This is the monthly FREE issue of The Broadway Maven’s Weekly Blast for August. For a full weekly subscription ($36/year), press this button:
Shalom!
This week, The Broadway Maven looks at Anything Goes:
• On Monday, August 9 at Noon and 8 pm ET, there will be a FREE Zoom class exploring that Jazz Age-era show. Register here. No Thursday class this week.
• My latest video is a fill-in-the-lyrics quiz about Broadway shows set in high schools.
• This Weekly Blast looks at some of the coded gay lyrics in Cole Porter’s songs; RAVES about a student’s moving memory of a Phantom performance; presents last week’s excellent interview with Thoroughly Modern Millie creator Dick Scanlan; and links to a YouTube GEM with a beloved female crooner singing a Cole Porter medley at the 1965 Academy Awards ceremony.
“Each night I’m getting queerer…” (from Cole Porter’s “Nobody’s Chasing Me”)
Famously, Cole Porter’s lyrics contained lots of sexual innuendo, often of the homosexual sort. “You’re the Top” is an obvious example. Its reference to “the top” and “the bottom” evoke (to those in the know) a kind of bedroom engineering.
Porter's lyric for "A Picture of Me Without You" from Jubilee (1935) includes "picture Central Park without a sailor,” which would whoosh by straight listeners but which winks at people who know what gay cruising is.
Then there’s “Tom, Dick, or Harry” from Kiss Me Kate. Not only does the song repeatedly punctuate the word “Dick” with a strong beat, at one point the lyric goes “Any Harry (hairy?), Dick or Tom.“ But by hiding his playful (or gross, depending on your perspective) lyrics behind common phrases like “Tom, Dick, and Harry” he could “dog-whistle” his listeners who shared his savvy.
One interesting analogy: Whenever Porter penned romantic songs that were arguably just “straight,” he was not all that different than Irving Berlin writing “White Christmas.” Adam Gopnik explains his analysis thus in the New Yorker: what Berlin and Porter were doing was that “the outsider’s triumph was to own the insider’s material.”
Marcie Kramer: I saw an amazing performance of Phantom of the Opera on Broadway in the summer of 2008. The songs moved me like no other - incredible voices (Ben Crawford as the Phantom and Meghan Picerno as Christine). I distinctly remember the incredible set that was eye popping for the elaborate gowns and sweeping staircase in the Masquerade sequence, the subterranean gondola and the moving chandelier. Songs like "The Phantom of the Opera" with Christine hitting the high shattering note and the haunting "The Point of No Return" are but of a few of the stunning numbers. The story and music throughout the show was so engaging uplifting at times, sad at others. The actors evoked feelings of passion and sadness. By the end of the performance I was sobbing for the Phantom and his heartbreak. Such an emotionally moving show!
Many students who attended last Monday’s interview with Thoroughly Modern Millie creator Dick Scanlan said he was the best guest yet. Here is the interview, unedited because it is so near-perfect:
One of America’s finest singers tackles the music of one of America’s finest songwriters. ‘Nuff said.
On Monday, The Broadway Maven examines the words, lyrics, and themes in Broadway’s 1930s madcap romp-at-sea, Anything Goes. How does the show represent pre-Oklahoma Broadway? How has it evolved in its various revivals? Could it be made today?
Register: bitly.com/MavenAnything
For the Anything Goes class, watch the video below, which will help you identify and appreciate “List Songs” like the ones Cole Porter wrote.
What other list songs can you think of? Put your answers in the comments.
I’m discussing with AACI Travel the idea of a seven-to-ten-day kosher Broadway tour in March 2022 in which I would be the educator in residence. We would both learn about and see several shows and enjoy New York. Sample activities would include a backstage tour and guest speakers who created some of Broadway’s best.
Please let me know your level of interest by answering a quick question at this page. (If you’ve already answered the one-question survey, no need to do so again).
Note: links to register for ALL classes are ALWAYS available at TheBroadwayMaven.com.
Monday, August 9 Anything Goes (FREE, Noon and 8 pm ET)
Monday, August 16 Bye Bye Birdie (FREE, Noon and 8 pm ET)
Monday, August 23 Rodgers and Hart (FREE, Noon and 8 pm ET)
Thursday, September 9 Rodgers and Hammerstein (FREE, Noon and 8 pm ET)
-David Benkof, The Broadway Maven
if love affairs you like, with young bears you like...why no body will oppose....
I thought that you would mention "Unlucky at love," with an open gay reference.