FATED TO BE MATED – OR NOT? By Peter Filichia
So, how much faith do we place in numerologists and astrologers?
Many of them claim that people born on four certain days of the month – the first, the 16th, the 27th and the 31st – are more likely to remain single than those born on the other dates.
Can we substantiate these claims based on the birthdays of real people whose lives have been celebrated in musicals? Let’s see who did or did not tie the knot.
September 1, 1957: Gloria Estefan: ON YOUR FEET.
Some 21 or so years after Gloria Milagrosa’s birth, she and Emilio Estefan may not have sung the fetching “I See Your Smile,” as their namesakes did in the 2015 musical. But the two have often been beaming during a marriage that is still flourishing after 47 years.
September 16, 1777: Nathan Rothschild: THE ROTHSCHILDS.
In Act Two of the excellent 1970 musical THE ROTHSCHILDS, Nathan joyously sings “I’m in Love! I’m in Love!”
Not so fast, Nathan. For a while there, it appears that you won’t stay in love. However, the song soon (and delightfully, unexpectedly) shows that he and Hannah Cohen reconcile. Indeed, Mr. Rothschild’s 30-year marriage may have lasted longer had he not died at 58.
Footnote: Of the five Rothschilds brothers, Nathan has the most to do in this bio-musical, starting with one of the most delicious fake-outs that a musical has been known to give. Listen for it in “Sons.”
June 16, 1894: Tamara de Lempicka: LEMPICKA.
The famous artist had two husbands. But as the 2024 musical detailed, there was more to Ms. Lempicka’s love life than marriages to men. So, instead of getting us to Husband Number Two, the writers centered on Lover Number One: Ms. Rafaela. Both sang their perceptions of Lempicka in the perceptive “What She Sees.”
August 31, 1890: Rose Hovick: GYPSY.
Although in the musical she says, “After three husbands, it takes a lot of butter to get you back in the frying pan,” Rose did marry a fourth time.
So did the first Rose to dominate the stage from “Some People” to “Rose’s Turn”: Ethel Merman. She mentions one of her four husbands in Chapter 28 of her second memoir: “My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine.” Mermaniacs love to report that the rest of the page is blank, but that’s not all, folks. Chapter 29 has her spend its five (unflattering) paragraphs on the man she was wed to for 38 days.
And by the way, Merman was born on January 16 – another rebuttal to the numerologists and astrologers’ claim.
April 16, 1889: Charlie Chaplin: CHAPLIN.
The underrated 2012 musical about “The Little Tramp” showed that he did some tramping around himself. Dealing with all four wives would have made the musical too long, so the writers concentrated on two.
Mildred Harris, the first, expressed a few perceptions in “Life Can Be Like the Movies.” Oona O’Neill, the fourth, was disowned by her father – playwright Eugene – because his 18-year-old was marrying someone his own age: 54. Her response? “What Only Love Can See.”
What about fictional characters in musicals? We’ll never know about Bobby in COMPANY, for neither George Furth nor Stephen Sondheim gave the bachelor’s actual birth date, but just left it at his turning 35.
Musicals seldom tell us any character’s birthday. So, just for fun, let’s see if musicals with one of those four dates as “birthdays” – i.e., opening nights – have characters that flew solo all their lives or paired up.
December 1, 1956: CANDIDE.
In the slyly humorous “Oh, Happy We,” Candide and Cunegonde are blinded by puppy love and deaf to each other’s needs and wants. Not until they’ve endured many torturous events and matured do they marry and let us believe they’ll be okay.
October 1, 2018: DESPERATE MEASURES.
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure set in the Old Wild West has Mary Jo as the reimagined Isabella. Both are nuns. However, although Isabella never gives the Duke an answer when he proposes, Mary Jo is quite happy to give her hand (and everything else) to the Governor.
November 16, 1959: THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
Speaking of nuns, Maria is another who eventually takes vows quite different from the ones she originally expected to take.
A question: during the wedding, why do we hear the nuns sing “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Are they warning the Captain that he’s going to have a handful on his hands?
January 16, 1964: HELLO, DOLLY!
Widow Dolly Gallagher Levi and widower Horace Vandergelder are eventually altar-bound. Although he got a reprise of the famous title song, David Burns in 1964 and Cab Calloway in 1967 each only had one other chance to sing. At least in 2017, David Hyde Pierce got the funny song that Burns only had in Detroit: “Penny in My Pocket.”
June 16, 1993: WHOOP-DEE-DOO.
Four men in this revue proclaimed their love for “Elizabeth,” whose full name they sang out as “Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky.”
That Burton is listed twice isn’t a typo. The former Ms. Taylor married Richard Burton – yes, that Tony-winner for CAMELOT – in 1964 before divorcing him in 1974, remarrying him a year later, and divorcing him a year after that.
May 1, 1979: SWEENEY TODD.
Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd had each had been married before, but, oh, they sure didn’t marry again. Yet Mrs. Lovett sure tried to change that situation in her jaunty seduction song, “By the Sea.”
March 16, 1969: 1776.
John Adams’ relationship with Abigail, stressed in “Yours, Yours, Yours,” is considered one of the all-time great marriages. Thomas Jefferson certainly shows, upon his wife’s first entrance, how much he loves and lusts for her. She shows her zest in “He Plays the Violin,” which gave Betty Buckley her first significant role.
And the others? Eight delegates were married twice and 10 were married once, if you include Benjamin Franklin’s common-law wife. One of those, Lewis Morris, had 10 children; apparently, he did not always abstain courteously.
That leaves only two who never married: Caesar Rodney of Delaware and Joseph Hewes of North Carolina, though Hewes would have had a wife had his fiancée had not died just days before the wedding.
And while numerologists and astrologers were talking about true birthdays and not opening nights, we’ll give two instances that support their view of people remaining single on those four dates:
November 16, 1981: MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.
Charley married successfully; Frank didn’t – twice. But Mary Flynn, in the show’s 25-year-span, stays single, doesn’t she?
November 27, 1937: PINS AND NEEDLES.
Although this is a political revue, Harold Rome made room for a comic song for an unmarried woman who mourned that “Nobody Makes a Pass at Me.”
PINS, produced before the advent of original cast albums, received a studio recording in 1962. Rome insisted that the show-stealer in his then-current I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE would sing the song: Barbra Streisand. Hear her when she had a sense of humor about her.
Meanwhile, what about…
October 27, 2025: BEAU.
Yes, this new musical opens this week off-Broadway. Find out if Beau, the title character, marries or stays single. Does the song “By Your Side” mean he’ll always have someone there?
If you can’t make it to West 46th Street, the concept album that spurred this production will suffice. But do try to get to the show, even if you don’t have a spouse to attend with you.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon and The Drama Book Shop.
