[78-L] And the Oscar goes to....

[Taylor Bowie]

>
> As for dialect written into songs, somebody take Oscar Hammerstein out and
> throttle him. I don't care if he's dead. Er, daid.
>
> dl


I'm going to send you an MP3 file of ten tone-deaf and intoxicated 
karaoke-ites,   all singing endless choruses (and verses)  of "Happy Talk." 
And we'll make sure that our version by comparison will make Juanita Hall's 
sound like Olivier reciting  Hamlet.

Oscar takes a lot of sh-t from many...I think at his best he wrote some 
wonderful lyrics for  Oklahoma,  South Pacific,  King and I,  even The Sound 
of Music.  Some of his best are for the movie State Fair.

I think that Show Boat is one of the most overrated musical productions ever 
conceived...most of the songs seem more like European operetta stuff anyway. 
Compare with what Gershwin and Youmans were writing for Broadway at the same 
time...Kern was a fine writer but stuck in the past.

Ok,  Oscar  wasn't Larry Hart or Cole Porter or Ira Gershwin....but we 
already had them anyway.


Taylor