The Theater: New Musical in Manhattan, Dec. 17, 1956

Happy Hunting (book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Grouse; music by Harold Karr; lyrics by Matt Dubey) opened to a $1,500,000 advance sale and may take in a few pennies more. For it boasts Ethel Merman, who is known to be fun no matter what she appears in. Happy Hunting proves it: as musicomedy, it is more than just not out of the top drawer, it is from a discontinued line of furniture. Even what is most up to date about the show—its background of the Grace Kelly wedding—is satirically, by now, down to peanuts.

But Musicomedienne Merman goes at her work in much the same way, whether she is peddling peanuts or pearls. She plays a rich, uninhibited Philadelphia widow who, unwelcome in society and uninvited to the Monaco nuptials, vengefully bags bigger game from the royal preserves. Where she can, Ethel outflanks her material; where she cannot, she outstares it. Just watching her handle a third-rate song can compensate for its third-rateness. Whatever her stage environment—riding an ocean liner or bucking the Main Line, singing of a dead husband or chatting with a live horse—she has the urgency of a steam calliope, the assurance of an empress, and a likable low-downness all her own. The Ethel Merman who began as little more than wonderfully lusty vocal cords has expanded and grown into an expertly manipulated stage personality; and in a show business that so often turns the funny into the vulgar, she consistently converts vulgarity into fun.

Hers is a real triumph in Happy Hunting, but—as Merman triumphs are measured—a minor one, what with a book that has at best a routine brightness, and a score that sometimes lacks lilt even where it seems reminiscent. There is just one really good song, Mutual Admiration Society, and one lively ditty, Every One Who’s “Who’s Who.” The dancing, except for a tango number, suggests the hotcha of a generation ago. The romantic lead, Cinemactor Fernando Lamas, has a voice and good looks; the Jo Mielziner sets have lightness and good looks; but the show, all too often, leaves Ethel a forsaken Merman.