some other time
by
Douglas Messerli
Leonard
Bernstein (music), Betty Comden and Adolph Green (book and lyrics) On the Town
/ Adelphi Theater, New York / December 28, 1944
Given
a 24-hour shore leave, three sailor friends—Gabey, Ozzie and Chip—are let loose
on the city of New York. All want to “see the sites,” particularly Chip, but
they also seeking “romance and danger”: after all, it’s World War II, and the
men have been long at sea. A helluva town, New York—where the “Bronx is up”
(suggesting not only northern-most borough of the city but the vulgar cheer of
contempt) and the “Battery’s down” (suggesting both the southern tip of
Manhattan and a source of lagging energy), where one must endure an unbearable
pace and “seven millions…screaming for space”—is ready and willing to greet
them. Indeed the New York of On the Town, which premiered in 1944. is a
city in love with strangers, a community that quickly embraces its visitors. No
sooner is Ivy Smith named the subway system’s “Miss Turnstiles” of the month,
than Gabey falls in love with her poster image.
Brunhilde
Esterhazy (the incomparable Nancy Walker in the original production), a taxi
driver, invites Chip “up to her place.” Only after convincing him that the New
York he is desperate to see—a city of the Hippodrome, “Tobacco Road,” and the
Manhattan Aquarium—no longer exists, does he accept her offer, and is she able
to prove that she cannot only make love but can cook too!
Ozzie, meanwhile, has mistakenly visited
the Museum of Natural History in search of Gabey’s Ivy (the poster has
described her as studying painting at a museum); there he encounters Claire de
Loon, a would-be anthropologist in search of a “sub-super-dolicocephalic head”—and
any man attached. The two—in the original, the musical’s book and lyric writers
Betty Green and Adolph Comden—quickly discover that they are kindred souls,
people who easily get “Carried Away,” and, ultimately, as proof of their
malady, destroy the museum’s rare dinosaur.
For a short while, the friendly city is
experienced by Gabey, wandering through Central Park, as “A Lonely Town”; but
that feeling soon disappears when he discovers his long-sought Ivy at a
Carnegie Hall studio, and she, immediately smitten with him, promises to meet
him in Times Square at 11 PM. Due to previous commitments (enforced
performances as a cooch dancer on Coney Island to pay for her ballet dancing
lesson debts) Ivy is a no-show; but his friends and their dates, (along with a
unsuitable substitute date for Gabey, Lucy Schmeeler) head out for a night on
the town.
Gabey and Ivy are quickly reunited just in
time for the all three sailors to return to their ship, replaced by a new trio
on their way to see the “wonderful town.”
I recount this plot, since many readers
may have only seen the enjoyable, but less than perfect movie version which not
only devotes a great deal of its energies on the characters’ attempts to escape
authority, but also deletes the majority of the most charming of the original’s
music and lyrics: “Carried Away,” “Lonely Town,” “Lucky to Be Me,” and “Some
Other Time.” What I am most interested in conveying about the original is the
near absolute excitement about the city itself. On the Town is a
valentine to New York, a city presented as, perhaps, vulgar and fast-paced, but
also loving, accepting, embracing. As Comden and Green write: New York is “a
visitor’s place,” a world which loves outsiders.
Los Angeles, June 3, 2005
Reprinted from The Green Integer Review, no. 1 (January
2006)
