'I Married an Angel' - The Early Recordings

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart formed a wildly productive partnership - from 1925 to 1940, they opened a show on Broadway in every year except 1934, and usually more than one. One fertile period was 1936-38, when their productions were On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, I'd Rather Be Right, The Boys from Syracuse and I Married an Angel.

Not long ago, I explored the early recordings from Babes in Arms. The subject of today's post is a lesser hit, but still a popular show: I Married an Angel, which ran from May 11, 1938 to February 25, 1939. Its score is not as bountiful as Babes in Arms, but it has its moments, and there were interesting recordings from the time, which I've gathered for this post.

Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers

The contrived but amusing plot is from a play by the Hungarian writer János Vaszary. It involves the complications that ensue when banker Count Willy Palaffi (Dennis King) marries an angel (Vera Zorina), whose unvarnished honesty becomes a business and social problem for him.

The production involved some of the finest talents of the 20th century theatre - director Joshua Logan, choreographer George Balanchine (Zorina's husband at the time) and scenic designer Jo Mielziner, with Rodgers and Hart writing the book as well as the music.

One reason why the score is less impressive than Babes in Arms among other Rodgers and Hart shows is that the pivotal character, played by Zorina, was a dancer, not a singer. Even so, most of the 10 original songs in the score merited a recording, and a few can still be heard today.

Vera Zorina and ensemble

Let's examine the score, in running order.

Wynn Murray

The first song is Count Palaffi's "Did You Ever Get Stung?" which is nor heard today outside of a few cabarets. No member of the cast recorded it, but Rodgers and Hart veteran Wynn Murray did do so. (She had appeared in both Babes in Arms and The Boys from Syracuse.) Her accompaniment is by the Walter-Bowers Orchestra - cabaret legend Cy Walter and duo-piano partner Gil Bowers. Murray and the band are lyrical at first, then "get hot," in the musical fashion of the time.

Palaffi's "I Married an Angel" was not recorded by a Broadway cast member either, but it did merit a disc from Nelson Eddy, who played the Count in the 1942 film version. That production kept the main songs from the stage score, but added much more music, primarily by operetta veteran Herbert Stothart. He was well suited to providing songs for Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, in their last film together.

Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald

For this number, Eddy's singing was tuneful, but not especially colorful or flexible. For contrast, I've added a contemporary recording by the more relaxed Buddy Clark. Unlike the latter, Eddy includes the verse - a plus for his version. I believe this song still gets an occasional performance today - I was familiar with it, anyway.

Eddy returns for "I'll Tell the Man in the Street," a beautiful song with a tricky melody that he tosses off effortlessly. He again scores points by performing the verse, which adds greatly to the song. 

I could not resist adding a much different interpretation to the end of the playlist, even though it is from 25 years after the musical's run on Broadway. This is the remarkable version of "I'll Tell the Man in the Street" from Barbra Streisand's debut LP. (No verse, though!)

Audrey Christie and Charles Walters

We now come to the only member of the original cast to merit a recording (actually, two). The fortunate artist is Audrey Christie, then a singer and dancer, later a film actor. Her first number is "How to Win Friends and Influence People," a title pinched from the 1936 best seller by Dale Carnegie. 

Christie isn't a great singer, but she does exude energy, essential for this lively number. In the show, he sang the piece with Charles Walters. On record, she is backed by Walter, Bowers and ensemble, again for the Liberty Music Shop label. 

The enduring hit from the show is the eloquent "Spring Is Here." Despite its quality and staying power, no one from the cast recorded it, to my knowledge. So I have again turned to Buddy Clark for a contemporary recording. To it, I've added an unexpectedly terrific version from cabaret singer Eve Symington, issued by the invaluable Liberty Music Shop. Cy Walter leads the band without Gil Bowers, who must have missed his train. Symington includes the verse; Clark does not.

