comic-strip musicals ranked (you thought "Annie" was the only one?)
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• The Monday, February 1 class will watch and discuss several clips from the show, analyzing the lyrics, music, plot, characterizations, and more. Why did this become such a beloved show?
• I’ve uploaded a video TO MY YouTube channel showing clips from three comic-strip musicals (see below), focusing on how they are structured.
• This Weekly Blast ranks five comic-strip shows with significant Broadway runs, RANTs about a beloved but over-hyped song from South Pacific, and RAVEs about the first show I ever saw (Annie was the second) and its amazingly well-cast actress playing its villain.
Annie isn’t the only comic-strip musical to hit Broadway. Five that ran on Broadway since the 1950s are ranked here:
FIVE: Doonesbury (1983) was a hot (see its TIME cover), highly political comic strip back in the 1980s when creator Garry Trudeau took a leave of absence to write a Doonesbury musical. He shouldn’t have. While his composer Elizabeth Swados did a passable job, Trudeau had no business writing the lyrics, which are frequently clunky and sometimes just plain bad. The show’s book was a self-evident vanity project. It unfairly assumed viewers knew the backstories of its characters. Finally, there’s only a little politics in Doonesbury the musical, whereas the political content is the center of the success of Doonesbury the comic strip. A denuded comic-strip show was destined to fail artistically and commercially.
FOUR: Li’l Abner (1956) was based on a long-running satirical strip set in Dogpatch, USA. It’s characters are vividly drawn, there are several good show tunes (check out “Namely You”), and the silly plot is fun to watch unfold: the government declares Dogpatch the most unnecessary town in America, and it will be the target of an atomic bomb test unless the town can prove it’s useful. The solution (sorry): a potion that makes men like the title character formidably strong. The problem here is the politics: the show traffics in stereotypes about poor white “Hillbillies,” and the praise for an (admittedly incompetent) Confederate general is cringeworthy. Jubilation T. Cornpone (whose statue is on stage!) gets gently criticized for his repeated ineptness, not his support for an immoral cause. One more thing: a show that starts with a muscular guy uninterested in the opposite sex reads differently today than it did 65 years ago.
THREE: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1967) brings the Peanuts gang to life in a series of vivid sketches with some great tunes (“Beethoven Day,” “My New Philosophy,” and especially “Happiness” are terrific). Sometimes starring actual kids and sometimes adults playing kids, the show brings viewers back to the wide-eyed age when “two kinds of ice cream” and “learning to whistle” are the kind of happiness matched only by a warm puppy.
TWO: The Addams Family (2010) was a relatively successful Broadway book musical with likable (but weird) characters drawn from the Addams Family comic strips, TV show, and movies. The songs are entertaining: “When You’re an Addams,” “Crazier Than You,” and “Let’s Not Talk About Anything Else But Love” are great, but the “I Want” Song “Pulled” is truly inspired. The plot is “La Cage Aux Folles with cobwebs” - an engaged daughter asks her family to be normal for one night when her future in-laws come to visit. Guess what? Hilarity ensues. It’s no wonder this has been the most widely performed high school musical for nearly a decade.
ONE: It won’t surprise you that Annie (1978) gets the top slot. Each song propels the plot, and you either love the characters or love to hate them. Annie has not one but two “I Want” songs (“Maybe” and the classic “Tomorrow”) and two great villain songs (“Little Girls” and the truly wicked “Easy Street”). The optimism of a plucky Depression-era orphan has been moving audiences since the show’s debut more than 40 years ago, or really since the conic strip first appeared 97 years ago. The show fuels the fantasies of A) kids who want parents, B) non-wealthy people who want a “Queen for a Day” experience, and C) little girls who want their Big Broadway Break.
There are still FREE spots available for Monday’s class about Annie. Sign up now, because we won’t be distributing more than 1,000 free tickets. The classes are at Noon and 8 pm ET on February 1.
The homework for this week’s class is to watch the clips video below and consider if having seen all or parts of those comic-strip Broadway shows, if there are any strips you want to go back and read.
Put your answer in the comments below the video at YouTube and we’ll respond. (And feel free to respond to each other, too!)
“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” - at the heart of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific - is widely considered one of the most poignant anti-racist songs in the Broadway canon. Despite some questionable lyrics (“whose eyes are oddly made”), Lt. Cable sings the song in frustration of not being able to marry a Tonkinese girl, and sympathy with Nellie Forbush’s discomfort with Emile De Becque’s children, who are half-Pacific Islander.
The problem? It’s not true.
Racist children are rarely sat down and given instructions on how “to hate and fear.” They learn from the models the people around them present, and their acquisition of racism takes place at a very young age, before they are carefully taught anything – as studies of black and white dolls has demonstrated.
It’s a comforting thought – just stop teaching racism and it will go away.
Again, the problem? It’s not true.
Annie was the show that made me fall in love with Broadway, when I first saw it at age 7 in the summer of 1978 at St. Louis’s Muny outdoor theater.
But that actually wasn’t my first experience as a budding Broadwaynik.
I don’t remember it well, but when I was four years old, I got a real treat, at a Muny performance of The Wizard of Oz in 1975. I remember nothing about it other than my parents telling me that the “real witch” would be on stage.
I did not understand that they were referring to Margaret Hamilton, the performer who donned the green makeup of the Wicked Witch in the beloved 1939 film.
Since witches are “old and ugly” (thanks, Dorothy) and Hamilton was only 37 when the film was released, she was able to play the character for the rest of her long life. She portrayed the evil hag at The Muny three times: in 1957, 1962, and 1975.
Four years ago, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the plucky-orphan musical, 19 former Annies reunited to compare notes - and sing. They ranged in age from the first Annie, Andrea McArdle (now 57 years old) to the most recent Broadway Annie, Taylor Richardson (now 19). A bonus: Sarah Jessica Parker (the third Annie in the original run) shares memories as well.
Many of the grown-up actresses are wearing “Annie Red” to honor the show’s 40th anniversary. The four generations of Annies end the segment by singing - what else? - “Tomorrow.”
Tuesday, January 26 Contemporary Jewish Broadway (Noon ET, ALL-ACCESS Passholders ONLY)
Wednesday, January 27 Carole King 101 (8 pm ET) and Debbie Friedman 101 (9 pm ET)
Thursday, January 28 History of Mel Brooks Parts One and Two (8-10 pm ET) *repeat from January 21
Monday, February 1 Annie (Noon and 8 pm ET)
Thursday, February 4 Disney’s Jews (Noon ET, with special guests)
Monday, February 8 Mary Poppins (Noon and 8 pm ET)
Thursday, February 11 Voice Actors (Noon ET)
Monday, February 15 Wicked (Noon and 8 pm ET)
Thursday, February 18 Roy Lichtenstein (Noon ET)
Monday, February 22 Hairspray (Noon and 8 pm ET)
Tuesday, February 23 The Wizard of Oz (Noon ET, ALL-ACCESS Passholders ONLY)
Thursday, February 25 Schoolhouse Rock (Noon ET)
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