Musicals that Make Subtle Tributes to Other Musicals — Page 2

Applause in the "she got up early and pulled a Shirley MacLaine" lyric of "She's No Longer a Gypsy" (Pajama Game)

Not exactly a tribute, but the lyric "I've gotten through Abie's Irish Rose" in "I'm Still Here" (of course "Follies" is replete with theatrical pastiches of musical theatre)

"On the Town" - in "Come Up to My Place" Hildy explains to a disappointed Ozzie that "Tobacco Road" has closed and "the actors washed their feet and called it "Angel Street" (The disappointment may strike some as ironic - who would want to see "Tobacco Road" when he could see "Angel Street" instead?)

Updated On: 11/4/14 at 11:30 AM

Angel Street was a huge hit on Broadway at the time and later became the film Gaslight.

Going back to the the original post, there are two other "tributes" of sorts in Miss Saigon.

First, the plot is largely lifted from Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, which itself was based on a Broadway play by David Belasco, Madame Butterfly. The play was based on a short story of the same title. When South Pacific was being written, Rodgers and Hammerstein first started adapting the story about Liat and Cable, but Rodgers stopped work when he realized the story was too similar to Madama Butterfly. They then started over, adapting the story about Emile and Nellie. Even later, Hammerstein figured out how to intertwine the two stories. In Tales of the South Pacific, which was a collection of short stories, not a novel, the two couples appear in different stories and never interact.

Second, and as has often been noted, the first part of "Why, God, Why?" is the same melody as "There's a Small Hotel" from On Your Toes.

Here's an interesting article from the NY Times about the score of Miss Saigon and how obviously derivative parts of it are:

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/19/theater/recordings-view-playing-name-that-tune-with-miss-saigon.html

Updated On: 11/4/14 at 12:31 PM