my favorite broadway musical songs: “who’s been sitting in my chair?”
by Douglas Messerli
Leroy Anderson, Jean and Walter Kerr and Joan Ford Goldilocks, 1958
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqnincwVDAA
Shockingly, the musical composed by
Leroy Anderson, with a libretto by the famous critic/writing-couple of Jean and
Walter Kerr, starring the popular Elaine Stritch, co-staring the
Perhaps the silly plot of a retiring movie star, attempting to marry
into high society while completing just one last “bad” Hollywood film, Frontier Woman, was just too much for
the New York theater audiences of the day. Too much slapstick, particularly
when incorporating the original Goldilocks
story, was just too difficult to deal with for the New York matinee
audiences of the late 1950s.
Give it to Stritch for her cheeky performance as Maggie Harris, who
sings numerous of the musical’s still loveable ditties with great panache. Her
wonderful “Who’s Been Sitting in My Chair?” in which she desperately wishes for
a visitation from anyone—including even one of the bears—to come spill her
porridge or just simply muss up her bed—is a lovely song of loneliness that
resonates with her later Stephen Sondheim performance of the Follies’ “Broadway Baby”: “In my tiny
flat, there’s just my cat, a bed and a chair.”
Everything is neat as apple pie.
…..
Whose been sitting in my chair, just
me, just me.
Seems such a pity when I’d share it willingly.
…..
Whose been eating my porridge, just
me, that’s who
I’m just the type to go foraging for
a midnight snack for two.
…..
I’d like to get a larger mattress….
It’s a totally memorable song, despite the now forgotten status of the
original musical. Joan Ford, along with the Kerrs, who wrote the lyrics to Leroy Anderson's music, all of whom ought to have become Broadway legends.
Los Angeles, October 24, 2017
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