FIORELLO!

After listening to THE ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT-THE SMELL OF THE CROWD, I've decided to go through my CD collection and play some CDs I haven't heard in a while. The first one I played was FIORELLO!, the musical about the life of Fiorello H. LaGuardia.

Mind you Tom Bosley seemed very energetc in his one main song in the show ("The Name's LaGuardia"), and the score is nice wih such great songs as "Politics and Poker", "Little Tin Box", and "When Did I Fall in Love" (Anybody ever hear Audra McDonald's rendition of it?), but I can't help but wonder how on Earth did this show manage to win the Pulitzer and the Tony for Best Musical (Tied with THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which both won over GYPSY)? Maybe it was more of a product of its time, but I'm still puzzled. Granted it's a good show (I saw a local producion of the show a couple of years ago), but was it THAT good?

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Updated On: 8/14/05 at 01:42 PM

I think you're exactly right that it's a product of its time. The show must have seemed completely fresh and up-to-the-minute when it came out that year. So much so, that it is now a very dated piece.

I keep thinking about how smart the creative team for "The Wizard of Oz" (movie) was when they cut the Jitterbug number. Oz is a true classic film now, but to see all of its main characters twitching around to a popular dance of the moment would have severely dated the picture. Many wanted to keep the number in, but good sense won out.

I also think of how they wrecked the movie of "A Chorus Line" by trying to make the music and dancing as current as humanly possible, at the expense of the characters and story. It was "semi-cool" for all of 2 minutes before it became yesterday's trend. And now it's pretty laughable (and very frustrating) to watch.

Back to Fiorello... Most of us grew up without knowing many details about Fiorello, and some may not even know who he was at all. Except they named an airport after him, and he once was a wildly popular mayor of New York. Sad but true.

I have not seen the show, but have often wanted to. My guess is that many of the Fiorello-isms of the day would go right over my head. I wouldn't get the character's quirks, famous sayings, or the hot-off-the-press humor. No doubt this fueled the Pulitzer and Tony committees' choices.

It's mind-boggling today to think of it tying with The Sound of Music, both of which beat out Gypsy for a Tony that year. If they could have only been transported through time to see how limited that decision was!

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The book for FIORELLO while not totally factual is very well written - almost strong enough to be a play but the songs only help embellish it. Only "Gentleman Jimmy" is superfluous. Not as flashy as GYPSY's book but just as tight!

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