Music: Radio Musicomedy

Radio heard last week what it had never heard before—a musicomedy with music especially composed for it. Procter & Gamble’s The Gibson Family is a one-hour-a-week NBC program which will run 39 weeks. The music for each program will be as new to the public as the music at the opening night of a theatre musicomedy. If radio audiences particularly like any Gibson Family songs, they will be able to buy sheet copies, may plug them into hits.

To turn out an average of four new songs a week Procter & Gamble (Ivory Soap) hired Composer Arthur Schwartz and Lyricist Howard Dietz at an estimated weekly salary of $1,250 each. Book for the show was written by Courtney Ryley Cooper. Last week’s installment of The Gibson Family ended where the first act of a theatre musicomedy usually ends. Father Gibson is suspicious of Dude Rancher Jack Hamilton’s past, orders him away from Daughter Sally. Lacking the gusto of Maxwell House’s Show Boat, The Gibson Family’s first program was chiefly remarkable for its experiment with new music. Much of its dialog was silly and few of its singers were Grade A. Particularly objectionable to first nighters was the “baby talk” of one girl performer (Loretta Clemens). Last week’s best song: “Under Your Spell.”

Since Three’s a Crowd, The Band Wagon and Flying Colors, Composer Schwartz and Lyricist Dietz have been recognized by Tin Pan Alley as a top-notch songwriting team. When they work on a show, they hire a hotel room, stay in it until the show is ready for rehearsal. They refer to typical musicomedy songs in jargon: a “restless” (“Moanin’ Low”), a “Columbus” (“I Found A Million Dollar Baby”), a “Hoover” (“Just Around A Corner”). The coat, vest and pants of a song are its verse, transition and chorus. Dietz-Schwartz songs (“Something to Remember You By,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Shine on Your Shoes,” “New Sun in the Sky”) have been critically commended for their literacy, their agile rhymes, their musical variety and structure.

While tall, dark, quiet-spoken Arthur Schwartz was taking a degree at Columbia Law School, he was also teaching English in Manhattan’s High School of Commerce. Today he occasionally helps Partner Dietz with a fractious lyric. When he made enough money in Law to give it up, he became a composer. He dislikes all opera but Wagner, favors Strauss, Schumann, Brahms, Hoagie Carmichael. When he makes enough money from his music, he intends producing straight drama. He is now writing the music for a Dietz adaptation of The Three-Cornered Hat.

Howard Dietz got his chief job, managing Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer publicity, by writing letters to newspapers mentioning MGM cinemas. His funniest stunt was flashing an MGM advertisement from the roof of Manhattan’s Capitol Theatre onto the walls of the rival Paramount Theatre eight blocks down Broadway. He has broad sloping shoulders, a quick grin which reveals prominent crooked teeth and makes him look younger than his 39 years. He is a fair tennis player, a first-rate ping-pong player, once bought a $4,000 marble torso out of his bridge winnings. Vivacious, restless, he keeps random hours at his office, goes from Manhattan to Hollywood twice a year, stays there as short a time as he can. In the Depression year of 1931 Variety reported his income from plays and MGM salary as $100,000. The opening of The Gibson Family was the 17th anniversary of his marriage.