June is Bustin’ Out All Over—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival 2020

June is Bustin' Out All Over from the movie Carousel.

Was there ever a month greeted so exuberantly as this one in Richard Rodgers’s and Oscar Hammerstein II 1945 Broadway musical Carousel with June is Bustin’ Out All Over?

As a follow up to the enormous success of their 1943 breakthrough Oklahoma! the duo wanted to mount another musical with a distinctively American setting but they turned to a nearly 40 year old European modernist theater classic as their inspiration.  Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom, was transplanted from its Budapest setting to a Maine coastal village and mill town.  The original play might today have been classified as magical realism with a tough guy carnival roustabout dispatched from heaven to help the daughter he fathered on an innocent young woman.  Despite the magical elements, the play was often dark with the seduction of the girl, his physical abuse of her, a crime, and his death. 

It is quite possible that the musical could not be mounted as a new work on Broadway today with a male lead abuser sympathetically portrayed.  And a famous scene where the now teen-age daughter feels his slap and is told by her mother that it could be a sign of love would probably never make it to the stage.

The original 1945 Broadway poster fir Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel.

Carousel opened on Broadway on April 19, 1945 with John Raitt as Billy Bigelow and Jan Clayton (future mom on TV’s Lassie) as Julie. While not as big a smash hit as Oklahoma! the musical became an oft revived staple of American theater.  Broadway revivals included 1954 and 1957 productions by the New York City Center Light Opera Company. Both times, the production featured Barbara Cook, though she played Carrie in 1954 and Julie in 1957, with Howard Keel as Billy.  A 1992 London East End revival came to Broadway in 1995 with Michael Hayden as Billy, Sally Murphy as Julie, and Audra McDonald as Carrie, a Tony winning best supporting actress role.  In 2019 Jessie Mueller was Julie, Joshua Henry was Billy, and opera diva Renée Fleming was Carrie.

The 1956 movie poster for Carousel.

Most of us are most familiar with the 1956 20th Century Fox wide screen film adaptation starring Gordon MacCrae as Billy and Shirley Jones as Julie.  June is Bustin’ Out All Over featured Claramae Turner as Cousin Nettie Fowler, Barbara Ruick as Carrie and a large ensemble.  The number seamlessly introduced the June Is Bustin' Out All Over Ballet.

You’ll Never Walk Alone—Murfin Corona Confinement Music Festival

You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel by Renée Fleming.

Note—A couple of days ago I posted Hank Williams classic I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry as a response to the social distancing and isolation many of us are experiencing during the Coronavirus emergency.  Folks seemed to like that so much that yesterday I featured British World War II favorite Vera Lynn singing the romantic separation ballad I’ll Be Seeing You and announced that I would make one of my Murfin Music Festival a regular feature for the foreseeable.  Today I am migrating it to Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout from where it can easily be shared widely.

Since this is Sunday and some of us are really missing our church connection and in need of a dose of spirituality and encouragement here is something inspirational.  But today’s song does not come from any hymnal, it comes from Broadway.

The graduation scene from the original Broadway production of Rodger and Hammerstein's Carousel.

Carousel was the second musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.  It was Ference Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline in 1873.  It was an unusual and grim choice in an era when most stage musicals were still revues, frothy romantic comedies, or light operettas.  In the show innocent textile mill girl Julie Jordon meets rough and tumble carousel barker Billy Bigelow at carnival set up for the town’s annual clam bake.  He woos, seduces, and abuses the girl before committing suicide after a botched robbery.  Then in an apparently universalist heaven, he is summoned from his duties as a star polisher by the Starkeeper to return invisibly to earth to save his daughter Louise who is in trouble and considering suicide herself due to the shame of being a bastard and living as a social pariah with her disgrace mother.  In his frustration at being unable to get through to Louise, Billy slaps her.  Unlike the original play in which the daughter is doomed, Carousel ends in a moment of uplifting triumph as Louise marches in for her high school graduation.

In the musical Julie is comforted after Billy’s death by Netti Fowler, Julie’s wise cousin and owner of a small seaside resort who sings You’ll Never Walk Alone.  The song is reprised in the final graduation scene by the whole cast.

In the original production Julie was played by Jan Clayton, later noted as the mom on TV’s Lassie, Billy by macho baritone John Raite, Christine Johnson as Nettie, and ingénue Bambi Lynn as Louise.  Many performers have taken the stage in numerous Broadway Revivals, London productions, touring companies and innumerable regional, community, and school theater productions.

The movie poster for the 1956 film adaptation.

The 1956 20th Century Fox film adaptation Featured Shirley Jones, Gordon MacRea, Claramae Turner, and Susan Luckey in the roles.

Renée Fleming as Nettie comforts Julie in the 2018 Broadway revival of Carousel

Today we are featuring a version of You’ll Never Walk Alone from the 2018 Broadway revival by opera lyric soprano diva Renée Fleming.