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"T'morra,' T'morra"': the 1940S Broadway Period Musical and Progressive Nostalgia in Bloomer Girl Maya Cantu

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"T'morra,' T'morra"': The 1940s Broadway Period Musical and Progressive Nostalgia in Bloomer Girl Maya Cantu Billed as a "Modern Musical Comedy with Old-Fashioned Charm," the Civil llar-sef Bloomer Girl (1944) followed Oklahoma! as part of a lVorld llar ll-era cycle of Broadway musicals steeped in period Ameri- cana. This article argues that Bloomer Girl---connecting Jirst-wave feminism to Rosie the Riveter, and the abolitionist movement with civil rights-offired a complex vision of progressive nostalgia, advancing atopian aims of social justice that anticipale Finianos Rainbow. daOOOox While Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!legendarily changed the course of American musical theater through the historical canonization of the "integrated musical play," the 1943 musical also had more immediate effects in the commercial arena of the Broadway musical. The monumental hit status of Oklahomal launched a substantial World War Il-era cycle of Broadway musical plays steeped in folkloric visions of the American past: what critic Louis Kronenberger predicted in 1944 as 'oa vogue, a cycle, perhaps an orgy of costume pieces." Indeed, by the time the 1910s-set musical comedy High Button Shoes opened in October of 1947, following such shows as Carousel (1945), Up in Central Park (1945), and Brigadoon (1947), George Jean Nathan observed, "In the last five seasons, twenty- Maya Cantu is a recent graduate of Yale School of Drama, where she received her DFA in Dramaturgl,t and Dramatic Criticism in 2014, and her MFA in 2010. Her dissertation is entitled, "Working Girls, Gold Diggers, Broads, and Boss Ladies: Cinderella Mythologies of the American Musical Stage, I9l9-1959." Maya's writing has been published in Studies in Musical Theatre, Theatre Journal, The Sondheim Review and as part of the New York Public Library's Musical of the Month series. As a dramaturg, she has worked at Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale Cabaret, and, most recently, at the Mint Theater Company, on their productions of George Kel/y's Philip Goes Forth and John Van Druten 's London Wall. 50 New England Theatre Journal Maya Cantu 5I seven of the musical exhibits, including revivals, have dealt with past and Oklahoma!portrayed the turn-of-the-century American prairie as a site of hypothetically nostalgic years. This is the twenty-eighth" (95). cmerging statehood and communal cohesion, while allegorizing the uniting Among the earliest musicals of this wartime nostalgia wave was 1944's of a divided America during Worl dWarII, Bloomer Girl focused on threats Bloomer Girl,withmusic by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E. Y. "Yip" Harburg to democracy within the United States itself. Rooted in New Deal liberal- (who also directed the show, as produced by John C. Wilson), and a book ism, Bloomer Girl drew strong parallels between social struggles in 1861 by Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy. Set in Cicero Falls, NY, just before the and current 1944 conditions of racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws, outbreak of the civil war in 1861, this fictionalized historical musical wl,ile also making powerful statements about women's rights: connecting recounts how budding activist Evelina Appelgate joins her firebrand aunt- the skirted pantaloons of Amelia Bloomer and the trousers of Rosie the the dress refotm crusader Dolly Bloomer (based loosely on Amelia Jenks Riveter. As a New York Times preview of the show noted, "But, say the Bloomer)-in fighting the interwoven battles for women's rights and the show's enthusiasts, in spite of its 1861 setting, Bloomer Girlwill be very abolition of slavery. Produced and marketed as something of a follow-up tirnely. For, it's said, problems that are bothering Americans then are to oklahoma!, Bloomer Girl sharedmuch of the pedigree and personnel of bothering them now" ("New Musical"). Offering what theater critic John the former show, including choreographer Agnes de Mille (who created the Rosenfield called an "amalgam of liberal propaganda and Americana" show's legendary "Civil War Ballet"), as well as featured players Celeste (Rosenfield), and combining "nostalgic gaiety with soberly intelligent Holm (in the lead role of Evelina) and Joan Mccracken (as rnaid-turned- tlcatment of abolition and racial equality" ("Bloomer Girl," Pic Magazine), suffragette Daisy), orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett, set designer lJloomer Girl presented a vision of progressive nostalgia, with utopian Lemuel Ayers, and costume designer Miles White. tlrcmes anticipating Finian's Rainbow, Harburg's masterful 1947 musical Billed as "a modern musical comedy with old-fashioned charm," satire advocating civil rights. Bloomer Girl earned favorable comparison to the Rodgers and Hammer- stein musical (as well as Hammerstein's earlier Sltow Boat, 1927), and Nostalgia and Utopianism in the Broadway Musical a "fresh, vigorous, radiant, enchanting and thoroughly praise from critics as The period musicals of the 1940s stemmed both from the context of show, as described by Jim