Welcome to a new Musical Theatre Monday! This week, I’m celebrating a show that first opened this month in 1949 — Miss Liberty. It’s the perfect musical to spotlight during the USA’s 250th birthday, for Miss Liberty follows the public clamor after France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty, and in particular, a New York reporter who tracks down the model that posed for her.
With a little bit of history — e.g., Joseph Pulitzer and James Gordon Bennett are characters — a touch of romance, and some creative shaping by director Moss Hart, choreographer Jerome Robbins, and playwright Robert E. Sherwood, Miss Liberty had everything going for it. Not to mention a score by Irving Berlin, the man behind “God Bless America.” But the show got poor reviews and despite a healthy nine-month run, did not return its investment. So, unlike the two musicals bracketing this one in Irving Berlin’s chronology — Annie Get Your Gun (1946) and Call Me Madam (1950), Miss Liberty is largely forgotten today. Why?
Well, those other two shows had one thing this didn’t: Ethel Merman. Although Eddie Albert, Allyn Ann McLerie, and Mary McCarty were all capable Broadway performers with plenty of credits, they weren’t headlining stars. Berlin himself believed that was the problem. However, I think Berlin, Hart, Robbins, and Sherwood should have been enough of a collective selling point to most New York theatergoers, even without a Merman. In fact, I’m afraid I think the issue is more fundamental: the material. Not the story, but the telling. Specifically, Sherwood’s book is neither funny enough for a musical comedy, nor smart enough for a musical drama. The flaw, to me, is that the characters, in spite of their various jobs within the story, are not individualized. (You know, the way that Merman’s leads both were, using her persona as a foundational guide.) As a result, they aren’t able to enliven a predictable, uninspired plot, which starts with some competitive intrigue but then tapers off into romantic tripe with an easily resolvable misunderstanding, minimizing the original tension for more familiar emotional stakes.
As for the score, these book limitations mean that Berlin can’t be as character-specific with his lyrics as he was in those other shows (especially Annie Get Your Gun). So, the songs themselves aren’t his absolute best. However, there are quite a few that I personally enjoy — including several that have wound up in the “jukebox” re-imaginings of Holiday Inn and White Christmas. Namely, the romantic “Let’s Take An Old-Fashioned Walk” and the jazzy “Falling Out Of Love Can Be Fun,” which is probably the score’s best and most exciting song. (Hear the latter above, sung by Mary McCarty on the 1949 Miss Liberty cast album.) And throughout the score, Berlin reaffirms his reliability as a melodist in stuff like the bouncy “A Little Fish In A Big Pond,” the soulful “Homework,” the charming “Just One Way To Say I Love You,” the toe-tapping “The Policeman’s Ball,” and the wry “You Can Have Him” — the last a duet between the two women, in Pal Joey’s “Take Him” tradition. All of these are hummable delights.
In fact, I think Miss Liberty is a better score than it’s commonly remembered. Are there better? Of course. But Berlin is always Berlin. So, for interested subscribers who comment below to alert me of their private non-commercial interest, I’ve got something educational to share. It’s an audio recording of the 2005 Musicals in Mufti production. This is your chance to hear some of the songs that were not officially recorded in 1949 by the original Broadway cast, including the quaint “Me And My Bundle” (above). It’s the perfect way to celebrate 250 years of the U.S. of A, which Berlin was devoted to honoring, especially here in Miss Liberty’s rousing finale — a simple melody set to the lyrics of Emma Lazarus’ immortal sonnet The New Colossus, “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor.” What an inspiration! Any score with something this beautiful deserves to stand like Lady Liberty herself as a tribute to the ideals she represents.
Come back next month for another musical! And stay tuned tomorrow for more sitcom fun!