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| The Duchess of Mint |
Thank Heaven for Little Girls & Maurice ChevalierDear Musicals.Net Posters,I have a few questions concerning your opinions about Maurice Chevalier's signature song, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls". First of all, the lyrics to the song are: "Thank Heaven for little girls, For little girls get bigger every day. Thank Heaven for little girls; They grow up in the most delightful way. Those little eyes, so helpless and appealing One day will flash and send you crashing through the ceiling. Thank Heaven for little girls; Thank Heaven for them all, no matter where, no matter who! Without them, what would little boys do? Thank Heaven! Thank Heaven! Thank Heaven...for little girls!" These are my questions: 1. Do you personally believe that Maurice Chevalier (or, rather, his character) is attracted to little girls? In other words, do you think that he's a really dirty man? 2. Do you think that Maurice Chevalier's character is attracted to the process by which girls "grow up"? In other words, do you think that he's a...really dirty man? 3. Do you believe that Maurice Chevalier's character is just commenting on the fact that boys are really fortunate that girls grow up to be beautiful women? 4. Do you think that Maurice Chevalier himself was a really dirty man? 5. Do you like the song "Thank Heaven for Little Girls"? Why do you like or dislike the song? Thanks in advance for your replies. |
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| Salome |
Its very obvious that Uncle Honore is commenting on the facet they way you stated it in number 3.
the song is delightful..Alan Lerner was a genius of musical theatre and everyone should own Gigi in their dvd collection. Chevalier's real life opinions were summed up best in another song from Gigi. . Alan Lerner wrote "i'm glad I'm Not Young Anymore" for him after a conversation he had about women . |
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| RainbowJude |
Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner had moments of genius (My Fair Lady, the film version of Gigi, and parts of Camelot, Paint Your Wagon and Brigadoon). But I'd say that, as a whole, his body of work is flawed somewhat by: • a tendency to show off at the expense of character and believability (e.g. "The Seven Deadly Virtues", "The First Thing You Know"); • a tendency to go for the broad strokes and not commit as much effort to the small details (e.g. the American bobolinks that are mentioned a couple of times in Camelot); • focusing more energy on the drama going on around the show than getting the drama of the show working in tandem with an underlying belief that his choices - and no one else's - were completely infallible (evident especially in his writing about Camelot but generally throughout The Street Where I Live). Picking up on the Sondheim vs. Rice thread, I could quite easily suggest that (for slightly different reasons) Lerner is the Rice to Hammerstein's Sondheim. Later days David |
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| Salome |
you didnt just say that!
lerner and Hammerstien were both geniuse' in their own right..as a lyricisy..Hammerstien doesnt come close to Lerner. as a poet Hammerstien is the winner. no one has mastered the internal rhyme like lerner. And how can you dismiss his brilliant work minus fritz such as On a Clear Day?? his Clear Day work surpasses brigadoon and Paint Your Wagon easily. p.s. the bobolink was mentioned but once in Camelot. not several times. lol |
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| RainbowJude |
I did say that...The problem is that Lerner gets enamoured by his own linguistic prowess at the expense of things like characterisation. So if Hammerstein's wordplay doesn't quite measure up to Lerner's, his ability to create, develop, manipilate and comment on character and situation is far better.I think that Lerner hit his stride in the late fifties with My Fair Lady and Gigi. Camelot has moments of sheer brilliance, but fell short of the standard set by his previous work. And the rest of his career offered mere variations and shadows of the characters he created before, tempered only by the narrative differences from piece to piece. I think On a Clear Day..., in particular, suffers from this problem - I don't think the lyrics delineate the characters uniquely so that the memory of Higgins, Eliza and Gigi is completely left behind. And Burton Lane just doesn't have the ability to offer a score like those which Frederick Loewe provided to work alongside the lyrics, nor does he seem to be able to offer creative challenges to Lerner's process and thereby push Lerner's work further in the way that Loewe seemed to do. Later days David P.S. Bobolink is mentioned at least twice, once in a lyric and once in the book. |
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| Salome |
where in the book is bobolink mentioned? | ||
| RainbowJude |
Bobolink
I think it's a scene where Arthur tells Guenevere about how Merlin changed him into different animals. I can't remember offhand and my copy is 800km away at the moment. I know it's there because I circled it when I was working on a textual analysis exercise a couple of years ago and it was a word I had to look up. Later days David |