1933 - Music

Music

New York's Radio City Music Hall gets a new lease on life as the Rockefellers hire Kansas City-born vaudeville and movie-house treasurer Gustav S. "Gus" Eyssell, 32 (see 1932). He transforms it from a vaudeville house to a movie palace, charging 35¢ until 1 o'clock, 50¢ in the afternoon, and 75¢ in the evening. The Music Hall will start booming next year when S. L. "Roxy" Rothafel brings over his high-kicking "Roxyette" chorus girls from the Roxy Theater and renames them "Rockettes" (the first such chorus line, they were organized at St. Louis by Russell Markert, now 33, in 1925 as the Sixteen Missouri Rockets; see 1978).

Hollywood musicals: Lloyd Bacon's 42nd Street with Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, Dick Powell, Nova Scotia-born dancer Ruby Keeler, 23, George Brent, music and lyrics by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, songs that include "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" and "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me"; Mervyn LeRoy's Gold Diggers of 1933 with Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, choreography by Busby Berkeley, music and lyrics by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, songs that include "We're in the Money," "Shadow Waltz," "Remember Your Forgotten Man"; Raoul Walsh's Going Hollywood with Bing Crosby, Marion Davies, music by Nacio Herb Brown, lyrics by Arthur Freed, songs that include "Temptation"; Lloyd Bacon's Footlight Parade with James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, choreography by Busby Berkeley, music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal, songs that include "By a Waterfall," "Honeymoon Hotel"; Thornton Freeland's Flying Down to Rio with Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (a new dance team, with Rogers doing everything that Astaire does except backwards, wearing high heels), choreography by Nashville, Tenn.-born dancer Hermes Pan (originally Panagiotopulos), 28, music by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Gus Kahn and Edward Eliscu, songs that include "Carioca," "Orchids in the Moonlight," and the title song; Walt Disney's The Three Little Pigs (animated) with music and lyrics by Frank E. Churchill, songs that include "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" by Ann Ronell (Disney's animated Mickey Mouse character receives 800,000 fan letters).

Warner Brothers arranges with animated-film producer Leon Schlesinger to release his cartoons on a regular basis as showcases for the studio's large music library (see Looney Tunes, 1930). Having produced 39 Looney Tunes films (one per month), Schlesinger produces Merrie Melodies films (directed by Kansas City-born Disney veteran Fritz Frelung, 27) that compete with Disney's Silly Symphonies but are more adult in content. His animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising quit Schlesinger over a budget dispute and take their Bosko and Honey characters to M-G-M, where they make Happy Harmonies cartoons, but most of his staff will soon return, and he will build a staff of outstanding musicians and animators (see 1936).

Broadway musicals: Strike Me Pink 3/4 at the Majestic Theater, with Lupe Velez, Jimmy Durante, Hope Williams in a show backed by bootlegger Waxey Gordon with opening-night tickets priced as high as $25 (printed on gold stock), music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by B. G. DeSylva and Lew Brown, 105 perfs.; Murder at the Vanities 9/8 at the New Amsterdam Theater (to Majestic Theater 11/6), with Janet Abbott, James Rennie, Olga Baklanova, Frank Kingdon, Bela Lugosi, book by Earl Carroll (who makes a cameo appearance on stage) and Rufus King, music by Richard Myers, Victor Young, Herman Hupfeld, John J. Loeb, and others, lyrics by Edward Heyman, Ned Washington, Paul Francis Webster, and Hupfield, 207 perfs.; As Thousands Cheer 9/30 at the Music Box Theater, with Marilyn Miller, Clifton Webb, Ethel Waters, New York-born actor Jerome Cowan, 35, book by Irving Berlin and Moss Hart, music and lyrics by Berlin, Edward Heyman, and Richard Myers, songs that include "Easter Parade," 400 perfs.; Let 'Em Eat Cake by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind 10/21 at the Imperial Theater, with William Gaxton as John P. Wintergreen, Victor Moore as Alexander Throttlebottom, Philip Loeb, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, 90 perfs.; Roberta (initially Gowns by Roberta) 11/18 at the New Ambassadors Theater, with Ray Middleton, George Murphy, Bob Hope, Fay Templeton, Tamara Geva, Sydney Greenstreet, book from the Alice Duer Miller novel, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Otto Harbach, songs that include "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "The Touch of Your Hand," ("Lovely to Look At" will be added for a 1935 film version), 295 perfs.

