Favorite Larry Grossman score?

[twinbelters]

Posted: 12/12/10 at 7:56pm

I'm listening to Goodtime Charley for the second time in two days. Grossman conceived of some lovely themes and i think this is a greatly under appreciated score. However I think Grind is my favorite score he's composed. A Doll's Life is a minor masterpiece at #2.

But Minnie's Boys is a quality score, even Snoopy is recommendable.

What's your favorite Grossman score?

[broadwaydanwi]

Posted: 12/12/10 at 8:19pm

Grind. This show deserves a second chance. It opened and closed during Broadway's worst season ever -- 1985. I never stop listening to the CD. I even saved my vinyl album for its great cover art. Whatever happened to artists creating illustrations to promote musicals on Broadway?

[twinbelters]

Posted: 12/12/10 at 8:29pm

Still listening to Charley.One Little Year is crazy
magnificent. Grind def requires reinvestigation.

I know, what happened to Tom Morrow? Shout out to Gadino, Fraver, and Byrd.

[After Eight]

Posted: 12/12/10 at 11:12pm

I'm sorry to say I don't find any of his work first rate, though he has written some good individual songs in his shows. I guess "Minnie's Boys" is the best of them, but since it's rather mediocre, that's not saying much. I think "Grind" is awful.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 12/12/10 at 11:20pm

Loved Grind & would loved to have seen the show.

Always wanted to hear Paper Moon. I think he also did Harold & Maude if I am not wrong.

[newintown]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 9:46am

Grind was a terrific show. Saw it twice. Great heart, well-structured, and with a great, tuneful theatrical score. Ellen Fitzhugh's lyrics are highly undervalued. like Scottsboro, though, it's a bit too dark to sit well with the brain-numb herd, who want no more than glitter and sentiment.

I'm also very fond of Goodtime Charley. I know there's that old saw that a writer can only have one protagonist, dooming this show, but I don't see any reason why anyone should think that's true.

[tazber]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 10:41am

I love Goodtime Charley so much. It's one of my faves.

I think my favorite is Snoopy for sentimental reasons.

Grind is an ok score. It has some really good stuff, and then some really terrible stuff.

I haven't heard Minnie's Boys in awhile, but I definitely like it.

The one score that I absolutely hate though is A Doll's Life.
I have never been able to get into that. And I've tried.

I wish he would finally have a big fat hit already!

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 10:50am

GRIND didn't fail because it was too dark to suit the brain dead herd. It failed because it had serious Delusions Of Relevance: it was so busy smashing the audience over the head with its BIG THEMES of Racism and Violence that it never got around to actually dealing with any of themes in an intelligent or useful manner. It wound up sinking under the weight of all those BIG THEMES -- few musicals have ever worked so hard and accomplished so little.

A shame, really. Some cool stuff. Bob Fosse did some doctoring, and he came up with a wonderful reverse striptease, where women danced provocatively while putting on clothes, that only served to point up how trite the rest of the show was.

[Jon]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 1:49pm

SNOOPY is a better score than Gesner's score for YAGMCB.

[PennybankBill]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 2:13pm

What is wrong with A Doll's Life? I like the music. The Lyrics are not the best, though. GRIND is an amazing piece of work, IMO.

[tazber]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 2:50pm

Nothing is wrong with it, I just don't like it.

There are a couple of relatively pretty songs (Learn To Be Lonely, A Woman Alone) but the rest of it is boring. It's very anaemic imo.

I agree that Snoopy is better than YAGMCB. But it seems that whichever score people are exposed to first ends up being their favorite.

Big Bow Wow is such a great song!

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 4:50pm

A DOLL'S LIFE tried like hell, but just didn't work. Taz mentions the good songs, but there was another that worked very well onstage, George Hearn singing "You Interest Me."

Far worse musicals have come and gone, though. Whatever happened to Betsy Joslyn?

Trust me -- the amazing things about GRIND were the waste of some very large sets and a very good cast, and a lot of money.

Updated On: 12/13/10 at 04:50 PM

[twinbelters]

Posted: 12/13/10 at 9:36pm

But oh what a cast recording it left behind.

[newintown]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 9:24am

Chacun à son goût, Roscoe. I saw Grind twice during its brief run and thought it was good musical theatre - it had something to say, said it in an interesting way, had defined place, time, character, a colorful panoply of a book, and a terrific score. Speaking with Ellen Fitzhugh several years after, she derided it because of the changes/compromises necessitated by the casting of Ben Vereen in a supporting role, but then, she tended to deride all her projects anyway.

One reason I believe it failed - it was a show with many threads, written in a time when audiences prefer only one or two (more than that being too hard to follow).

[tazber]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 9:44am

I must say that Ben Vereen's songs are the ones I dislike most.

I love "I Get Myself Out" and "Timing". Also, "All Things To One Man", "The Line", and "These Eyes Of Mine" are very good.

But the rest leave me feeling like they were half baked. Especially Ben's 11 o'clock number "A New Man".

But this is all just based on the recording. I've never seen the show so maybe they worked better in the show.

