New Muscial in Manhattan

New Musical in Manhattan

Something for the Boys (book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields; music & lyrics by Cole Porter; produced by Michael Todd) gives Broadway the musicomedy it has been thirsting for since September. It reveals Songblitzer Ethel Merman at her absolute peak and Songwriter Cole Porter well above the timberline. Its book has more laughs, if no more logic, than most. It has the bright Broadway look that, despite the show's light wartime motifs, suggests the gaudier years of peace.

Something for the Boys tells of three uninhibited cousins (Ethel Merman, Paula Laurence, Allen Jenkins) who inherit a Texas ranch next door to Kelly Field and set up a boardinghouse for soldiers' wives. In their spare time they also make defense gadgets out of carborundum. The hostelry turns into a scandal, and Actress Merman, by getting some carborundum in her teeth, turns into a radio receiving set. After that nothing even tries to make sense.

Having long since proved that she can pull the plug on any three other musicomedy voices, Ethel Merman today puts herself across as brilliantly as she does a song. In Something for the Boys she is everywhere, doing everything. She torches and trollops, blares and beguiles, and late in the evening she and Actress Laurence, as a pair of wacky Indian women, bring down the house larruping through By the Mississinewa.

The Porter tunes in Something for the Boys are lively, but lack the old throbbing magic of Night and Day and Begin the Beguine. The Porter lyrics are clever, but lack the old high-style smartness of Let's Do It and You're the Top. If this means loss of power, it also suggests change of purpose: Composer Porter is gearing his tunes for Broadway productions and tailoring them for the brash Merman.

At 49, small, dark, shiny-haired Cole Albert Porter shares top rank for musicomedy tunes with Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers. Behind Porter lie 17 Broadway shows, including such hits as Fifty Million Frenchmen, Gay Divorce, Anything Goes, Leave It to Me, Du Barry Was a Lady, Panama Hattie.

Musicomedy's most sophisticated composer was born in Peru, Ind., the son of a fruitgrowing farmer. After graduating from Yale (where he wrote the still popular Bulldog and Bingo) in 1913, Porter went for a year to Harvard Law School, then switched to the department of music. While still a student he had a musical, See America First, produced on Broadway. It contained one Porter song which still makes middle-aged sentimentalists blink over their highballs: I've a Shooting Box in Scotland (words by Porter's good friend T. Lawrason Riggs, longtime Catholic chaplain at Yale). In 1917 Porter joined the French Foreign Legion, going to the wars with a tiny portable piano on his back.

After the Armistice he returned to the U.S., wrote Hitchy-Koo, 1919, then doubled back to Europe. There he married fashionable, Louisville-bred Linda Lee Thomas, and with the help of a $1,000,000 (coal mines, timberland) bequest from a grandfather, plunged into post-war international society at its gaudiest. The Porters' Paris menage had a room done up in platinum; their Venetian palazzo, once inhabited by the Brownings, was the scene of fabulous parties featuring Porter's crony Edgar Montillion (Monty) Woolley. Porter invented an American couple named Fitch and stuffed the society columns with accounts of their European triumphs. At one point Elsa Maxwell got her licks in by announcing that Mr. Fitch had left Porter's party for hers. During these years Porter wrote many of his future song hits but -- snapping his manicured fingers at the theater -- merely played them for his friends.

Playboy's Return. He returned to the U.S. and Broadway in 1928. Since then he has sandwiched bouts of work between rounds of gaiety, or sometimes combined them: the lyrics for Night and Day were written on the beach at Newport, the music for Jubilee was composed during a trip around the world.

Unlike most of his tribe, Porter neither squirms nor seeks solitude on opening nights. He always turns up in evening dress with a superb dinner on board and a large party of friends. He sits way down front, holds court, applauds like mad.

Five years ago Porter broke both his legs in a riding accident. With his legs in casts, and facing amputation of one, he wrote the music for You Never Know in a record-breaking four weeks. He has undergone 30 operations on his legs since, still has both, gets about with a cane.

With Something for the Boys a smash hit, Porter will start on a new Michael Todd musical about Cinderella. The lead, he regrets, is not quite right for Ethel.

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