get to do that. She does 20 seconds of Anything Goes at the beginning. One chorus of I Get a Kick Out of You, but You're the Top with Bing Crosby, they do that because that's both of them.

[30:15] ♪ Musical number ♪

[30:36] Geoffrey Block: You're the top.

[30:39] David Armstrong: You're just saying that.

[30:41] Geoffrey Block: You're the swanny river.

[30:43] David Armstrong: You're the top.

[30:43] Geoffrey Block: You're a V8 flipper.

[30:46] David Armstrong: You're the buttons that rove when the wind has snowed ripped on.

[30:51] David Armstrong: You're Carolina.

[30:52] Geoffrey Block: You're Santa Claus.

[30:50] Geoffrey Block: You're the walls of China.

[30:56] David Armstrong: Make more.

[30:58] Geoffrey Block: You're a knight.

[30:58] David Armstrong: In the streets of Cairo.

[31:03] Geoffrey Block: You're a lion.

[31:05] David Armstrong: In an autogyro.

[31:05] Geoffrey Block: I'm the lazy hound that hangs around the shower.

[31:11] David Armstrong: But a baby on the bottom.

[31:13] Geoffrey Block: So that's the reason these movies are so unfaithful and so disappointing to us today. Because it made more sense for the studio. There was a way to make more money and showcase the stars they had under contract, as opposed to Ethel Merman, who was a sort of novelty to bring this Broadway star and put her in the movie, but that's not where their focus was. That's not where their bread and butter was.

[31:35] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[31:35] Geoffrey Block: They took a chance with her in Call Me Madam, and I think it really paid off. That's really, if you want to see Ethel Merman at her best. The other thing is about why it happened, there are other reasons too. One of the big things that started happening in the 40s is that musicals had longer runs.

[31:49] David Armstrong: Yeah, Oklahoma's the classic example and ran for so many years.

[31:52] Geoffrey Block: More than twice as long as any show that ever ran before it.

[31:55] David Armstrong: Absolutely.

[31:56] Geoffrey Block: And so in the 30s, you can make your money back in a few months. And so it was easier to produce a show. I mean, just in general. It wasn't thought of as something that was going to be a lasting thing, in part because they didn't make cast albums.

[32:08] David Armstrong: Right.

[32:09] Geoffrey Block: And that's one of your things that makes that change in the 50s is the cast album. So if you're in the 50s, imagine you've been listening all your life to a successful cast album, one of the first. Oklahoma's a great example because that cast album comes out what in 1943.

[32:24] David Armstrong: Right.

[32:25] Geoffrey Block: By the time they make the movie, which is 1955, there's more than a decade of everyone having heard that cast album over and over and all those songs on the hit parade and all that kind of stuff.

[32:36] David Armstrong: Yeah, and those days, the Rogers and Hammerstein's Broadway shows, their music was the hit parade. So by the time they make this movie, they know the audience is going to be disappointed if they don't hear Poor Judd is Dead or any of these songs that are part of it because they know that's what this show is.

[32:53] Geoffrey Block: And they know the story too. So they want to keep a lot of the dialogue and they want to keep the basic narrative structure, and of course the songs and the characters absolutely are embedded because they're so dramatized by the songs. Whereas back in the 30s, Anything Goes is most famous as a title more than anything else. So really what they're buying is the title.

[33:13] David Armstrong: Right.

[33:13] Geoffrey Block: And they're going to make a movie called Anything Goes, and everyone coming to see it will think they're seeing Anything Goes because they don't have any of these other reference points.

[33:20] David Armstrong: Are you just now talking about the one that when they made in the 50s?

[33:23] Geoffrey Block: Well, no, I was talking about the original, but Oh, you could have been, because they made it an Anything Goes in the 50s, which also cut the songs.

[33:30] David Armstrong: Totally, and has a bunch of other songs by other people and a plot that's it's actually on an ocean liner, but that's about the only thing it has to do with the original.

[33:38] Geoffrey Block: During this 1930s, 40s era leading up to the 50s, for some reason, one composer is sort of exempted from this, and that's Jerome Kern. He has not only Show Boat, but several other shows that you talk about that are treated very faithfully and very completely. Does that have something to do with Jerome Kern, or is it just happens to be a lucky coincidence?

[34:01] David Armstrong: Yeah, it's a lot of things.