Lyricist Adrian Ross dies at London August 10 at age 73.

Opera: Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence, 24, makes her debut 2/25 at the Paris Opéra as Ortrud in the 1850 Wagner opera Lohengrin. She will be the only singer to ride a horse on stage, as Richard Wagner intended, in the finale of Die Götterdämmerung; Belarus-born soprano Jennie Tourel (Davidovich), 32, makes her Opéra-Comique debut in the title role of the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen (Tourel is an anagram based on Anna El-Tour, her teacher in Paris); Arabella 7/1 at Dresden's Staatsoper, with music by Richard Strauss, libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Ballet: Les Presages (Destiny) 4/13 at Monte Carlo's Théâtre de Monte Carlo, with music by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky, choreography by Leonide Massine.

First performances: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 by Béla Bartók 1/23 in a Frankfort radio broadcast; Concerto in C major for Two Pianos and Orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams 2/1 in a BBC broadcast; School for Scandal Overture by U.S. composer Samuel Barber, 23, 8/30 at Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell; Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra by Dmitri Shostakovich 10/15 at Leningrad; Charterhouse Suite by Vaughn Williams 10/21 at the Queen's Hall, London.

Stereoscopic sound fills Constitution Hall at Washington, D.C., April 27 as members and invited guests of the National Academy of Sciences hear music transmitted over wires from Philadelphia's Academy of Music while Leopold Stowkowski at Washington fiddles with the controls of three speakers (see 1932). EMI engineer Alan Blumlein receives a British patent for his monaural system June 14, it employs two widely spaced loudspeakers, and he will use it in January of next year to record a performance of Mozart's 1788 Symphony No. 41 in C major (Jupiter) conducted by Thomas Beecham, employing a stylus that vibrates in two directions to record one channel of sound in a groove laterally and then recording another sound in the same groove vertically, but Blumlein's system is flawed and it will be some years before it can be perfected.

Popular songs: "Basin Street Blues" by Spencer Williams, whose work was published in small orchestra parts 4 years ago; "Only a Paper Moon" by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, Billy Rose; "Lazybones" by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by vocalist Johnny Mercer, 23; "Love Is the Sweetest Thing" by Ray Noble; "Stormy Weather--Keeps Rainin' All the Time" by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler; "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" by U.S. songwriter Billy Mayhew; "Dolores" by Paramount songwriter Frank Loesser, 23, lyrics by Louis Alter (for the film Las Vegas Nights); "Sophisticated Lady" by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Mills, Mitchell Parish; "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" by Harry Revel and Polish-born songwriter Mack Gordon (originally Morris Gittler), 29 (for the film Sitting Pretty); "Everything I Have Is Yours" by Burton Lane, lyrics by Harold Adamson (for the film Dancing Lady); "Let's Fall in Love" by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler (title song for film); "I Wanna Be Loved by You" by Johnny Green, lyrics by Billy Rose, Edward Heyman; "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town" by Joe Young, John Siros, Little Jack Little; "I Cover the Waterfront" by Johnny Green, lyrics by Richard Heyman; "It Isn't Fair" by bandleader Richard Himber, Frank Warshauer, Sylvester Sprigato, lyrics by Himber; "Minnie the Moocher" by band leader Cabell "Cab" Calloway, 26, who plays at gangster Owney Madden's Cotton Club in Harlem, lyrics by Irving Mills (when Calloway forgets the lyrics he "scat" sings "Hi-de-hi-hi" and gets an enthusiastic audience response); "The Old Spinning Wheel" by Billy Hill; "I Like Mountain Music" by Frank Weldon, lyrics by James Cavanaugh.

Michigan-born jazz trumpeter Melvin James "Sy" Oliver, 22, joins the Jimmie Lunceford dance band and begins to develop a reputation for innovative arrangement and a distinctive "growl" sound. Mississippi-born band leader Lunceford, 31, started his professional career 4 years ago, having organized a student orchestra at Memphis; his band's renditions of "Organ Grinder's Swing" (1936) and "For Dancers Only" (1937) will help make it a rival of the Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman bands, but after Oliver joins Tommy Dorsey as arranger and singer in 1939 the Lunceford band's popularity will begin to decline.

Songwriter-journalist Stoddard King dies of sleeping sickness at Spokane, Wash., June 13 at age 43.