Eve Symington

A parenthetical note about the unfamiliar (to me) Symington: born Eve Wadsworth, she married businessman Stuart Symington in the 1920s, and embarked on a career as a singer. On this evidence, she was quite a good one, but her career was short. It was at about this time that she and her husband moved to St. Louis, where he became the head of Emerson Electric. He later became a well-known US Senator - as Eve Symington's father had been. I've posted three of her other recordings on my singles blog.  

Wynn Murray returns for the clumsily risqué "A Twinkle in Your Eye," not one of the best songs from Rodgers and especially Hart. Murray, Walter and Bowers do their best.

The Roxy

Audrey Christie then performs her second song from the score, "At the Roxy Music Hall." The Roxy was a 6,000-seat behemoth of a movie theater on W. 50th Street. I had no recollection of the place until reader hkitt42 reminded me that it's referenced in the title song of Guys and Dolls. Oh, yeah - "What's playing at the Roxy?"! In this earlier number, Christie assures us, "Oh come with me, you won't believe a thing you see!" and "Don't be shy if a naked statue meets your eye!" among other marvels. It's a fun piece and Christie is the right person to sing it, but the song is now recherché considering that the Roxy has been dust since 1960.

Cy Walter and Gil Bowers

The playlist is completed - save for the Streisand reprise of "I'll Tell the Man in the Street" - by a two-sided medley from Walter and Bowers and their pianos. It includes "Spring Is Here," "I'll Tell the Man in the Street," "I Married an Angel" and "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

The download includes a restored version of the souvenir program along with production stills, a few Jo Mielziner scenery sketches, and two reviews from Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times. The program and stills are cleaned up from originals on the New York Public Library site, and the resolution is not as fine as one might desire. Most of the recordings were cleaned up from Internet Archive transfers. The Liberty Music Shop items were not well recorded; I've done my best to help them out.

Małcużyński and Susskind in Liszt and Borodin

Małcużyński and Susskind smoke and stare

My friend Jean ("Centuri") asked if I could post the other side of a US Columbia LP I recently offered that contained Cyril Smith's 1944 recording of Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Theme. Jean was seeking a 1947 performance of Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2, with pianist Witold Małcużyński and the Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Walter Susskind.

I am happy to post that recording - and am adding to it the same team's 1953 remake of the concerto, along with Małcużyński's recording of Liszt's Sonata in B minor.

Jean, a conductor himself, is particularly interested in Walter Susskind's work. So I am also adding an LP of Borodin's music that Susskind and the Philharmonia set down in 1952.

Details on these recordings are below.

Liszt - Piano Concerto No. 2 (1947 recording), Chopin - Étude, Op. 25, No. 7

Witold Małcużyński (1914-77) was a Polish pianist who escaped to Portugal from France when that country capitulated to the Germans. He then moved to Argentina, the US, and, after the war, Switzerland.

The pianist specialized in the Romantic repertoire, particularly Chopin. Here we have his first recorded venture into the music of Franz Liszt.

Not surprisingly, views of Małcużyński's pianism diverged. Some critics, such as a writer in the American Record Guide, were impressed:

"With the sympathetic assistance of Susskind, who is developing rapidly as a conductor, he delivers a stunning performance that makes the most of the many opportunities for dramatic effectiveness and virtuosic brilliance, yet thankfully does not indulge in the 'interpretative' orgies that have often been the feature of this work's appearance in local concert halls."

The other reviews were equally kind both to pianist and conductor.

This transfer is from LP; the original 78 album included the Chopin Étude in C sharp minor, Op. 25, No. 7, so I've appended that recording to the download as well.

The Gramophone, May 1948

Liszt - Piano Concerto No. 2 (1953 recording), Sonata in B minor

As it did with Cyril Smith's 1940's recording of the Dohnányi, UK Columbia waited only a few years before getting the pianist and conductor back for a remake of the Liszt concerto - presumably warranted by the success of the earlier recording.

As before, the orchestra was the Philharmonia, and again the site was Abbey Road for these March 1953 recordings. This time, the fill-up was more substantial - Liszt's Sonata in B minor.

