1937, the chosen year for today’s “Saturday List” year, was a time of huge highs and lows. Early in the year, aviator Howard Hughes broke his transcontinental flight speed record. On the other hand, Amelia Earhart mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in her attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in a plane. The German airship, the Hindenburg, burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 people on board. In the world’s political arenas, the Spanish Civil War continued, while the Second Sino-Japanese War commenced. The Hossbach Memorandum recorded another step towards World War II, with Adolf Hitler outlining his plan to acquire additional “living space” for the Germans. Minute by minute, the lows were becoming more frequent than the highs. At the movies, three musicals were among the year’s top-grossing films, with Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs taking the top spot. The others were the operetta, Maytime, and the oddly-titled Broadway Melody of 1938. The most popular songs of the year included no fewer than four Bing Crosby hits, “Too Marvelous for Words,” “Remember Me?,” “The Moon Got in My Eyes” and “Sweet Leilani.” One of the big new words of the year was “doodle” – something you might do while listening to Ol’ Bingo from Bingville croon one of his melodies from yesteryear. On to the musicals!  

1. The Award Winners for Best Musical

1937 is a year that pre-dates the Tony Awards, so there is not much to discuss here. Babes in Arms would have been a strong contender, perhaps even a sure thing, to win in the 1937-1938 season. It’s also likely that a 1937 show would have won the following year. Perhaps the popular union revue Pins and Needles? The more cerebral The Cradle Will Rock? Would Hooray for What!, less popular than Pins and Needles but more accessible than The Cradle Will Rock, have stood a chance? What a fascinating trio of shows to pit against each other.

2. Most Overrated

Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock is often cited as one of the most historically significant shows of the 1930s. No arguments there. It has been described as an opera, in the tradition of The Threepenny Opera, and a play in music, like Bertolt Brecht’s greatest plays, as often as it has been called a musical. It’s one of those shows that draw from multiple traditions and ends its own thing. It’s also a solid show with a clear social and political thesis. In a nutshell, that’s also its problem. It is so logical, so successful in its verfremdung, that it keeps itself at a distance. No Mack or Mother Courage pull in the audience and agitate its beliefs. Moll and Harry aren’t written charismatically enough to shift us into dialectical distress. In some ways, the story behind the show’s origins as a Federal Theatre Project as a New Deal work-relief programme, its cancellation by the government in an attempt to censor what they felt had become an anti-establishment propaganda piece, and the legendary dress rehearsal that cheated the system is more compelling than The Cradle Will Rock itself. These circumstances made this show a musical theatre legend rather than a footnote in Broadway history.

3. Most Underrated

Babes in Arms is the kind of show everyone thinks they know, thanks to the 1939 Busby Berkeley film starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and the frequently performed 1959 revisal of the show, which stripped it of its social commentary. As such, it is written off as an inconsequential 1930s musical comedy, albeit with a score packed to the brim with hit songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. This is why I consider the original version of the show underrated, as many people aren’t aware of everything that Rodgers and Hart packed into the show’s book. Rather than a group of teens trying to rebel against their parents by making it on Broadway (!) or save a local theatre from being demolished, the original show’s characters put on their performance to avoid being sent to a work farm, which the town sheriff feels is the appropriate path of action when their actor parents go on the road for five months. The original Babes in Arms is not about vanity or community outreach. It is about survival and self-preservation. The original Babes in Arms wasn’t afraid to tackle racism, sexual harassment or the contemporary interests in Nietzsche and communism. It was light entertainment, for sure, but one with a bit of a bite – and that’s before one even considers the score’s great pleasures, which include “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Johnny One Note,” “Where or When?” and “The Lady is a Tramp.”

4. Hidden Gem 

The longest-running show to open in 1937 is, ironically, the year’s hidden gem. Pins and Needles was a revue produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Its unusual origins and content have seen it slide into relative obscurity, despite an incredible 25th Anniversary recording – which featured Barbra Streisand as one of its performers in the face of Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson’s pearl-clutching on her inclusion on the album – and a couple of productions that have popped up over the years. Pins and Needles included songs and sketches by Arthur Arent, Marc Blitzstein, Emmanuel Eisenberg, Charles Friedman, David Gregory, Joseph Schrank, Arnold B. Horwitt, John Latouche and Harold Rome, the last of whom also wrote the majority of the show’s score. The writers updated the show’s content every few months to keep it topical. There’s not a dud song in the score. Each is full of wit, double meanings and delightfully articulated takes on social issues – some of which remain as relevant today as when they were first written! Highlights include “Doing The Reactionary,” a spoof on the tried-and-tested musical comedy dance craze number, now a political dance of people moving to the left or the right, and “Nobody Makes A Pass At Me,” a criticism of how capitalism and commercialism impact on individual identity. There’s also “Not Cricket To Picket,” which is a satirical reminder of how social action inconveniences those who hold power – ‘Just think of the predicament in which your boss is placed’ – and “One Big Union For Two” which repackages love and marriage as socially relevant processes to rib-tickling effect. In 1938, Pins and Needles was performed in the White House for the Roosevelts, which prefigures the Obamas’ similar endorsement of Hamilton in 2016. How strange it is to think that the Hamilton of its day is rarely remembered by most musical theatre fans, let alone the general populace!

5. Show of the Year

Last week, I couldn’t quite commit to naming the British The Boy Friend as the show of the year with the USA’s Wonderful Town in the mix. This week, I have no hesitation in giving the title to Noel Gay, Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose’s Me and My Girl, which Stephen Fry and Mike Ockrent reinvented for modern audiences in the 1980s. In between, there had been a successful film adaptation and three revivals in the West End. Me and My Girl has found an audience in each iteration. It’s a jolly romantic romp through the British class system, with just enough social observation to anchor the tuneful score and rags-to-riches plot in a way that allows it to play today. The big hit was “The Lambeth Walk,” which inspired a jaunty walking dance, which saw people strutting it out around the globe just like we’ve all been jiving to “Pink Shoe Laces” on TikTok this year. The score has further delights like the wistful “Once You Lose Your Heart” and the warm-hearted title tune. Me and My Girl is pure entertainment from start to finish.

1937 was a year that saw the bow of some fantastic landmark musicals. There were other fascinating little shows like Pepper Mill, a revue that was a political defiance of the Nazi rise to power. It had been so successful in Germany that its makers had to flee to the USA to continue the fight, which stalled in New York due to the cultural divide between the two countries and their theatrical traditions. It is also interesting to see echoes of this season in modern musicals like Urinetown and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. If nothing else, it is clear that 1937 was a significant year for musicals and it is the kind of season that is a joy to look back on today.