o'connor of the Jom'nal Autet'icorr American" World War II, and from a nostalgic irnpulse that runs throughout the history Although several critics, such as John Chapman, (qtd. in Suskin 90-91). ol'the Broadway musical. Coined by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in the libretto overlong and marred by a "lack of pace," found Herzig and Saidy's scvcnteenth century as an affliction troubling homesick soldiers, "nostal- the majority of rcviewers lauded Arlen's idiornatic folk and American 1lia" (from nostoc, "return home," and algia, "longing") came to signify "a melodies, Harburg's "deft, adult lyrics" (Field)' Ayers's spiritual-inflected longing for a home that no longer existed or has never existed" (Boyrn xiii). and costumes by White that "caught "warm and wistfully humorous" sets, As Rebecca Ann Rugg observes: "Nostalgia is the prime dramaturgical a period of Amcricana with a captivating blend of warmth, nostalgia and r rrocle of musical theater. It steers not only the course of audience response by Edwin H. Schloss of the Philadelphia Record. At humor," as described rrrrtl show structure but also marketing strategies, the critical machine, and qualities incited critical backlash from thc New York the same time, these llrc scttings of the productions themselves" (45). Steeped in "nostalgic "The fabulous success of Oklahontal was bound Post's Wilella Waldorf: rrrcnrories of performances, tropes and icons past" (Edney 35), the market. Let's face it. Wc are in to have its effect on the Broadway musical llroadway musical's backward-looking irnpulses have also frequently quaintncss, most of it with for several seasons of intensely old-fashioned rrrclgcd with what Richard Dyer described as entertainment's "utopian Mille" (qtd. in Suskin 92). On the heels of a choreography by Agncs de ';t'rrsibility" (27),localing intuitions of "something better to escape into" prodigious advancc sale, as well as its accolades, Bloomer Glrl-which 1 )0)amicl portrayals of America's past.r 5 october 1944-ran for a solid 657 opened at the Shuberl Theatre on Whilc nostalgia musicals have pervaded the history of thc Broadway performances. rrrrrsical, ccrtain historical periods- including years of wartime have can be catcgorized as a period musical. thc Yet while Bloomer Girl lr'rrtlcrl to intcnsify tlicir fi'equencyofproduction.2 As SvetlanaBoymnotes, with nostalgia is more cornplicated than critics lil<c 'irs show's engagemcnt . a longiug lor continuity in a fragmcntcd world, nostalgia inevitably Bloomar (iir'1 usccl a pictut'cstlttc scttittg lcss Walclorf suggcstccl. ltcriocl r('irl)l)clrs as a tlcflrtsc tncchanistn itr a tiurc of accclcratcd rhythm of lifc cvocatiott ol'a sittrl'rlcl'titttt:. lltlttt lrtlvltt'tl lhc lillcral t1lwalrl tIc scrrtiurcntal ,rrrrl lristolicirl rrphcaval" (xiv). l)uring Worlcl War ll, thc nostalgia musical lttrrrrirrrrighlslrctivisntol'llitlbtrlp"itlttl ltist'ollltlrotttlttts.Wltct'cits Iriltsllrtl ',r'r l,crl s irr rilirl lirrrcliorrs o l'corrr lirll irrrrl rc:irssrrla rrcc, lvh ilc lcrrrirrtling atrcli- II 52 New Englartcl Theatre Journal Maya Cantu 53 ences of the democratic American values for which soldiers were fighting conversation between American history and issues of civil rights and overseas. Alan Jay Lerner recalled of the Oklaltonto! era, "As the depres- women's rights in the then-present moment of 1944. sion had killed the sentimental musical and squirtcd adrenalin into the veins of satire, World War ll killed satire and revivcd the sentimental musical. Ilistory and Human Rights in Bloomer Girl The mood of the country switched like a traffic light to escapism, nostalgia Bloomer presented a heavily fictionalized portrayal of Amelia and fantasy" (42). Girl .lcnks Bloorner's battles and campaigns in Civil War-era America. As Many Broadway musicals, irrcluding those of the World War II era, rccounted by Harburg, Bloomer Girl originated with an idea (and, then, align with one of the two types of nostalgia as influentially defined by runproduced play) by costume designer Lilith Jarnes and her husband Dan Boym (xviii). "Restorative nostalgia" earnestly seeks a return to lost origins .lamcs. Thc former had shared with Harburg her fascination with antebel- and homeland, as in Lctner and Loewe's own Brigacloon (1947), which lLun fashion and her research into the life of Bloomer, who urged the evoked a lost, pre-industrial Shangri-La in its fantasy Scottish moors. By rcplacement of the cumbersome hoop skirt with the freer bloomer costurne contrast, "reflective nostalgia" a mode exemplified by Sondheim and (rvhich, as invented not by Bloomer, but by Elizabeth Smith Miller, Goldman's Follies (1971) draws critically upon irony and humor to "consisted of loose, Turkish-style trousers gathered by the ankles and reflect upon the distance between past and present (and thus is not incom- covered by a dress that usually reached somewhere between the knee and patible with another frequent mode of the Broadway musical: camp). thc mid-calf ';Alonso 123).In the early 1850s, Bloomerpromoted women's Beyond this binary, nostalgia can also function to channel visions of rights and dress reform, as well as abolitionism and tcmperance, in her social transformation, as demonstrated in Bloorner Girl.
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