The Comedy of Errors: Winfred Shaw and Dick Powell - Lullaby of Broadway (6 June 1992)

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In time for the 6/6/92 show, a listener called Dave (not me) sent Peel a postcard with an owl on it and a request that he play something for himself.  “Hope you’ve got your dancing shoes on” said Peel and responded to the invitation not with Teenage Kicks but the breakout tune from Busby Berkeley’s 1935 film, Gold Diggers of 1935.  Written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, featuring one of the largest collections of tap dancers preserved on vinyl, Lullaby of Broadway was a perennial favourite of Peel’s and cropped up intermittently on his playlists.  Set in a world of Broadway dancers and wannabe Manhattan starlets who need stamina to survive long nights with their “Broadway Daddies” as well as skill to get their big break, it may very well have inspired tracks like My Time of Day from Guys and Dolls, which I appeared in, though I didn’t sing the song, a year after this show was broadcast.
The track goes through four movements: Winifred Shaw, backed by Leo Forbstein and his orchestra takes us through the tune up to 2:10, which is where Berkeley’s dancers get to work (the version on record is shorter than the sequence in the film). At 3:25, Dick Powell gets a contractually obliged turn, only 15 seconds long, but enough to get him on the record sleeve, which is nice work if you can get it. From 3:40 onwards the chorus and dancers take the track through to thunderous applause at the end including at 4:30, one of those descending brass runs which were so much a feature of 30s and 40s soundtracks.  A musical cue ripe for use either in a Golden Age of Hollywood musical or a film noir.

I suspect that had I been listening to the show in 1992, I’d have taped Lullaby of Broadway because a) it’s a wonderful tune and that enchanting gramophone-like quality to the sound genuinely allows us to feel like we’re hearing the past and b) the LOLBANTZ of hearing a 57 year old musical track played on Radio 1 (albeit in the early hours of the morning).  I don’t listen to Radio 1’s night-time output these days, though I keep meaning to.  Does anyone there now have the heft of Peel which would allow them to play records as old as this with impunity?  Would Huw Stephens ever feel inclined to play something like Dance at the Gym on a Sunday night?  Hmmm...I doubt it, but Phil Taggart could be persuaded, I think.

It would be another 9 years before Lullaby of Broadway would register with me.  In August 2001, I appeared in The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940, a zany 1987 comedy-thriller by John Bishop - not the comedian -  The curtain music at both start and end of the play was Lullaby of Broadway - though it wasn’t this version-  and as I drove home from St. Austell to Falmouth after the dress rehearsal on 7 August 2001, I listened to Peel’s show and he played the Shaw/Powell version of Lullaby of Broadway.  It was surely an omen that the show was going to be a success.  It certainly should have been with its mixture of escaped Nazi spies, undercover murderers, a spooky house and the subplot about staging White House Merry Go Round a musical about U.S. Presidents which is used as the cover to bring the characters together in the hope of unmasking The Stage Door Slasher -  maybe it inspired The Simpsons?  If that all sounds like the recipe for a ghastly night out, have a
heart. I hadn’t done a show in nine months and was desperate to get back onstage.
Alas, it missed the mark.  It will be a long time before we soundtrack The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 so I’m not worried about giving spoilers out here.  Our production never quite got over the handicap of our director having to act in a medium sized role which we weren’t able to fill.  It meant that he couldn’t watch the rehearsals as forensically as a fast-paced comedy demanded.  It needed someone to be able to tell us when less was more or indeed when more needed to be more.  It wan’t a disaster - you’ll have to wait till this blog reaches 1997 for one of those.  The performances were all good and it looked ravishing - but it lacked polish and focus, meaning that a potentially riotous night at the theatre never quite achieved lift-off.  A point brought home to us as the run of 12 performances progressed by curtain-call applause from audiences that suggested they quite liked what they had seen, but only if nobody asked them any questions about it.  As we made our way offstage after taking our bows to another crescendo of polite applause, I was moved to comment to one of the cast, “Sounds like a parish council meeting accepting the minutes”.  I brought friends of mine out to see one performance and dropped them home afterwards.  In the bar, they smiled and nodded and said “Well done” to everyone, but the moment we were in the car, I said, “We botched it, didn’t we?” and their agreement was immediate.
I couldn’t be too down-hearted though.  My character, struggling comedian, Eddie McCuen got the girl at the end of the play, undercover naval agent, Nikki Crandall. And for a brief and blissful time over late 2001, art imitated life as myself and the lady who played her, Ruth*, got together before the end of the run.  We reinvigorated each other’s lives just at the right time for both of us and as previously discussed here, she brought me a rare piece of treasure that I still value to this day.  Just over a week ago, she celebrated her birthday, so this one’s for her.

*The Stage Door Slasher went on to become her father-in-law a couple of years later.  So she gained a father-in-law and a starting point if she, or indeed any of us who were in The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940, ever find ourselves playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

The full sequence is just over 13 minutes apparently, but here’s an excerpt.  Still staggering in any era.



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