Word: saratoga
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Saratoga (adapted from Edna Ferber's novel Saratoga Trunk; music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer) is a gorgeously decked-out period musical, moving from a plush New Orleans in the '80s to a palmy Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The handsome sets and costumes by Cecil Beaton are much the brightest part of the show. Despite some lively Ralph Beaumont dances, some pleasant Harold Arlen music and some neat touches in Morton Da Costa's direction, Saratoga has all the animation of a tableau and all the narrative interest of something written 50 times...
...chief trouble is once again book trouble, and the sense of a period musical in treatment as well as subject matter. Saratoga tells a tale of two young fortune seekers: an illegitimate New Orleans beauty and a ranchman gypped out of his inheritance, who unromantically team up to get ahead in the world but become the victims of romance. In telling its tale, Saratoga snows cliches, trips over its own gaudy furnishings, and interminably keeps a heroine who was born out of wedlock from entering it. An added trouble: lacking all freshness and zip, the show possesses no compensating charm...
...three times the dancing turns lively suggest a last two or three rounds of ammunition desperately fired at the advancing battalions of boredom. Carol Lawrence and Howard Keel are agreeable leads, but to little avail. With none of the succulence of a great big old-fashioned dinner, Saratoga induces all of the somnolence...
...ending when it opened in Pittsburgh, another by the time it got to Detroit, will probably have several more before it finishes its two months on the road. The Detroit Times found the "situations and dialogue so uniformly funny . . . that even the most racy moments are disarming." ¶ Saratoga has been dressed up by Designer Cecil Beaton, but Morton DaCosta's musical version of Edna Ferber's Saratoga Trunk does not yet live up to its magnificent settings. With a $1,500,000 advance sale, Saratoga is sure of a long Broadway run, but Harold Arlen...
...freckled 15-year-old blonde gripped the starting block with her toes, inhaled deeply, and hit the water at the gun with long, smooth strokes. When she flashed home last week in 4:55.9 for the 400 meters, Chris von Saltza of Saratoga, Calif, had broken her U.S. record by 2.2 sec., neatly finished the job of turning Chicago's Pan-American Games into a one-girl swim. In all, Chris carried off five gold medals: she won the 100, 200 and 400 meters, was a member of the winning team in the 400-meter freestyle relay...