MUSICALS PUTS THEIR STAMP ON IT! By Peter Filichia
If you want to know the historical details of The Stamp Act Congress that met 260 years ago this week, Google will tell all.
For our purposes, though, let’s go far afield to the Broadway-centric stamp acts that have occurred over the decades.
The policy of the United States Post Office is to “generally commemorate anniversaries in multiples of 50 years.” So, in 1993 – when a stamp cost all of 29 cents – four Broadway musicals were honored. The word “generally” explains why, when MY FAIR LADY was still 13 years shy of its 50th anniversary, it was honored along with the fully qualified SHOW BOAT (1920s), PORGY AND BESS (1930s), and OKLAHOMA! (1940s).
Now that more than 50 years have passed since the 1960s, what musical should represent that decade: HELLO, DOLLY! or FIDDLER ON THE ROOF? After all, each broke the record as the longest-running musical of all time.
The irony is that FIDDLER has been twice honored with stamps, first by Israel, which wouldn’t surprise you. But would you expect that the Caribbean island of Nevis (pop. 46,843) would mint a FIDDLER one, too?
Both stamps show (Chaim) Topol as Tevye. Israel’s is in a drawing; Nevis’ in a photograph. Why not original Tevye Zero Mostel? Perhaps representatives from those lands had heard that Mostel was known to play fast and loose with the show’s dialogue and songs and thus didn’t deserve to be chosen; luckily for us, none of that improvisation appears on the original cast album, when Mostel was on his best behavior.
The choice of Topol suggests that the two countries had the 1971 Oscar-nominated film in mind. Or perhaps they knew Topol’s Tevye from the cast album made in London during its 2,030-performance run; it does show Topol to good advantage
The closest that DOLLY has reached a stamp is through the one celebrating Thornton Wilder’s, who wrote The Matchmaker on which the musical was based. And guess who was invited to the first date of issue ceremony in 1997. (A hint: CC are her initials.)
So, where are the 1970s Broadway musical stamps? Fifty years have passed since the opening of COMPANY, FOLLIES, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (do you see a commonality there?), CHICAGO and A CHORUS LINE.
Next year would be a nice time for a CHICAGO stamp, for 2026 will be the 30th anniversary of the revival’s opening. Will it then still be on Broadway? Don’t bet against it. Considering that most of today’s stamps are “Forever stamps,” CHICAGO would be a natural for one.
As for A CHORUS LINE, in 1999, when the Postmaster General decided there should be a series of “Celebrate the Century” stamps, that classic was in the running as one of the two selections that would represent American entertainment. Alas, the musical lost to All in the Family and Sesame Street. Okay, Postmaster General, now’s the time to have at least one singular sensational stamp.
In 1999, six stamps also paid tribute to nine Broadway songsmiths. The Postmaster General said, “Here’s Love!” to Meredith Willson (who was admittedly more famous for THE MUSIC MAN than for that musical version of Miracle on 34th Street). A stamp also praised Frank Loesser, the HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING and GUYS AND DOLLS guy.
Wonder how much thought went into the stamp on which Richard Rodgers would appear? Would he be shown alone? With Lorenz Hart, whom he had success with PAL JOEY and BY JUPITER? With Oscar Hammerstein, who provided the lyrics to THE SOUND OF MUSIC as well as all the words to CAROUSEL, ALLEGRO, SOUTH PACIFIC, THE KING AND I, ME AND JULIET, PIPE DREAM, and, of course, OKLAHOMA!?
It had to be Hammerstein. The irony is that Hart was often said to be a loner in life, and here he was, alone on a stamp. Nevertheless, had he still been around, he would have been pleased.
No question about the composer with whom Alan Jay Lerner would be linked. Although Lerner had written marvelous lyrics to Burton Lane’s splendid melodies for ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, he just had to be paired with Frederick Loewe, with whom he’d collaborated on BRIGADOON, PAINT YOUR WAGON, CAMELOT, GIGI, and the aforementioned MY FAIR LADY.
The best brother team that Broadway has ever known was also commemorated: George and Ira Gershwin. Granted, the latter didn’t write all the lyrics for PORGY AND BESS, but that three-disc set made from the 1976 revival shows what he did was exemplary.
That revival, by the way, was so impressive that it gave birth to a new Tony category for revivals. And considering how revival-happy Broadway has become in the last half-century, it’s not a category that we imagine will ever go away.
Who’d expect that a quotation emblazoned on a three-cent stamp issued in 1948 would turn out to be almost the title of the final song of a Tony-winning musical 43 years later?
“I Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like,” a sentiment made famous by beloved folksy raconteur Will Rogers (1879-1935), is stated on a stamp underneath his picture. Drop the “I,” and you get the name of the song in THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES for which Cy Coleman provided the countrified melody, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the easygoing lyrics. For whatever reason, the three dropped the first pronoun in their title.
The United Kingdom has put its stamp on some of its celebrated musicals, too. OLIVER! had to be one, because it was the first British musical to be an international hit. It certainly wasn’t the last; BLOOD BROTHERS only ran six months when it opened in London in 1983, but that revival in 1988 almost ran a quarter-century and spurred productions in many countries. (I saw it in Barcelona as Hermanos de Sangre.)
THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW also got a U.K. stamp. True, the film, through midnight shows where people dressed as characters and commented endlessly on dialogue are what made millions aware of the musical. And yet, while such screenings are far fewer than they used to be, at the end of this month you’ll probably find a stage production in a playhouse near you. The musical has truly become a Halloween perennial, so you may soon have another chance to do The Time Warp again.
Then there’s a song that doesn’t refer to a stamp per se, but as a metaphor: HAPPY HUNTING’s “Postage-Stamp Principality” refers to Monaco’s less than one square mile of territory. The country was much in the news in 1956, for that January, Oscar-winner Grace Kelly became engaged to Prince Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi; they’d marry that April. Hard to believe that only a matter of months later, HAPPY HUNTING – a musical about the wedding (with Ethel Merman starring) – would open on Broadway and stay around for almost a full year.
There’s a completely different meaning for “stamp” in THE MAD SHOW. Composer Mary Rodgers and lyricist Stephen Vinaver wrote “Hate Song,” but that title obfuscates the real meaning of the song: “We’re gonna stamp out hate.”
When the cast of THE MAD SHOW sang this song on The Ed Sullivan Show, the word “cross” was replaced by “tree.” Give a listen to the cast album, and you’ll understand why the censors stamped it out.
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.
