Sinatra! Deep Cuts: Another ride on the CAROUSEL (part 1 of 3)
On the Bench: “What are we? A couple of specks of nothing!”
(Special thanks to Chuck Granata, of course, and to Michael “Contentious” Kraus and Rob Waldman for reading this through in advance. And as always to Elizabeth Zimmer!)
First a note of thanks to the indefatigable Charles L. Granata - known as “Chuck” to his friends, and “Chuckie” or “The Chuckster” to his greatest friend, Nancy Sinatra, and to listeners of their long-running, wonderful Sirius radio series - Chuck has been a close friend for over 30 years and in all of that time a tireless advocate, historian, author, archivist, and scholar of Sinatra’s music. So many of the most essential Sinatra reissues and packages of the digital era are due to his thoughtful and diligent work, among them virtually all of Sinatra’s early (pre-1953) work and the amazing Frank Sinatra in Hollywood 1940–1964 package from 2002.
Chuck’s latest discovery is a major clue in one of the existential mysteries of Sinatra’s career: his role in the 20th Century Fox motion picture adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, produced in 1955 and released in 1956. Chuck has essentially uncovered two more pre-recordings (we already had one - sort of - I will explain) that shed valuable light on what actually transpired.
# # #
Before I dig into this episode in the Sinatra saga, I have to step back and say that I never actually liked the Henry King film of Carousel. To me it’s rather lifeless and dreary; it lacks the zing I’ve seen in every other production, both live and even the 1967 TV version with Robert Goulet. The only cast member in the movie who really rings the bell is the radiant Shirley Jones; one can’t imagine a more perfect Julie Jordan. (Barbara Cook would also have been great, but she somehow never made it to Hollywood, and though she played the part many times, she has frequently said, “I’d much rather play Carrie Pipperidge - all Julie ever does is cry!”)
As terrific as Gordon MacRae is in literally everywhere else, especially his nostalgic musicals with Doris Day as well as the 1955 film of Oklahoma!, he’s totally miscast here. He is sorely lacking the profundity, the shading, the nuance, the ever-present darkness, the sense of menace that Sinatra brings to characters like Frankie Machine and Joey Evans. In contrast, MacRae, who made a perfect screen Curley, seems merely like a naif who is out of his depth in Carousel, he can’t come anywhere near the complexities that Sinatra brings to virtually every performance.
To take a step backwards: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote five classic works of musical theater and three other valiant efforts. It’s to their credit that they never stopped experimenting and trying something new. Oklahoma! and Carousel, obviously, were experiments that worked, whereas Allegro (1947) is one that didn’t, but was a noble effort just the same. Over the course of their 17-year partnership, they experimented with other ideas: in 1945 they wrote an original score for a movie musical (State Fair) and in 1957 they wrote a wholly original musical for television (Cinderella).
Rodgers & Hammerstein also established themselves as producers, most notably on one major musical show written by someone else, the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun by Irving Berlin. It was logical that they would eventually try their hand at film production. The 1955 motion picture adaptation of Oklahoma! Is a Dick-and-Ockie production all the way through, in which they worked closely with veteran Hollywood producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr., director Fred Zinneman, and storied showman and entrepreneur Mike Todd.
R & H were also happy to experiment with new cinematic processes, which, in the mid-1950s, were intended to enhance the viewing experience and lure audiences back into theaters in response to the rise of television. Todd-AO was a new widescreen process that resulted in a spectacular looking film and took full advantage of the al fresco location filming - the amazing locations, many of which were scouted by R & H themselves. The drawback to Todd-AO was that it wasn’t compatible with conventional projection systems, and thus the movie had to be filmed twice. As I outlined in a 2015 article for The Wall Street Journal, the 1955 Oklahoma! is essentially two movies, the conventional version, shot after the actors were already exhausted from a hard day’s work, is flat and lifeless - and this is the one we’ve been seeing all these years. The 70MM widescreen version, contrastingly, fairly bursts with life and energy; this was finally issued properly, on a bluRay, in 2014. (You can read that article here … if you can’t access the page, write to me and I’ll send a PDF.)