[34:02] Geoffrey Block: But I think it has a lot to do with Kern. I don't feel like I have a definitive answer at all. But it wasn't anything contractual that he had some contract that was different than no, actually, no. He had influence, and well, he was very popular. You know, the songs are very popular. And there are a lot of films, so there are a lot that aren't faithful. But he has the highest percentage by long shot of anybody in terms of how few songs are cut, relatively speaking.

[34:29] David Armstrong: Is it perhaps because his shows were already starting to be more integrated than the other writers?

[34:35] Geoffrey Block: Yeah, I think that's I think that's part of it.

[34:37] David Armstrong: So they were harder to cut and harder to change.

[34:37] Geoffrey Block: But Show Boat was like Oklahoma. They had to cut a lot of the score, and they added some songs for Paul Robeson, but they kept the trajectory. They changed the ending. That's absolutely true. But they didn't think the ending was good to begin with. Hammerstein and Kern were unhappy with the ending on Broadway. And Hammerstein got to write the screenplay for the film, Show Boat. That's one of the reasons why Show Boat's an exception. So I have a chapter on three Kern films. Show Boat makes the most sense in a way. Roberta makes sense because people thought it was a great score, you know, and it's a Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers film.

[35:12] Geoffrey Block: And so those songs, it was like an original film. So if it was an original film, they'd get to do all the songs. So why not in a stage, you know, an adaptation? Cat and the Fiddle starred Jeanette McDonald at the peak of her fame, but it transitioned phase from she starred in a lot of the films with Maurice Chevalier. Love Me Tonight, really early great films. And then afterwards, she did a whole series of really popular films with Nelson Eddy. But this is the only one she did with Navarro, and it got lost in the shuffle. But as an adaptation, they just said, okay, Kern, these are great songs. She didn't say yes, she didn't say no. He wanted to stay. She thought he should go. She wasn't so sure that he'd be good.

She wasn't even sure that she'd be good. She wanted to rest, all coddled and breath. So coyly she took one sly little look. Make something a walker, smile inside. Uh-huh. The gallant beating wild inside. So what does she do? I leave it to you. She did just what you do too. It was a big success. In fact, Cat in the Fiddle was another really big success on Broadway.

[36:27] David Armstrong: Talk to us a little bit about because I think even very ardent aficionados of Broadway like myself. Cat and the Fiddle is one of these shows we just do not know very well, either as the stage version or as the film version, and both of them are big hits.

[36:41] Geoffrey Block: That's right. We're sort of answering the question away because the three that were the most faithful all had other kinds of things that would make them strong. And Cat and the Fiddle, we don't think of as a big success. It's never been revived on stage. And nobody knows the film because it was a poorly made thing, and it just never got marketed, and nobody knows Navarro. Well, we think of him as a silent movie star, not as a singer. Yeah, yeah. And so one of the things about the film that's interesting, that it's a really interesting film. It's faithful in the sense that it uses a tremendous amount of the songs, but it changes the dramatic context, which you know that's a no-no later on. So they make a film that really makes sense for a film that ends with the big stage production at the end. So they change the context. But the story is very much the same, but the context of the songs changes.

[37:34] David Armstrong: Right.

[37:34] Geoffrey Block: And another thing that's really unusual about the stage version of Cat and the Fiddle, we're gonna use the word diegetic, is that the characters they know they're singing the song. They have the awareness that they're singing the song. I don't think there's been a single any musical that's been more diegetic than the stage version of Cat and the Fiddle. Because it's really extraordinary.

[37:53] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[37:53] Geoffrey Block: And that was on purpose, if I understood what you wrote correctly, because the two leading characters are both composers. The female lead and the male lead are both composers. One is sort of a pop composer, one is a more classical composer. So most of the songs are songs they've written as being composers.

[38:17] ♪ Musical number ♪

[39:47] David Armstrong: And in a way, this was sort of an experiment. Do you think that the authors were let's try to write a show where we make all the songs.

[39:53] Geoffrey Block: Yeah, what I would call acknowledged.

[39:55] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[39:55] Geoffrey Block: And they went with it and it worked, which is very different than what Kern was doing in Show Boat, where there are, you know, acknowledged or diegetic songs, but a lot of them are book songs, are songs that the characters don't know they're singing.

[40:08] David Armstrong: Right.

[40:08] Geoffrey Block: Musicalized dialogue. And so even though they're in different contexts, they're still diegetic in the screen version.

[40:14] David Armstrong: Right.

[40:15] Geoffrey Block: Which is fascinating to me. And the very end of the Cat in the Fiddle film version is quite interesting. It's the first time in a musical film that any of it's in color. Color was real expensive and really unusual. Technicolor. And there's what a like a 10-minute technicolor sequence at the end of that. And they perform the show that they created.

