ALL SHOOK UP STIRS UP SOME THOUGHTS By Peter Filichia
Let’s go back to November 15, 1956, when two very different events occurred in entertainment history.
And yet, in one strange way, they were related.
On this date, Elvis Presley’s recording of “Love Me Tender” was released.
Meanwhile on Broadway, LI’L ABNER opened at the St. James Theatre.
So, what could possibly be the commonality? Presley was offered the title role in LI’L ABNER. But Hollywood producer David Weisbart offered him a part in his upcoming film The Reno Brothers.
Weisbart sweetened the pot by saying that if the superstar agreed, he’d change the name of the picture to Love Me Tender in honor of the upcoming recording.
We all know which choice Presley made – and that he never did a Broadway musical. But the type of character that he played in most of his 31 films has shown up in ALL SHOOK UP at the Goodspeed Opera House, where it’s an enormous hit.
Joe DiPietro’s 2005 jukebox musical sports 25 songs that Presley recorded during his 23-year career. There are songs that came from Presley’s films (including “Love Me Tender”), some that charted (“Blue Suede Shoes”), some that didn’t (“It Hurts Me”), and a full 11 that soared all the way to Number One.
The other ten chart-toppers were, in alphabetical order, “All Shook Up,” “Burning Love,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” “Devil in Disguise,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “It’s Now or Never,” “Jailhouse Rock” and “Teddy Bear.”
A look at an average Goodspeed audience always shows quite a few first-wave Baby Boomers, and, oh, did these songs have them walking among their yesterdays and applauding with zest.
As the Masterworks Broadway recording reveals, one of ALL SHOOK UP’s great assets is Stephen Oremus’s orchestrations. He was truly the unsung hero of the show. So, let’s start singing his praises right here and now.
Oremus would eventually win a Best Orchestrations Tony for THE BOOK OF MORMON and another for KINKY BOOTS, but he was inexplicably denied even a nomination for ALL SHOOK UP.
Well, every first week in May, many of us use the words “robbed” and “snubbed” when describing those artists that the Tony nominating committee inexplicably forgot or ignored.
Few would begrudge 2004-05 nominations given to the orchestrators of SPAMALOT, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS and THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA (the eventually winner). But Jonathan Tunick received the spot that should have gone to Oremus.
Much as we all venerate Tunick, his orchestrations for PACIFIC OVERTURES were, after all, his second looks at the magnificent work he did for the original 1976 production. His reducing an orchestra of 22 musicians to a band of nine might not be as easy as we non-orchestraters might think, but there’s no denying that he had a big advantage over an orchestrator who was starting from scratch.
And while one could say that Oremus also had a head start because all Presley songs had been already orchestrated, he had to turn what had been Presley’s solos into duets, trios and whole ensemble numbers – sometimes with men (“Jailhouse Rock”), sometimes with women (“It Hurts Me”) and, far more often than not, with both sexes chiming in with stirring harmonies (“C’mon Everybody”).
And was it Oremus who noticed that Presley’s iconic “Hound Dog” could be matched and sung simultaneously with his later hit “Teddy Bear”? It was an impressive mix-and-match, as both he, the Goodspeed production and the original cast album reveal.
Oremus’ crown jewel, however, comes at the end of the first act through “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” arguably the most beautiful song that Presley ever sang.
(And who’d expect that it came courtesy of the three writers who created the 1968 musical MAGGIE FLYNN: Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore and George David Weiss.)
Here, Oremus made “Can’t Help Falling in Love” into a vibrant choral number in which the entire company participated. One doesn’t expect to use the adjective “majestic” for a song popularized by Presley, but that’s the right word for the sound that Oremus created for it.
A side note: “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was written for Blue Hawaii, a 1961 film in which Elvis played the son of a woman who was only nine-and-a-half years older than he: Angela Lansbury.
And while we’re at it, a bit of history on “Jailhouse Rock” – it was the title song of a 1957 Presley film that he claimed he never saw, because of his leading lady, Judy Tyler.
No, the reason wasn’t that they didn’t like each other during filming. They got along quite well. But only three days after the film had finished shooting, Tyler and her husband, driving back to New York, were killed in a car accident in Wyoming.
She was only 24.
Presley admired her so much that he said that he couldn’t bear to see the film.
Tyler’s name is much better known to us musical theater aficionados as Suzy, an aimless lass who rued that “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me” in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s PIPE DREAM. That performance landed her on the cover of Life magazine as one of five “Shining Young Broadway Stars.”
(Two of the others were Lois Smith, whose Broadway career has spanned more than 67 years, and Jayne Mansfield, now much in the news because of her daughter Mariska Hargitay’s touching film documentary My Mom Jayne.)
Tyler also received a Tony nomination for her work in PIPE DREAM, but didn’t win, although she may well have received the most votes of anyone who did a Broadway musical that season.
Does that sound convoluted? Here’s the explanation: Lotte Lenya, then appearing off-Broadway in the runaway hit THE THREEPENNY OPERA, was deemed eligible – and won.
In truth, Lenya shouldn’t have even been nominated, for she was appearing in the Theatre De Lys (now called the Lucille Lortel Theatre) which is more than 200 seats shy of being a true Broadway house.
Two explanations come to mind: 1) The voters wanted to give Lenya a Lifetime Achievement Award, and this was the easiest way of doing it; and 2) Lenya did the musical in its original Broadway production in 1933, which, to New York’s shame, only lasted 12 performances. By 1956, Manhattan’s critics had caught up with the musical’s values and were atoning for their earlier sins.
Hmmm, wonder if the producers of LI’L ABNER also approached Lenya to be in their musical? She would have made a fine Mammy Yokum.
(And if you don’t know who that is, well, that’s what Google is for.)
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon.