The movie version was a huge success, but this was another suit of clothes that Rodgers & Hammerstein would wear only once. After proving that they could do it with the film of Oklahoma!, they then went to work on their next, less successful work for Broadway, Pipe Dream, which opened in September 1955 and thus was in production at the exact same moment that the movie adaptation of Carousel was being recorded in Hollywood and then filmed in Maine. Where they had been involved every aspect of the production on Oklahoma!, they seem to have totally recused themselves from the production of Carousel.
As a result, the 20th Century Fox film of Carousel seems merely like another studio musical. Everything about it, other than the luminescent Shirley Jones, seems completely cookie-cutter and mass-produced, just kind of ground out. For one thing, the producers Henry Ephron and Daryll F. Zanuck (the latter obviously an executive producer) cut too many songs - “"You're a Queer One, Julie Jordan," "Blow High, Blow Low," "The Highest Judge of All" and "Geraniums in the Winder" are all gone, thus depriving the movie of a lot of much-needed character exposition. We can’t know who Julie Jordan and Carrie Pipperidge are unless we’ve heard Julie’s opening song.
In any case, R & H clearly learned from their mistake, and thus participated more actively in the filming of The King and I (released only a few months later in 1955) and South Pacific (1959).
# # #
The obvious subtext here is that if Carousel had been filmed as originally intended, with Sinatra in the lead as Billy Bigelow, the movie would have had the bite and the thrills that the released version sorely lacks. As I mentioned, the story of Sinatra’s involvement with the film, and why he’s ultimately not in it, involves a web of conspiracy theories that rivals the Kennedy Assassination for complexity. I’ll delve into some of those theories in these posts as well, but I wanted to start by talking about Chuck’s discoveries, starting with “If I Loved You.”
Most pop music fans know that the spectacular “Soliloquy” that closes Act I is an undisputed classic of songwriting; musical theater people, however, feel that Rodgers & Hammerstein’s all-time pinnacle as masters of musical storytelling comes earlier in Act 1 with the iconic “Bench Scene” that includes “If I Loved You.” Here, R & H use everything at their disposal - dialog, speech, song, instrumental music, and everything in between, as well as stage and sound effects - to get at the complex inner feelings and relationship of these two characters.
Hammerstein’s protegee, Stephen Sondheim, has cited the bench scene as “the singular most important moment in the evolution of contemporary musicals.” At the start, Billy and Julie have just met; ten minutes later, it makes perfect sense that they’re going to be married next we see them. More than that, we know that their lives, their hearts and souls, are going to be eternally intertwined not only in this world but in the next.
R & H pull this off so magnificently - especially with the help of the brilliant director Rouben Mamoulian - that it seems perfectly logical and natural to the audience. Rodgers, Hammerstein & Mamoulian had the advantage of working with solid source material, Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, and specifically the 1934 French film adaptation directed by the great German auteur Fritz Lang. Here’s a print with Russian titles (Don’t worry, you can turn them off. You have a choice of French or Russian here. The second youTube link below goes directly to the start of the bench scene.)
The March 28, 1954 General Electric Show (A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein) - this shows the original Billy (John Raitt) and Julie (Jan Clayton) presumably recreating Mamoullian’s original staging.
Here’s another video talking about the bench scene.
To me, the bench scene is one of the great disappointments of the 1956 movie; it just seems rote and tired, there’s no electricity between Billy and Julie whatsoever - considerably less than there was between Curley and Laurie in the Oklahoma! movie. It’s not only badly staged but they did away with the semi-sung portions, which are perhaps the most innovative aspects of the scene.
Now, at last we can hear the scene as it should have been filmed, thanks to Chuck’s discovery of the playback disc. (In 1993, a brief excerpt from the track came out on a Sinatra “boot” CD titled Soundtrack Sessions.) On Tuesday, August 16, 1955, Sinatra and Shirley Jones with Alfred Newman and the 20th Century Fox orchestra, featuring Sinatra’s favorite violinist, Felix Slatkin, as concertmaster, recorded the entire bench scene track. What they laid down on that date consisted of all the orchestral parts as well as all the fully-sung parts; the semi-sung lines and the spoken dialog were going to be performed live on-set.