This time, not all the critics were impressed, at least by the pianist. Andrew Porter wrote in The Gramophone, "Małcużyński seems to me to be an odd pianist - sometimes very poetical in his treatment of a singing phrase; then suddenly brash and harsh." The New York Times' Harold C. Schonberg concurred: "He sentimentalizes, he breaks rhythm; his playing tends to be disconnected...And yet, every once in a while a potentially great pianist is at work."

Borodin - Orchestral Music from Prince Igor

Walter Susskind (1913-80) made quite a number of recordings for EMI in the postwar years, almost all of them as accompanist. Much later he had a chance to record a wider repertoire with his St. Louis Symphony, and via other discs for various labels. Today we have one of his few orchestral outings for EMI, a 10-inch disc done for EMI's Parlophone marque in 1952.

Susskind was a Czech-born British conductor who left his native land in 1939 upon the Nazi invasion. In 1942 he joined the Carl Rosa Opera Company, and his first recording was soon thereafter in support of that company's Joan Hammond. This set him on the path of being one of UK Columbia's most prolific orchestral accompanists.

Walter Susskind

When the Borodin recording was made, he was the music director of the Scottish National Orchestra; soon he would move to Australia to lead the Melbourne Symphony, followed by seven years in Toronto, and a productive spell in St. Louis. He concluded his career with a few years as artistic advisor to the Cincinnati Symphony.

Parlophone advertises the music as an "Orchestral Suite" from Prince Igor, but it is that true only in retrospect. This is actually the orchestral excerpts from the opera - the Overture, "Polovtsian March" and the famous "Polovtsian Dances." Borodin himself never finished the opera. After his death, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov arranged and orchestrated a performing edition of the work. The Polovtsian music was orchestrated by Rimsky. Glazunov is credited with arranging the Overture, but he did more, drafting it himself using Borodin's opera themes "roughly according to Borodin's plan," as he explained.

Regardless of the patchwork nature of the performing edition, the orchestral works are highly enjoyable. The Philharmonia played well for Susskind, and the critics were generally kind.

The Borodin comes from my collection; the other works were remastered from needle drops found on Internet Archive. The sound is very good in all cases. In addition to the usual reviews and scans, the Borodin download includes a 1972 Gramophone article on Susskind.

Matt Dennis and Virginia Maxey

Singer-pianist-composer Matt Dennis is a firm favorite on this blog, via his MacGregor transcriptions and his complete Capitol output. Here's another unusual item - actually four of them, taken from The Navy Swings series of 15-minute shows sent for promotional purposes to radio stations.

In these, Matt is joined by his wife, the well-known former band singer Virginia Maxey. The programs are from about 1963 or 1964, which is when the couple began performing in nightclubs as Matt and Ginny Dennis.

The four shows are on two LPs, and contain 16 songs in total. These probably reflect their act, being split among solo features and duets. The performances are extroverted, which also likely reflects their nightclub performances. The loud number "Oom-Pah-Pah," from Lionel Bart's Oliver!, is made for live performance and doesn't work very well on a record. (Oliver! opened on Broadway in 1963, one of the reasons why I've dated the records for that year or soon after.)

George Fenneman

The Navy programs intersperse musical numbers with the usual scripted banter, here slightly better than usual because of the announcer, George Fenneman, who had become famous as Groucho Marx's unflappable straight man on the TV show You Bet Your Life. Each program also contains two recruiting spots, which on these shows promote the Airborne Officer Candidate program.

Matt's songs include:

"Show Me the Way to Get Out of This World ('Cause That's Where Everything Is)," which he wrote with Les Clark and recorded for RCA Victor in 1955.

"By the Bend of the River," a 1927 song that Matt may have picked up from the recent LP versions from Betty Carter and Etta Jones. He doesn't seem to have recorded it otherwise.

"Everything Happens to Me," one of his most famous songs, written with Tom Adair in 1940 and introduced by Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey. It's also on Dennis' 1954 Trend LP, and on a MacGregor transcription that can be found here.

