#6c: Cast Recordings: "Sitting Pretty"

Sitting Pretty

New World Records, 80387-2 (2-disk set), 1990

Original Broadway production:

Opened at the Fulton Theatre on 8 April 1924 and played 95 performances

Music: Jerome Kern

Book and Lyrics: Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse

Sitting Pretty was the final show written by Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern. It was originally conceived as a vehicle for the Duncan Sisters, twins who were vaudeville stars, with songs by Irving Berlin and book by Bolton and Wodehouse. However, the production was delayed, so the Duncan Sisters moved on to another project and with them gone Berlin dropped out. Kern was called in to write the music, Wodehouse agreed to write lyrics, and the trio from the Princess Shows was back together.

However, unlike their other shows, Sitting Pretty was not a hit. It didn’t even make the 100-performance mark, the bar at the time between a solid show and a flop.

There are several theories about why this was. Kern thought that the two actresses brought in to replace the Duncan sisters looked so little alike that they were unbelievable as twins.

But then, Kern decided he would not allow any of the songs from the show to be played outside of the theater. This was in the days when audiences learned the music before going to a show by hearing it on the radio or in clubs and restaurants. But Kern thought any version other than in the actual show was a “fraudulent imitation” and banned it. So the show didn’t get its usual promotion.

There was also the small matter of the title song. It seems that the leading man had a slight speech impediment so that when he sang “I want to sit, just sit and sit and sit” it didn’t come out quite right. The song was cut.

But my feeling is that the authors were not in agreement about the tone of the show. Bolton and Wodehouse had written the book and lyrics in the rather silly, madcap style that they had used in their previous shows. But Kern seems to have been trying something new, and his music, which was a little more serious or stately, didn’t match feeling of the book and lyrics.

The music, to my mind, also didn’t contain any big, romantic ballads, and the lively numbers were not nearly so lively as they had been in previous Princess shows. To me it sounds like all of the songs were marked “moderato.” Of course, part of this may be due to the recording. The conductor, John McGlinn, may have been trying to be important and forgot to be fun.

So, given all that, why is this one of my favorite cast recordings? Well, first of all, it is a Kern-Wodehouse show, and there aren’t very many of them on record, so you can’t be choosy. Evidently, John McGlinn planned on recording all the Kern-Wodehouse musicals, but this is the only one he did before he died, so you take what you can get. And, it has some beautiful melodies. Even at a moderate tempo, Kern melodies are better than pretty much anyone else’s. It also has those clever Wodehouse lyrics which in this score alternate between sweet and funny. I mean, who else would get sentimental about subsisting on bread and water while in solitary confinement as he does in “Tulip Time In Sing Sing”:

How I miss the peace and quiet

And the simple, wholesome diet

In that dear old-fashioned prison of mine.

Finally, there is the overture. Unlike most overtures, this is not a medley of all the tunes in the show. It starts out with a sweeping, absolutely gorgeous melody that is heard nowhere else in the show; moves on to “The Enchanted Train,” a beautiful melody in its own right, which is presented complete with train effects from the orchestra; and then it finishes with the original melody. It is utterly beautiful, and one of the best overtures ever written.

All in all, this is a wonderful recording.