So, on this disc, you’ll hear long stretches of orchestral music without anything else on top of it. Using the libretto, we can piece together a pretty good idea of what we’re listening to here. (I’m using italics to denote those portions of the scene that are actually sung by Sinatra and Ms. Jones on the disc here.)
00:00 orchestra: “You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan” played somewhat fast & perky.
We seem to be picking up the scene about here:
[BILLY, spoken]
S'ppose I was to say that I would marry you?
You wouldn't marry anyone like me. Would you?
[JULIE, spoken]
Yes, I would! If I loved you!
It wouldn't any difference what you'd-
Even if I died for it
01:00 orchestra: “Julie Jordan” theme slowed down
[BILLY, spoken]
How you know what you'd do if you loved me?
How you'd feel or anythin'?
[JULIE, spoken]
I don't know how I know
[BILLY, spoken]
Hmm
[JULIE, spoken]
Just the same I know how it'd be
If I loved you
01:30 orchestra: this is the background for semi-sung section, where Julie sings what is, essentially, her verse to “If I Loved You.” (Ms. Jones’s vocal, like most of the verse sections here, was to be recorded live on set, and thus is not heard here.)
[JULIE, sung]
When I work in the mill weaving at the loom
I gaze absent-minded at the roof
And half the time the shuttle get twisted in the threads
And the warp would get mixed with the woof
If I loved you
[BILLY, spoken]
But you don't!
[JULIE, spoken]
No, I don't!
02:00 we hear Shirley Jones now start to sing the last part of the verse and then she glides seamlessly into the first chorus of “If I Loved You.”
(JULIE, sung)
But somehow I can see
Just exactly how I'd be
If I loved you
Time and again I would try to say
All I'd want you to know
If I loved you
Words wouldn't come in an easy way
Round in circles I'd go!
Longin' to tell you
But afraid and shy
I'd let my golden chances pass me by!
Soon you'd leave me
Off you would go in the mist of day
Never, never to know how I loved you
If I loved you
4:00 the orchestra now plays an instrumental of the “If I Loved You” bridge, which is the background for the dialog that begins with Billy saying, “well, anyway, you don’t love me. That’s what you said.”
[BILLY, spoken]
Well, anyway – you don’t love me. That’s what you said.
[JULIE, spoken]
I can smell 'em, can you, ah?
The blossoms. The wind brings 'em down!
[BILLY, spoken]
There ain't much wind tonight
[JULIE, spoken]
Hmm?
[BILLY, spoken]
Hardly any
4:40 Sinatra now starts to sing Billy’s verse (“You can’t hear a sound, not the turn of a leaf…”) and the combination of speech and song is especially adroit here, as we very gradually move into Billy’s chorus of “If I Loved You.”
(sung)
You can't hear a sound, not the turn of a leaf
Nor the fall of a wave hittin' the sand
The tide's creepin' up on the beach like a thief
Afraid to be caught stealin' the land!
On a night like this I start to wonder
What life is all about
[JULIE, sung]
And I always say two heads are better than one to
Figure it out
5:30 orchestral background for more dialogue
[BILLY, spoken]
I don't need you or anybody helpin' me
Well, I figured out for myself
We ain't important. What are we?
A couple o' specks a nothin'
Look up there
5:45: Billy sings more of his verse. On Broadway, the line was, “There's a hell of a lotta stars in the sky” - in the Hollywood cleaned up version, the line is “Why you can’t even count all the stars in the sky.”
[BILLY, sung]
There's a hell of a lotta stars in the sky
And the sky's so big the sea looks small
And two little people, you and I
We don't count at all
6:10 orchestral background for more dialogue
[BILLY, spoken]
You're diff'rent, alright! I don't know what it is
When you look up at me with that little kid's face, right?
Like you've trusted me
I wonder what it'd be like
[JULIE, spoken]
What?
