Producer Dwight Deere Wiman mounted his take on the "Hey, kids, lets put on a show" theme at the Shubert Theatre in New York on April 14, 1937. With a cast of 50 newcomers he and his talent scouts had rooted out, Deere turned to the hottest Broadway songwriting duo, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, to write a libretto, songs, and score for the musical.

Rodgers and Hart got to know the main actors, singers, and dancers in the play, and in some respects modeled their characters after the people who would portray them. The idea of the story is that most of the youngsters involved live in Seaport, a fictional actors' colony. They have been raised with theatrical training, and also are conversant with the political, social, and political issues of the day. Part of the charm of the story lies in the way they inject such issues as Communism, psychic phenomena, and even racism into more standard teenage concerns.

To set the plot in motion, all the parents leave when they are hired for a five-month tour. They put the older kids in charge, and exit. The kids' efforts to put on a show and survive unexpected turns of fate make up the plot, which is rather silly but endearing. What really distinguishes the musical is its songs, which include an amazing number that became standards: "Where or When," "I Wish I were in Love Again," "My Funny Valentine," "Johnny One-Note," and "The Lady is a Tramp" all come from Babes in Arms.

The production was directed by Robert Sinclair and choreographed by Georges Balanchine, ensuring a fully professional result. It was well received by the critics, but was not a popular success, at least initially.

The last half of the 1936 - 1937 season was a weak one for musicals on Broadway; it's plain in hindsight that Babes in Arms surpassed its competition musically. But while critics raved, the more pragmatic Variety warned in a dispatch from out-of-town tryouts, "No nudity, no show girls, no plush or gold plate may mean no sale." And so it was. The show barely hung on, and sometimes ticket sales failed to meet expenses. But three competing musicals and revues closed one by one, and on July 17 Babes in Arms became the only musical on Broadway. This boosted ticket sales, and soon the buzz about the outstanding score made it a respectable hit, if not a smash. Luckily, there was no real competition until well into November, when the next Rodgers and Hart play opened. Babes closed in December after a respectable 289 performances.

Although the songs became famous, the story did not. MGM made a musical that jettisoned most of the score and drastically revised the story. In 1959, a new libretto was substituted and became the standard version. It was not until a 1987 performance, using Hans Spialek's original orchestration, was presented at Lincoln Center that the original version was once again heard..

© All Music Guide

My Funny Valentine

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "My Funny Valentine" was first used in their 1937 musical Babes in Arms and sung by Mitzi Green. It was not, however, used in the 1939 movie version and not sung by either Judy Garland or Mickey Rooney. It was not reused in the Hart and Rodgers' 1940 musical Pal Joey and not sung by Gene Kelley or Vivienne Segal. It was used in the 1957 movie musical of Pal Joey, but it wasn't sung by Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, or Rita Hayworth; it was sung by a session singer who dubbed in Hayworth's singing voice. But whoever does or doesn't sing the song, "My Funny Valentine" is a woman's song, a song sung by a woman about a man whose "figure is less than Greek" and whose "mouth is a little weak," but she can't help but feel something for him which might or might not be called love. Hart's lyrics are not quite the words for a love song; at worst, the singer seems affectionately disdainful; at best, the singer seems emotionally ambivalent. Rodgers' music ideally matches Hart's lyrical ambivalence. The minor-keyed melody of the refrain rises as its chromatic harmonies sink, mixing consonances with dissonances and creating music both poignant and painful. The major-keyed melody of the release rises up by a step to the most striking dissonance in the song at the return of the refrain. The coda takes the tonic minor of the refrain and resolves it in a relative major cadence, resolving the song's emotional ambivalence in a lush major chord.

© All Music Guide

The Lady is a Tramp

This was one of the hit songs from the 1937 Broadway musical Babes in Arms, which featured music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart. Oddly, some consider Babes only a moderate success despite its achieving a run of almost 300 performances. They point out that it was quickly forgotten after it closed, receiving no significant revivals for decades. True, but the public's attention shifted to the team's other musicals, including I Married an Angel (1938) and Higher and Higher (1940), and to the efforts of Rodgers and Hammerstein, beginning with the hugely successful Oklahoma (1943). "The Lady Is a Tramp" has a deftly witty character, conveying a sassy coolness in the sensuous swing of its rhythms and in its cutely sophisticated lyrics. Its main theme (coming in the refrain) is quite long-breathed in its debonair melancholy, its first three phrases setting up the catchy closing line, "That's why the lady is a tramp." It was quite popular in its day, especially among Broadway goers and high society, the very groups it mocks. Dated though its lyrics may be, this charming song will have strong appeal for Broadway and popular music devotees.

© Robert Cummings, Rovi

Blue Moon

Originally titled Prayer and written for the 1934 MGM film Hollywood Party where it was to be sung by Jean Harlow, "Blue Moon" was rejected. But the studio asked Lorenz Hart, who had written the words for the Rodgers original, to supply new lyrics for use of the song in the 1934 film Manhattan Melodrama. That effort, tentatively titled It's Just That Kind of Play, was also rejected. With yet a new set of lyrics and title, "Bad in Every Man," it was finally used in Manhattan Melodrama and sung by Shirley Ross. A fourth version, featuring new lyrics again, was made at the behest of MGM's publishing director Jack Robbins. This effort was entitled "Blue Moon." Not surprisingly, "Blue Moon"'s catchy melody has a bluesy character. Its mood is carefree, almost sassy, the pacing moderate but with a sense of animation in the accompaniment. Yet the melody also expresses a tenderness in its gentle mixture of melancholy and sweet yearnings. The vocal line quite deftly matches Hart's touching lyrics about a lonely soul who finds love and is "no longer alone...no longer without a dream...." This is certainly one of the better Rodgers and Hart songs.

© Robert Cummings, Rovi