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for actress-dancer Eleanor Powell and her co-
star James Stewart as the Broadway-bound Nora
Paige and the lovelorn sailor Ted Barker. A Navy
submarine reaches port a er a long stint at sea.
e famous actress Lucy James (Virginia Bruce)
boards the sub to welcome the sailors home.
When Ted returns her escaped Pekingese puppy,
Lucy falls in love, later confessing her feelings in
“I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
e dance duo
Georges and Jalna later o ered a sensual ball-
room interpretation of the song as Ted and Lucy
watch from the gallery. “I’ve Got You Under My
Skin” was nominated for the Academy Award
for Best Original Song in
and became one
of Frank Sinatra’s signature songs.
Kiss Me, Kate
was the greatest achievement of
Porter’s stage career, evenmore remarkable since
it came a er seven straight theatrical ops. Bel-
la Spewack, with assistance from her husband
Samuel, loosely adapted William Shakespeare’s
e Taming of the Shrew
for the libretto. Musical
numbers included the rousing “Another Op’nin’,
Another Show,” the pensive “So in Love,” and the
bravura lament over lost bachelor days “Where
Is the Life that Late I Led?”
Kiss Me, Kate
opened
on Broadway on December ,
, and ran for
,
performances.
IRVING BERLIN (1888–1989)
“Anything You Can Do” from
Annie Get Your
Gun
Jerome Kern originally committed to writing
a musical comedy to a book by Dorothy and
Herbert Fields inspired by a story of a drunk-
en sailor who had returned from a day at Coney
Island, his chest still lined with marksmanship
medals from World War II. Dorothy’s imagi-
nation sparked: “And as if out of the sky, from
heaven, comes this idea—Annie Oakley, the
sharpshooter! With Ethel Merman to play her!
… It was the only time in my life an idea came
absolutely from God.”
ree days a er accept-
ing the assignment, Kern su ered a catastrophic
cerebral hemorrhage while walking to the drug
store to get a prescription lled. With assistance
from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein
II, the Fields quickly identifying a composer
worthy of lling Kern’s shoes—the celebrated
master of the stage Irving Berlin. Joshua Logan,
Berlin’s collaborator on
is Is the Army
, was
hired as director.
Berlin composed between his home in New
York City and a hideaway in the Catskills, n-
ishing the score in approximately two months.
Toward the end of the compositional process,
Logan recommended the addition of another
duet between Annie and the marksman Frank
Butler (Ray Middleton was cast in the role) in
the second act to balance their touching rst-act
love duet, “ ey Say It’s Wonderful.” Jumping
at the chance to compose another song, Berlin
asked whether it should be a quarrel or chal-
lenge song. “Challenge” was the consensus. Lo-
gan took a taxi to his apartment a few minutes
away. e phone rang moments a er he arrived.
Berlin had completed the chorus of “Anything
You Can Do.” Within more minutes, he had
nished the entire song.
ROBERT WRIGHT (1914–2005)
“And
is Is My Beloved” from
Kismet
Composer Robert Wright and lyricist George
Forrest began working together as teenagers,
scoring early successes with their lm adapta-
tions of musicals, among them Rudolf Friml’s
e Fire y
( ), Victor Herbert’s
Sweethearts
( ), and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s
I Married an Angel
(
). e songwriting duo
later turned their attention to Broadway, creat-
ing original musicals based on classical compo-
sitions by Edvard Grieg, Serge Rachmanino ,
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Camille Saint-Saëns, and
Alexander Borodin.
Kismet
, their Borodin-inspired score, opened
at Broadway’s Ziegfeld eater on December ,
, amid a newspaper strike in New York City.
Despite the absence of critical reviews, the musi-
cal enjoyed a successful run of
performanc-
es. e story is set in Baghdad during the times
of the
,
Arabian Nights
. Hit numbers include
“Stranger in Paradise,” “Baubles, Bangles, and
Beads,” and “And
is Is My Beloved,” the last
including music from Borodin’s
Prince Igor
and
String Quartet No. and sung by the Caliph
about his future bride.
Kismet
received a Tony
Award for Best Musical Score ( ), an honor
bestowed upon Borodin rather than Wright.
–Program notes ©
Todd E. Sullivan
Cole Porter (1933)
Irving Berlin
Robert Wright and George Forrest
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