Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986)

Growing up on a farm outside a small Wisconsin town, I never had much exposure to Broadway musicals. But, due to the fact that it featured Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin and was set during the California Gold Rush, the movie version of Paint Your Wagon was in regular rotation on a local TV station's Saturday afternoon Western matinee, an annual event at least. Due to that, even today, I have probably seen Paint Your Wagon more than any other musical in my life, though Jesus Christ Superstar show more and Rent may be slowly catching up. Paint Your Wagon probably launched a lifelong love of Broadway musicals that eventually became a way of bonding with my musical-loving daughter (thanks, Disney and Barbie!), and culminated last year with a daddy/daughter trip to New York City where I actually saw three Broadway musicals on Broadway for the first time in my life: Avenue Q, Come From Away, and Wicked. (All were amazing, by the way.)

So imagine my joy when I came across this original edition of the Broadway script for $1 at a library book sale a few days ago.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the Broadway play bears hardly any resemblance to the film.

The stage version is less raunchy and rowdy and has several characters that Hollywood saw fit to ditch, including the star-crossed Romeo and Juliet pair whose relationship takes up a major section of the storyline. The film added the character of Pardner and the whole polygamous marriage between him and the Mormon wife who is auctioned off to the highest bidder. The Broadway version is a little more melancholy and doesn't feature a big action set piece at the end that destroys much of the town. And yet, I find it almost as enjoyable as the movie and found myself singing out loud the songs that I was familiar with because they had made it into both productions.

Bonus: Lerner's introduction to this 1952 book is an apparently timeless rant about Broadway's over-reliance on adaptations, the overuse of the same small pool of composers and lyricists, and over-priced tickets that cause a vicious circle of audiences only wanting to attend shows with which they have brand familiarity. The more things change, eh? show less

Camelot. Gigi. My Fair Lady.

Really, that list right there should tell ya everything you need to know about the author, lyricist of these three epoch-defining musicals. He wrote "The Night They Invented Champagne" and "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "If Ever I Would Leave You." Egads! Gadzooks! Forsooth! So what the heck else is there for a man whose resume has those little bagatelles depending from it to say for 254pp of text?

Not a helluva lot.

No nasty, salacious gossip?! Nuh-uh. No show more cruel-to-be-kind character assassinations of his friends?!? pffft So is this book a complete yawn-fest? Almost.

I found Mr. Lerner's explication of the writing, adapting, and collaborative processes illuminating and useful. I thought his stories of life behind the scenes as a Broadway neophyte were funny. But I would never suggest to you, o budget-conscious book consumer, that you seek this book out and pay good coin for it. If you run across it at the charity shop or a yard sale, snap it up! Search AbeBooks? Oh hell no. Best of all, those of you in roughly my age bracket, go rooting in Mom's books and see if she got one back in 1978, thinking she'd wile away a few hours with a martini and a gossipy tell-all.

Betcha you'll know immediately where she gave up and moved on to dirtier fields...the spine'll crackle as you turn that page. show less

A fairly straightforward tale about the fabled events regarding King Arthur and the knights of the round table. The scores are set, the stakes are high, but there seems to be something inherently lacking in the play that makes it hard to get into and fully enjoy. I assume that a live version would be better, but suffice to say that there is not as much gracious and flowing dialogue as one would expect in this tale of immense potential.

3 stars.

A truly delightful classic with memorable songs and fun antics. It is interesting to see the way that the nature/nurture debate plays out in this piece without ever once mentioning the underlying assumptions, and makes for entertaining theatre, which is read better if you are familiar enough with the piece that you know the tunes to the songs and can hear them in your head.