Word: bergreen
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...music. And in his first flush of success, 90 years ago, he wrote so prolifically (averaging a new published song a week) that it was rumored "a little colored boy" was the real composer of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and other syncopated hits. (Berlin's response, noted in Lawrence Bergreen's excellent biography "As Thousands Cheer": "Do you realize how many little nigger boys I'd have to have?") The simple fact is that he wrote fast. In 1946, when he accepted the job of doing the music for the Broadway show "Annie Get Your Gun," Berlin went...
...salesman of his music; his ragged vocal and instrumental technique could undermine his best work. In 1934, Fred Astaire and the "Top Hat" production team gathered to hear the numbers Berlin had written for the movie. "And then he would sing the song," Hermes Pan, Astaire's choreographer, told Bergreen, "and we were all asking ourselves, Is this any good? I remember 'Cheek to Cheek' especially: the way he sang and played, it sounded so awful...
...hits and money. He talked grandly about writing a "folk opera" (Gershwin finally did); Puccini supposedly wanted to collaborate with him on an opera. But Berlin was compelled to keep writing in a form that could guarantee hit status for nearly every song. "His narrow field of activity," Bergreen writes, "resulted from both his own musical limitations and his enslavement to the musical marketplace. He was, in a broad sense, a victim of his success, doomed to replicate it ad infinitum...
...Karen Bergreen...
...overall, the personalities remain static, and this fact in combination with an unchanging set makes the play seem to drag on. Perhaps director Karen Bergreen should shorten it. In any case, Romantic Comedy is an enjoyable play for an hour-and-a-half. But prepare yourself for a long final half-hour...