Has there ever been a successful Bway musical that used existing songs?

Not a jukebox musical or a review, but a successful Broadway musical that took pre-existing songs and dropped them into a new book?

I ask because as much as I love a Bullets Over Broadway musical I can't see this working without a new score.

Updated On: 4/19/13 at 05:48 PM

I thought Cinderella used the original Rodgers & Hammerstein score? BoB is planning on taking period songs by various composers and putting them on stage in a new book.

Jersey Boys comes to mind because it isn't per se a juke box musical but rather uses a book written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and the songs of Frankie Valli and Four Seasons to tell the story. More like a VH1 Behind the Music.

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My One and Only and Crazy For You both used Gershwin songs with an original plat (the latter is LOOSELY based on Girl Crazy, but barely anything of the original plot remains).

And now we have Nice Work If You Can Get It - but it's not a hit...

Ahem, "Contact" was not a musical...not in the true sense of the word anyway.

Revival of Promises, Promises

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Would 42nd Street count or is that under the same category as Crazy for You and Anything Goes as it has songs from its original source material plus pre existing songs?

They did a tour of Moulin Rouge in Europe, but they couldn't get the rights to all the songs, so they added others instead- I believe the show contained "I Will Survive," among others.

Best, am reading this wrong or is that "Moulin Rouge" approach exactly what they are going to do here? I am assuming they are going to have their cast sing a "Woody Allen" assortment of Gershwin, Porter, Hart et al.

Joe, I believe they are ... but I'll bet Woody Allen isn't aware that licensing songs for films and licensing them for a stage production are two entirely different beasts.

The one advantage is that the songs he wants to use are all "old" now. That doesn't mean they'll be easy to obtain or even cheap. Cheaper and easier than new(er) songs, sure. Some of them may have passed into public domain already, since the era of music he wants to use is roughly 80 to even 90 years ago.

But remember, this was the original idea for Funny Girl -- to license her original songs (Second Hand Rose, My Man, I'd Rather Be Blue, etc.), and they couldn't get them (or afford them) for the Broadway production. So they had original songs written to take their places. When it came time to do the film, they used the original Brice songs (as intended from the start), because budgets are a lot higher for films. Plus the "distribution" of films is/was a lot more defined than licenses for Broadway, national tour, international tour, stock, pro, amateur, etc.

It gets really complicated.

Most jukebox shows today come from a single composer's (or more accurately, a single licenser's) catalogue. It's a lot easier to bundle and negotiate when you're dealing with one source.

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Updated On: 4/19/13 at 09:58 AM

Any jukebox musical, plus Crazy for You, Nice Work if You Can Get It. So plenty of shows have used pre-existing songs.

Updated On: 4/19/13 at 10:30 AM

I'm guessing Bullets score is not strictly limited to "The Great American Songbook", and is incorporating lesser-known Tin Pan Alley and novelty Vaudeville tunes that fit the plot and characters.

Book-specific songs were pretty rare back in the 20s. It's not a hard trick to interpolate these songs into a new musical set in that period. Nice Work managed to bungle the assignment, but they were dealing with a truly lousy book. If the Bullets screenplay is any indication, it's a given that the Bullets musical's book is light years beyond Nice Work already. (Can you tell I'm excited for Bullets Over Broadway?)

Nice Work also used extremely well-known songs, which are great unto themselves, but done to death. Who really needs to see yet another staging of 'S Wonderful or Fascinating Rhythm?

The Broadway musical tweaked the story, but not significantly enough that it would be considered entirely new or separate from its source material.

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