[40:33] David Armstrong: I see.

[40:33] Geoffrey Block: You get to see the show and all of a sudden it comes alive in color.

[40:36] David Armstrong: Right.

[40:37] Geoffrey Block: And this brings up the one thing. Most scholarly books, well, I should say that's probably you're gonna not want to read the book anymore. No, I mean my book is a scholarly book, but it's you know meant to be accessible. In academic books, the photos tend to be exclusively in black and white. And I remember, you know, I was asking my editor saying, you know, I'm gonna talk this up. This is the first time you can see this in color, you know. You have to have a black and white film. My publisher agreed to have the color films in color. That's one of the things I'm happiest about. Because I'm so used to seeing screenshots of color films and black and white.

[41:10] David Armstrong: And yeah, we all are. Yeah, let me just finish up with Cat in the Fiddle. This is a movie that I get the impression you recommend that people who interested in Broadway who don't know this are missing something.

[41:21] Geoffrey Block: Yes. I do think I'd rather see the stage version, but I'm not going to, or maybe I will someday. Who knows? But probably not.

[41:28] David Armstrong: Right.

[41:28] Geoffrey Block: But since we don't have that, this gives you a sense you could really tell this is a really great musical. So that's a high recommendation in itself. And then Roberta is much more familiar to us. I think, as you said, because it's an Astaire Rogers movie, so it became more famous to begin with. And that was part of that series that has remained so legendary in a way, just because those movies are so damn good. I've always found it interesting that those RKO movies, they're so brilliant at making that series of musicals, but then they aren't really famous for musicals outside of that. But for some reason, that was their sort of sweet spot. And this is one of the ones that you think was improved by being adapted for the movies. Talk about that, because I'm sure that's somewhat controversial.

[42:11] Geoffrey Block: One of them we mentioned earlier was the choice, the decision, to turn two characters into one. One was an actor and one was a singer. And one of them was played by Bob Hope originally.

[42:20] David Armstrong: Yes, Bob Hope on stage.

[42:22] Geoffrey Block: Right, exactly. That's one thing. Then create a whole new relationship with Ginger Rogers, how they met and they knew each other, when that went, and all that stuff. And that they're entertainers trying to make it into these clubs, you know, that kind of stuff. The other thing that's interesting because we've been talking about diegetic musicals. They also made all the songs diegetic and in really interesting ways. So every song is either a rehearsal for something, an audition, then a performance, even like "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," which was a totally extraneous context on stage. So they've turned everything into some version of a performance or rehearsal for a performance. And then the songs that are added are really great.

You know, "I Won't Dance." So Kern is the composer of the new songs, but instead of working with his previous lyricist, he works with Dorothy Fields. And they win the Academy Award. Not for that movie, but they in that same period, they win the Academy Award.

[43:17] David Armstrong: The next year they did a whole musical to two of them.

[43:19] Geoffrey Block: Swing Time.

[43:20] David Armstrong: Swing Time, yeah.

[43:21] Geoffrey Block: Yeah, Swing Time. Swing Time has a fine romance. So even though it's not an adaptation, to me, the idea of the refined romance is it's literally a romance between Broadway and Hollywood.

[43:31] David Armstrong: A rocky romance, a rocky, yeah.

[43:34] Geoffrey Block: As the lyrics to the song, as Dorothy Fields' lyrics are, that romance is troubled throughout. And this romance between Broadway and Hollywood is a troubled rocky relationship.

[43:44] David Armstrong: Including some moments of infidelity.

[43:46] Geoffrey Block: Yes.

[43:57] ♪ Musical number: "A Fine Romance" ♪

[44:32] David Armstrong: On the next episode of Broadway Nation, Geoffrey and I will return with discussions of Cabin in the Sky, On the Town, Brigadoon, and more as we continue our conversation about his new book, A Fine Romance: Adapting Broadway to Hollywood in the Studio System Era. Now here's the information about how you too can become a patron of Broadway Nation. A donation of just seven dollars a month will not only keep Broadway Nation rolling along, it will also provide you with exclusive access to the complete unedited versions of many of the interviews that you hear on this podcast. And all patrons will receive special shout-outs and acknowledgments of your vital support for Broadway Nation. To join, simply go to Broadway Nation Podcast.

That's Broadway Nation Podcast dot S-U-P-R-C-A-S-T. Or click the link in the show notes to this episode. Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

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