50 Favourite Musicals: 24: 42ND STREET (1980) (Harry Warren / Al Dubin, Johnny Mercer)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1980, Winter Garden, NY

First seen by me: 1984, Drury Lane, London

Productions seen: two

Score: Harry Warren / Al Dubin, Johnny Mercer
Book: Michael Stewart, Mark Bramble

Plot:  1933: Broadway director Julian Marsh is hoping his new show 'Pretty Lady' will restore his fortunes after recent flops, although he is saddled with a temperamental leading lady Dorothy Brock whose sugar daddy is bankrolling the show.  At an audition for the chorus, Peggy Sawyer, fresh from Pennsylvania, is the last to be cast.  But when Dorothy breaks her ankle onstage during an out-of-town tryout, all looks lost...but then Julian remembers young Sawyer...

Five memorable numbers: DAMES, 42ND STREET, LULLABY OF BROADWAY, ABOUT A QUARTER TO NINE, WE'RE IN THE MONEY

Producer David Merrick, trying to reclaim his King of Broadway crown, decided to produce 42nd STREET, adapted from the film by Mark Bramble - his ex-office boy - and Michael Stewart.  Stewart had written the lacklustre book for MACK AND MABEL which Merrick produced and Gower Champion directed.  The show flopped and Champion swore they would never work together again.  But six years and two more flops later, Champion signed up for 42nd STREET but, again, he and Merrick clashed.  Aware that word had reached the NY critics that 42nd STREET had problems in it's Washington tryout, the paranoid Merrick cancelled all the Broadway previews to stop the press sneaking in but insisted the actors still perform to the empty auditorium.  One of the cast suggested that they all bring in any cuddly toys they had one night and played the show to them sitting in the front rows!  These non-previews also covered up the sudden absence of Champion, but he was in hospital having succumbed to a blood disease that he had been fighting.  Opening night arrived and Merrick *had* to let the press and public in - but that morning, Gower Champion died.  Merrick only told the writers and asked Champion's family to keep silent.  After acknowledging the rapturous ovation at the end of the show, Merrick announced to the stunned cast and audience that Champion was dead.  The next morning 42nd STREET was front-page news and Merrick had his hit.  There is still conjecture that he made the announcement this way knowing it would make any bad reviews redundant.  The show transferred to London in 1984 and was an instant hit, giving London the sort of huge Broadway show it had not seen in years.  I saw a preview and was swept away by Champion's machine-gun tap choreography, Theoni V. Aldredge's lavish costumes and the larger-than-life performances of Georgia Brown as Dorothy Brock, Clare Leach as Peggy Sawyer and Carol Ball as Anytime Annie.  I knew Carol from Richard Eyre's company at the National Theatre so eventually her dressing room became a second home.  Flash-forward 33 years and it was a very strange experience to see the show on the same stage when it was revived in a slightly revised version.  I had not wanted to see it to be honest... but there I was at the end, clapping like a seal and beaming.  Randy Skinner had filled out the choreography for some added numbers and the show was directed by Mark Bramble, who has since died.  Bramble didn't revise his book so it remains as thin as ever - 42nd STREET is definitely the last musical to go to if you want 3-dimensional characters; it literally jumps from song to song like a tapping mountain goat.  But the show knows it's strengths and the songs - and the thrilling dance routines that accompany them - just keep on coming.  The Harry Warren and Al Dubin songs might not be the best songs of the 1930s but boy, they have tunes. From the famous opening moments - when the curtain rises and pauses so you can focus on the ensemble's furious tapping feet - the show just picks you up and whirls you through it's classic backstage tale.  Oddly enough, what stuck me during the revival is the desperation behind it all:  if PRETTY LADY fails Marsh faces a bleak future, Peggy has only her no-hope existence in Pennsylvania to return to, and the dancers all face unemployment and the breadline.  It's odd that I never really noticed it in the 1980s.


Most of the available video footage is of the revivals but 42nd STREET is here because of the impact that original 1984 production had on me so here is the wonderful Clare Leach as Peggy with Michael Howe as Billy in the climax of that production, singing and dancing the bitter title song; what better lasting tribute to Gower Champion's sensational choreography.