Courtin’ Time

Courtin’ Time centered around Maine widower Samuel Rilling (Joe E. Brown), who asks Araminta (Billie Worth), his housekeeper of ten years, for help in finding a new wife. His eye is on three candidates: Louisa Windeatt (Katherine Anderson), Theresa Tapper (Carmen Mathews), and Harriet Hearn (Effie Afton). For various reasons, all three turn him down, but not all is lost. For slowly but surely Samuel comes to realize the perfect wife has been there all along in the person of Araminta, who has always loved him. The musical received a number of positive notices, but they were on the mild side and stressed the modest charms of the evening. According to William Hawkins in the New York World-Telegram and Sun, the evening was “as relaxing as a tall lemonade in a flirting breeze,” and, in a reference to Flahooley, said the show was for people who liked a “breezy amusement with no axes to grind.” (But wielding an axe or not, both shows closed after a month.) John Chapman in the Daily News found the show “affable,” a “pleasant if not too important” start for the new Broadway season. Robert Garland in the New York Journal-American praised the “straight, simple and engaging” musical,” and Otis L. Guernsey in the New York Herald Tribune indicated summertime was a period when “light and airy musicals” generally opened, and while Courtin’ Time was “only an average example of its warm-weather type,” Joe E. Brown’s special brand of comedy turned the evening into a “pleasant summer diversion.” But Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times pronounced the musical “commonplace” and “ordinary”; Robert Coleman in the Daily Mirror said the show was an “also-ran”; and Vernon Rice in the New York Post said it was a “disadvantage” for Courtin’ Time to aim for the brand of Americana embraced by Oklahoma! because it couldn’t begin to match the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic that had just returned to Broadway two weeks earlier. As for Jack Lawrence’s lyrics and Don Walker’s music, Hawkins said that with two exceptions the score was “pastoral in mood” and “entirely happy.” A trio (“Masculinity,” for the three marriage candidates) lacked the necessary wit to get by and a number for Billie Worth (probably “Araminta to Herself”) was performed so “solemnly that it comes out as an anachronistic blues.” He had praise for two dance sequences choreographed by George Balanchine, one a brief waltz and the other “a wonderfully intricate square dance affair” (“Choose Your Partner”) performed around a gazebo. Chapman singled out six songs: “Choose Your Partner,” “The Wishbone Song,” “Smile Awhile,” “I Do, He Doesn’t,” “Golden Moment,” and “Fixin’ for a Long, Cold Winter” (the latter a salute to Maine). Garland said the score came out of “a good drawer of musical comedy” and Coleman found the score “pleasant” (but wrongly predicted a few of the songs would find success on the hit parade). However, Atkinson said the score was “commonplace” and Rice found it “undistinguished.” Almost every Broadway musical of the era offered the requisite ballet, and Courtin’ Time was no exception with Balanchine’s “Johnny and the Puckwudgies,” which described a storm (the program described a puckwudgie as a Maine pixie who tampers with the weather). Although Guernsey found the ballet “dull,” the critics were pleased with Balanchine’s contributions (but Atkinson found Balanchine’s “rustic revels” for the folks of Maine “curiously Russianized”). Chapman said the dances were “splendid” and “light and original”; and Hawkins praised their “remarkable variety.” The critics agreed that Courtin’ Time had three first-rate performers: Joe E. Brown, Billie Worth, and Carmen Mathews. When the musical began its long pre-Broadway tryout, Lloyd Nolan played the role of Samuel Rilling; when he left the musical, director Alfred Drake stepped in and temporarily played the character until Brown was ready to assume the part. The critics loved Brown, who hadn’t appeared on Broadway since the 1926 musical Twinkle, Twinkle (however, he had recently returned to the stage when he toured with Harvey). Brown was especially delightful in a wordless scene in which he was hung over and tried to light a wood stove in order to make coffee. Garland reported he had seen Nolan in the role (he “wasn’t good”) and then later Drake (who was). But Brown was even better. In 1959, Brown gave a hilarious performance as the lecherous millionaire Osgood Fielding III in the great film comedy Some Like It Hot. Brown single-mindedly courted Jack Lemmon (in drag as the female bull fiddle player), and it was Brown who uttered the film’s now immortal last line. Billie Worth received raves, and Atkinson noted she “sparkled” and was “likely to keep on making friends whenever she appears on a stage.” During the tryout, her name had been billed below the title, but because of her endearing performance the producers placed her name above, along with Brown’s. But for all her grand notices, Worth never again appeared in a

Music

Don Walker

Lyrics

Jack Lawrence

Book

William Roos