"The Lorelei," an instrumental written by Barclay Allen, former Freddy Martin pianist who was paralyzed in a 1949 car crash.

"Why Try to Change Me Now" by Cy Coleman and Joseph McCarthy, which was introduced in 1952 by Sinatra. An interesting choice by Dennis - this song strikes me as being strongly influenced both musically and lyrically by "Everything Happens to Me."

"Have You Met Miss Jones?" from 1937's I'd Rather Be Right. This is also on Dennis' 1954 RCA Victor LP She Dances Overhead, his Rodgers and Hart LP.

"Love Is Wonderful Everywhere," a Dennis song that was not otherwise recorded, as far as I can tell.

Ginny's selections are:

"Time After Time" by Cahn and Styne, written for Sinatra's 1947 MGM film It Happened in Brooklyn.

"Come Fly with Me," a Sammy Cahn-Jimmy Van Heusen song from one of Sinatra's most popular albums.

"The More I See You" by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon for the 1945 film Diamond Horseshoe, where Dick Haymes introduced it.

"Just in Time," a Jule Styne song from Bells Are Ringing, written in 1958 with Comden and Green, and sung by Judy Holliday and Sydney Chaplin in the show.

"On the Street Where You Live," Lerner and Loewe's great number from My Fair Lady.

Young Ginny and Matt

The Ginny-Matt duets are:

"We Belong Together," a 1954 song by Dennis and Don Lodice, which also can be found on Matt's 1954 Trend LP.

"Oom-Pa-Pa," the Lionel Bart song from Oliver! introduced by Georgia Brown in the 1960 West End production.

"The Night We Called It a Day," another classic Dennis-Adair song that was Sinatra's first solo single. It's on Matt's 1954 album on Trend; also on a MacGregor transcription that can be found here.

Matt is in excellent form throughout; Ginny too except for a tendency to get shouty on the high notes. As a band singer, I imagine she was used to projecting her voice. The backing combo is proficient, although I could do without the trumpet obbligatos. 

As always, I've tracked the LPs so that you can listen once (if that) to the banter and Navy spots, then jettison them in favor of the songs. The sound is very good, although the dynamics are compressed for AM radio use. The download includes a New York Times review of Matt and Ginny's act from early 1964.

An Easter Service from King's College

Looking through some of my choral LPs yesterday, I came across this recording of the Easter morning service made in 1957 by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. I decided to make a quick transfer for this post.

Similar to the Christmas recordings from King's, this includes both the spoken lessons and prayers and the appropriate music from the service.

The musical selections are largely from 16th and 17th century composers (Thomas Tomkins, Robert Stone and William Byrd) and from the 20th century composer Herbert Howells. The latter are from his Collegium Regale service, written for King's.

Boris Ord

Leading the choir was Dr. Boris Ord, who was the King's College Chapel organist from 1929 to 1957. This must have been one of his last recordings with the choir. Their 1956 disc of the Christmas Eve service and 1954 disc of Evensong can be found here. Ord died in 1961.

The "chapel" of course is a vast edifice, and a difficult place for recording. The music on this current disc was well handled by the Argo engineers, and even the spoken passages sound atmospheric yet also clear. This recording is in mono; I don't believe it ever was issued in stereo.

A.R. Vidler

Among those reading the lessons and prayers is the Rev. Dr. A.R. Vidler, Dean of King's College. He was a notable personality who was editor of the journal Theology and author of several books. As you will note above, he also advocated wearing a black shirt and white tie in preference to a clerical collar, which may bring to mind the men's garb in Guys and Dolls.

The download includes Jeremy Noble's review from The Gramophone. Very informative, but I must disagree with his characterization of Herbert Howells' music as "a little insipid." The Collegium Regale is a favorite of mine; you can hear another recording of the Te Deum in this post from Westminster Abbey.

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, I hope spring has arrived in your vicinity. Please have a happy holiday!

The King's College Chapel in a later photograph. Stephen Cleobury (left center) leads the choir.