6:30 orchestral background for more dialogue
[BILLY, spoken]
Nothin'
No, I know what it'd be like
It'd be awful! I can just see myself
6:45 this next verse is sung by Billy, but obviously they wanted to film Sinatra doing it live on set, so there’s more orchestral background here:
(sung)
Kinda scrawny, and pale
Picking at my food
And love-sick like any other guy
I'd throw away my sweater, and dress up like a dude
In a dicky and a collar and a tie
If I loved you
[JULIE, spoken]
But you don't!
[BILLY, spoken]
No, I don't!
7:00 Sinatra sings his chorus of “If I Loved You,” starting with the last two lines of his verse:
[BILLY, sung]
But somehow I can see
Just exactly how I'd be
If I loved you
Time and again I would try to say
All I'd want you to know
If I loved you
Words wouldn't come in an easy way
Round in circles I'd go!
Longin' to tell you
But afraid and shy
I'd let my golden chances pass me by!
Soon you'd leave me
Off you would go in the mist of day
Never, never to know
How I loved you
If I loved you
9:10 - the track ends here, although there’s more dialog in the scene:
[BILLY, spoken]
I'm not a fella to marry anybody!
Even if a girl was foolish enough to want me to
I wouldn't!
[JULIE, spoken]
Don't worry about it, Billy!
[BILLY, spoken]
Who's worried?
[JULIE, spoken
You're right
About there bein' no wind
The blossoms are just comin' down by themselves
Just their time to, I reckon
“Just their time to, I reckon.” Thanks again to Chuck Granata for finding, restoring, and sharing this amazing track. We’ll go through the other two in the next few days, and also speculate and ponder the vagaries of Sinatra’s connection to this classic work of American Musical Theater. It’s just our time to, I reckon.
to be continued - part 1 of 3
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming.) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com, click here.
SPECIAL ENCORE PERFORMANCES!
December 31: The Early Years 1935-42 hosted by Will Friedwald
January 1: The Columbia Years 1943-’49 hosted by Ken Poston
January 2: The Radio Years: hosted by Chuck Granata
January 3: The Fall and Rise (1950-’54) hosted by Will Friedwald
January 4: Frank and Nelson hosted by Will Friedwald
January 5: The Capitol Years hosted by Loren Schoenberg
January 6: Bonus! Sing! Sing! Sing! Some Frank Conversation with Adam Gopnik
January 7: The Movies: Hosted by Chuck Granata
January 8: The Early Reprise Years 1960-'65 hosted by Loren Schoenberg
January 9:The Concert Years hosted by Ken Poston
January 10: The Rat Pack hosted by Ken Poston
January 11: Inside the Studio hosted by Chuck Granata
January 12: Bonus! In the Wee Small Hours with AJ Lambert (Sinatra’s granddaughter)
January 13: 1965-1974 The Main Event hosted by Will Friedwald
Disclaimer: These are my memories of these incidents, nothing more, nothing less. I apologize in advance in case they may not line up precisely with anyone else’s account of what transpired on those occasions.
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming.) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com, click here.
December 1: The Early Years 1935-42 hosted by Will Friedwald
December 4: The Columbia Years 1943-’49 hosted by Ken Poston
December 5: The Radio Years: hosted by Chuck Granata
December 6: The Fall and Rise (1950-’54) hosted by Will Friedwald
December 7: Frank and Nelson hosted by Will Friedwald
December 8: The Capitol Years hosted by Loren Schoenberg
December 9: Bonus! Sing! Sing! Sing! Some Frank Conversation with Adam Gopnik
December 11: The Movies: Hosted by Chuck Granata
December 12: The Early Reprise Years 1960-'65 hosted by Loren Schoenberg
December 13:The Concert Years hosted by Ken Poston
December 14: The Rat Pack hosted by Ken Poston
December 15: Inside the Studio hosted by Chuck Granata
December 18: 1965-1974 The Main Event hosted by Will Friedwald
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What might have been....
I love the detail and (as always) the insight here.