The 1970 Tony Award season was a real curio for the musicals in good ways and bad ways. It was a year of limited options: there were only three musicals nominated for Best Musical – the same three musicals dominating the major categories. But it was also a season that saw Katharine Hepburn, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, make her musical debut in Coco, based on Coco Chanel; and a few months later Lauren Bacall, another screen legend, made her musical debut with an adaptation of the 1950 Best Picture winner All About Eve – titled Applause.
There were no nominations for Original Score for that year. Not for Coco, not for Applause and not for Purlie (the third Best Musical nominee of 1970). None of the three nominees have ever been revived on Broadway and all tend to be remembered as lesser curios. True, none reach the heights of the decade’s greatest scores, and Applause might rank last of the three. And, yet, I’m excited at the thought of its recent rerelease.
The most memorable thing about Applause is probably its eponymous number, and it’s hard not to begin the praise for the album there. The song derives from a line Eve Harrington says in the film, here transposed to Bonnie Franklin and her dancing “gypsy”; it’s a rousing, toe-tapping number, but it’s also melancholy inside. I think of this song as a precursor to a musical like A Chorus Line, which gives a more in depth look at what it takes to be a star.
Applause is good but never great as a score. Too few of the songs are about the fear of aging and the love of theatre, and the duets between Margo and Bill (played by Len Cariou in affable, but unexciting voice) are nowhere as thrilling as the more central numbers. Like the film before it, Applause reaches its heights with its women. What I consider to be the recording’s most searing moment is a later number from Penny Fuller. I first heard Penny Fuller sing the devastating “The Music Still Plays On” on the cast recording for A New Brain. It was not until later I became familiar with her work on Applause, and what a treat. She only gets two solos, and the first is just a thriller. In the second, “One Halloween”, Eve takes her place at the “top” and sings about how she got there. It’s a simple “memory” song closing with a deft reprise of an earlier number of Margo’s “But Alive”. And Fuller is electric.
The reprise of “But Alive” in the number is the best part of the score musically, getting to the root of the crisis of the musical. And “But Alive” is a fantastic song, so why not reprise it? In its way it’s a more impressive “inspirational” song than many of the more oft remembered ones because of how sly and slick it is. It is not sincere and earnest but cynical and even bitter, and it works. But, I’m just a sucker for ridiculous wordplay like, “I feel twitchy, and bitchy and manic / Calm and collected and choking with panic / But alive, but alive, but alive.” Sure, Bacall is not the best singer, but like all great actors regardless of vocal nuances she can sell a song, and “But Alive” works because of her. And the number’s ethos is a good representative of the show itself.
Composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Lee Adams are better known for their work on Bye Bye Birdie; and, to be clear, Applause’s score is not at the top tier of their work. But, as much as every musical should strive for greatness, not all will be perfect, and the fact that Applause does not capture the easy excellence of the film it’s based on does not lessen its significance or the enjoyability of its score. In spite, and even because of its issues, Applause is a recording I treasure.