[newintown]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 10:02am

The one problem that never seemed to be resolved with the book (or staging of the book): Stubby Kaye's character is a burlesque comic losing his sight, and that descent into blindness always felt a bit awkward, physically. Prince couldn't seem to find a graceful, inexorable way of staging that arc.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 2:15pm

A bigger problem was the rather bizarre inclusion of Timothy Nolan's character who turned out to be an IRA bomber who was drinking himself to death to get over the accidental slaying of his wife and child by a bomb he himself had made, or some such like that -- Nolan got this big old song that stopped the show bloody cold in its tracks.

The show gave me one of the hardest laughs I've ever had in a theatre, though. Late in the show when Nolan's character has vanished and is being sought by Leilani Jones, she is told by a stagehand to be careful going through the alley because "there's a lot of bums out there!", and Ms. Jones did one of the most unintentionally hilarious evocations of somebody getting an idea (Wait A Minute! He's One Of Those Bums In The Alley!!) that I've ever seen. It was like the Carpe Noctem number in DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES -- I thought I'd never stop laughing.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 2:24pm

Grind also had a problem of almost nothing happening in Act One and then all hell breaking loose in Act Two, including the ludicrous plot moments mentioned above.

Regarding the question asked about Tom Morrow, he died in 1995.

[newintown]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 2:41pm

Well, there you go. I found the character of Doyle (and his two songs, "Katie My Love" and "Down") moving. It was one of the things that made Grind more than just a simplistic one-thread story. Comparing Irish-English hatred to the racial hatred in America worked for me.
Updated On: 12/14/10 at 02:41 PM

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 2:49pm

Yeah, there you go. Instead of a simplistic one-thread story show, GRIND was a simplistic multi-thread show.

[newintown]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 2:54pm

In the words of the immortal Donny Osmond, "What. Everrrr."

[twinbelters]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 3:26pm

Grossman has never been represented at Encores! correct?

Mufti, however, has done A Dolls Life I know.

[Paul Bland4]

Posted: 12/14/10 at 3:36pm

I am also a big Grossman fan. Most of the opinions that follow are based on the Cast Recordings of his shows, as I have never had the opportunity to see any of them in any other form:

MINNIE'S BOYS - Very tuneful, mostly good, serviceable musical comedy numbers. The highlights: "You Remind Me of You," "Four Nightengales," "Mama, A Rainbow."

GOODTIME CHARLEY - Ambitious, sweeping and mostly successful, as a score. Grey is off-putting, but Reinking OWNED that show. The Highlights: "Goodtime Charley," "One Little Year," "I am Going to Love (The Man You're Going to Be)," and of course, "Merci, Bom Dieu."

SNOOPY - The only Grossman score I have personally performed (As Charlie Brown in an unholy comingling with YAGMCB - strictly a copyright infringement, but it was ten years ago.), I find the show to be again, very well-written, better than YAGMCB, but just a little too "slick," losing the nice childlike atmosphere of YAGMCB. The Highlights: "Edgar Allan Poe," "Where Did That Little Dog Go?." " Poor, Sweet Baby," "Don't Be Anything Less (Than Everything You Can Be.)"

A DOLL'S LIFE - I met Besty Joslyn in the late 1980's, doing a show in my hometown, and bought her a drink. I asked her what happened with DOLL'S LIFE, a show I thought to be very ambitious and risk-taking. She replied, wearily, "Oh, somebody else should have written it; It was Adolph and Betty's baby, though, and they insisted in writing the lyrics ..." I responded, "Somebody else, like WHO?" She took a deep breath and replied, this time wistfully, "Steve ..." I Like the show, but I do recognize its flaws, and I totally agree that Comden and Green were the wrong lyricists for the material. The Highlights:"Loki and Baldur," "Stay With Me, Nora," "Learn To Be Lonely."

GRIND - Another ambitious score; if nothing else, you can argue that Grossman was trying to push his own personal boundaries with every successive show. Love the CD, wish it was back in print. The Highlights: "I Get Myself Out," "Down," "Katie, My Love," "You Talk, I Talk," "The Right Man."

I have, to my chagrin, never heard anything from PAPER MOON. The Songs Grossman wrote for Disney's GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE were serviceable, and saved mainly by Vincent Price's plummy perfomances. If anybody ever hears of demos of other Grossman works, please let me know, I'd love to add them to my collection.
Updated On: 12/14/10 at 03:36 PM

[alterego]

Posted: 12/15/10 at 12:51am

A fan of MINNIE'S BOYS and GOODTIME CHARLEY, not sold on GRIND here though. SNOOPY OK. Surely GOODTIME CHARLEY is a show worth a (revival) revisit?

[After Eight]

Posted: 12/15/10 at 4:48am

"Mufti, however, has done A Dolls Life I know."

They did a series of shows by Larry Grossman: "Minnie's Boys," "Goodtime Charley," "Grind," and a revue based on his songs. They were all well presented, but the shows' shortcomings were still evident. "Grind" was presented in a revised version, and it was bad once again.