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Synopsis

Anything Goes belies the saying that sooner or later – sooner rather than later – musicals go to a deep, undisturbed rest in Cain’s Warehouse.

This ripsnorting musical comedy roared into a Broadway theatre late in November of 1934, and ever since that time memories of it or revivals of it either in the theatre or on the screen or radio have been giving infinite delight to a multitude of grateful people.

Anything Goes, to be sure, had more to recommend it than most. It had a supremely comic plot conceived and worked on by such illustrious names as Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse. Originally, the plot by the Messrs. Bolton and Wodehouse was concerned with a shipwreck – a comic one, at sea. But just before Anything Goes went into production, the tragic Morro Castle disaster occurred at sea and obviously the original story had to be abandoned. Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse were called in. In a short time the authors came up with a plot involving an urbane young man stowing away aboard a luxury Atlantic liner, America’s Public Enemy No. 13, and a hearty young lady named Reno Sweeney.

Best of all, of course, Anything Goes had top-drawer, smooth, almost unbelievably literate lyrics and music by Cole Porter, who had penned them, so the story went, while skimming down a European river aboard his own private yacht.

Critics, as well as everyone else who heard them, acclaimed the songs and the words as the best Mr. Porter had done to date – a magnificently perceptive judgment, obviously, as the melodies and the lyrics have bounded down the years without a sign of age.

Here are the wonderful songs – “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “All Through the Night,” “Anything Goes,” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” sung precisely as they should be with relish and fine romantic feeling and intimacy by America’s greatest musical comedy star, Mary Martin, companioned by a chorus (which goes off on its own in the delightful “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair”) and orchestra under the knowing direction of Lehman Engel, all expertly produced by Goddard Lieberson.

Of Mary Martin and her singing of these songs it hardly seems necessary to say anything more except that here she is at her incomparable best. The American public has been familiar with and has loved that radiant style of hers ever since the young lady from Texas sang “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in Leave It to Me. Since that happy occurrence Miss Martin has starred, with ever-increasing success, in One Touch of Venus, Lute Song, the national company of Annie Get Your Gun, and more recently in South Pacific, giving a performance in this great musical that forever establishes her as one of the first ladies of the American theatre.

– taken from the original liner notes, 1950

Credits

Mary Martin

Tracks 1–8 Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Tracks 9–18 Music by Arthur Schwartz, Lyrics by Howard Dietz
Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Lehman Engel
Orchestrations by Ted Royal
Produced by Goddard Lieberson

Track 19 sung by Mary Martin and Larry Hagman; Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin; Orchestra under the direction of Mitch Miller, recorded 12/1/1950

Tracks 1–18 originally released as Columbia Masterworks LPs ML 2159 and ML 2160 in 1950, subsequently released as Columbia Masterworks LP ML 4751 in 1953
Track 19 originally released on Columbia single record 39115 in 1951