HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Y’ALL! By Peter Filichia
So, according to the records, September 17 is the day of the year on which most people are born.
Now that we’re around the 260th day of 2025, let’s celebrate the birthdays on that date of those who have contributed to musical theater in one way or another.
“In one way or another” allows us to include Alec Coppell (9/17/07). Had he not written The Captain’s Paradise, we wouldn’t have OH CAPTAIN!, its 1958 musical version.
Sailors are said to have a girl in every port, but Captain Henry St. James has but two: a girlfriend in Paris and a wife in London. You may be surprised to hear that Tony Randall was cast as the ladies’ man, but indeed he was.
You can hear how he did on the original cast album, but we’re apparently lucky that Randall didn’t make a video. Walter Terry, then the dance critic for The New York Herald Tribune, said that when Randall danced, “he tortured the air.”
Many musical theater aficionados cherish OH CAPTAIN! because Susan Johnson gets three songs. Those who know her sardonic nature won’t be shocked to hear that one of them is called “Love Is Hell.”
Even those who don’t know Johnson by name may recognize her voice from the extensive cast album of THE MOST HAPPY FELLA. She started the show by moaning a waitress’s understandable complaint: “Ooh, My Feet.”
But back to birthdays. How sad to see that two men who made valuable contributions to musical theater died at such a young age.
Nick Cordero (9/17/78) was 41 in 2020 when he was one of the first to be felled by COVID-19. Cordero first came to prominence in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY in which he played Cheech, a hitman who literally died for his art.
In this jukebox musical, he got two songs from the 1920s and one from the 1930s. Through his fresh delivery, he gave credence to the belief that everything old is new again.
Alas, John-Michael Tebelak (9/17/49) died even younger: a mere 34. But he’ll always be remembered for conceiving and directing GODSPELL, which provided Stephen Schwartz an entrée to great Broadway fame and even greater fortune.
People are often surprised to learn that Schwartz did not write all the lyrics for the show: “Save the People,” “Turn Back, O Man,” “Bless the Lord,” “All Good Gifts” and “We Beseech Thee” were all lyrics that he found primarily in an Episcopal hymnal.
Does anyone know the original melodies? Here’s doubting that those pre-existing tunes were superior to what Schwartz wrote.
Melanie Moore (9/17/91) played Ermengarde in the 2017 Bette Midler revival of HELLO, DOLLY! Granted, in “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” she apparently does more sniveling than singing. But any opportunity to hear this Jerry Herman song – one of his all-time best – is an opportunity not to be squandered.
During the mammoth run of CHICAGO, there have been 19 performers (not counting understudies) who’ve played had the role of Hunyak. She’s one of the murderesses who pleads her case in Hungarian during “Cell Block Tango.” The first one to play the role in this revival was Tina Paul (9/17/51).
In case you don’t know the Hungarian language and have wondered what Hunyak is saying, Google Translate can help:
“What am I doing here? It is said that a lake is holding my husband that I slammed on the head. But that isn’t it, and I am innocent. I cannot tell Uncle Sam that I did it. I tried to explain to the police, but they did not understand it.”
Alas, Hunyak will be the only one in her cell block to be executed. Smart of director-choreographer Bob Fosse to make this victim one whose language is lost on us; as a result, we can’t bond with her as we would with any of her English-speaking cellmates.
Roddy McDowall (9/17/28) had only one song in CAMELOT but, considering its worth, we can understand why he’d settle for so little stage time.
McDowall portrayed Mordred, King Arthur’s illegitimate, troublemaking son. He’s relegated to standing in a dim light in Act One and isn’t around all that much in Act Two.
Ah, but “The Seven Deadly Virtues” proves that although writing for a villain is murderously hard, it’s not impossible when you have an in-his-prime Alan Jay Lerner doing it. Few others could have written a line as clever as “It’s not the earth the meek inherit; it’s the dirt.”
McDowall didn’t come into this world on the 260th day of 1928 but the 261st, for it was a leap year. It also was an election year that saw the presidency go to Herbert Hoover. And you all know in what musical he’s the subject of a song. It’s sung by unhappy people who are living in a neighborhood they’ve named for him – though that’s no great honor, either.
And speaking of ANNIE, this September 17th would have been the 100th birthday of Dorothy Loudon.
Her first three Broadway musicals averaged all of 19 performances each. And yet, THE FIG LEAVES ARE FALLING, which ran the fewest – four – on the one and only Saturday matinee after which Loudon sang “All of My Laughter,” the crowd loved her performance so much that it demanded she sing it again.
And she did.
That was in 1969. She wouldn’t do another musical for eight years – until ANNIE.
Loudon wasn’t with it from the outset; Maggie Task played Miss Hannigan when the musical tried out at Goodspeed. Once Mike Nichols decided to produce the show on Broadway, he wanted Loudon.
(He’d directed her in the road company of the hilariously funny comedy LUV, in which she proved her terrific comic timing.)
At the time, Loudon truly doubted that she’d ever see Broadway again. But once Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin saw what she could do, they wrote “Little Girls” for her.
Forty-six days after ANNIE opened, Loudon received the Tony as Best Actress in a Musical. Her acceptance speech included a joyous “I can play this room!”
That “room” was the Shubert Theatre, but Loudon next showed that she could also play the Majestic when BALLROOM opened.
She portrayed recent widow Bea Asher who finally decides to take her friend’s advice. Yes, she’ll rejoin the human race by going to a local ballroom which, she’s told, has “A Terrific Band and A Real Nice Crowd.” Loudon started singing timidly while looking up a steep and very narrow stairway but eventually courageously roared: “That isn’t the Matterhorn; it’s only a flight of stairs.”
And by the end of the night, Bea is proud to admit “Somebody Did Alright for Herself.” She’ll feel even better when she comes to love Al Rossi – and worse when he must tell her he’s married. That led to her great eleven o’clock reveal, where she says she’d rather have “Fifty Percent” of him “than all of anybody else at all.”
In another year, Loudon would have won another Tony, but she had to settle for a nomination; Angela Lansbury captured it for SWEENEY TODD. Little did Loudon know at the time she’d be the next Mrs. Lovett on Broadway.
And by the mid-‘70s, little did Loudon expect that anyone in 2025 would remember who she was. But ANNIE and BALLROOM live on through their cast albums; those two performances alone will be remembered for many a September 17th and beyond.
