Why Did “Anyone Can Whistle” Flop?

Imagine falling off the stage in the performance and YOU KILL SOMEBODY. Not only do you have to live with the embarrassment but you also killed somebody

Another major factor, of course, was that hits like Hello, Dolly!, and Funny Girl were playing down the street. And Sondheim had yet to establish himself as a composer to be reckoned with. Most of the songs to Forum weren't even used in the movie version, because the audience didn't need the same break in the comedic action that the theatre audiences may have.

Lee Remick said that,among them, Angela Lansbury was the only one who had the technique to sustain a vocal performance week after week.

Pls do more of this where you talk about why shows flopped. It's usually a multitude of reasons

You need to do a crossover with Diva from Musical Hell!

I love this score, and the show too actually. -I think the musical very clearly establishes the premise in the first 10 minutes, doesn't it? -Also, I don't think the writers were aiming for a beatnik audience - the broadway ticket buyers and the society they still lived in were the subject of the satire. So I'm not really sure how much water that holds. I think part of why it failed is that it didn't have an inclusive tone with the audience but a critical and mocking one, and also that it was too bizarre and experimental for a musical comedy in 1964's Broadway. HAIR started downtown, it was FOR the people that it was about, and it was spending most of its time enjoying and promoting those people and lifestyles while taking some humorous shots at the "uptown" audiences it would also have. It built steam downtown before trying to give its political and social messages to the uptown crowd. Also it wasn't a biting satire of current or recent times, ACW was (or was trying to be). Hair was also a rock musical with a new sound for Broadway, ACW was traditional Broadway. So I think they are two very different shows with very different styles and approaches and audiences.

Better question: WHY DID MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG FLOP?!?!?!

I agree with practically everything he said; but the fact remains that Broadway has, on occasion, elevated some pieces of utter crap to stratospheric success ("Cats", anyone?), while turning its back on some truly splendid works. My two favorite Lost Jewels are Harold Arlen's "House of Flowers" and John Latouche's "The Golden Apple", especially the second. Even describing "The Golden Apple" is risky: it's a musical version of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey", set at the time of the Spanish-American War. (The beauty contest among the three goddesses is a bake-off, Scylla and Charybdis are a pair of stockbrokers, Helen and Paris elope in a balloon, and if THAT doesn't whet your interest, I don't know what will). Please buy the CDs to both shows; you won't regret it.

Wow, great analysis of this show I've never heard of. Are you going to do more of them?

I was privileged to have seen one of the nine original Broadway performances of this wonderful show. I loved it... well I loved (had a crush on) Lee Remick, thought Harry Guardino was just terrific, and Angela Lansbury... well, she was marvelous in a role that was not good enough for her talents. And don't forget Gabe Dell, a fantastic villain. The show was born at the wrong time, either too early or too late, it's hard to tell. But, I think it fell, unfortunately, into a generational glitch between the Cold War and the dynamic changes of the mid-sixties forward. Anyway, I loved it and still do. The songs "Anyone Can Whistle" and "With So Little To Be Sure Of" are classic treasures and should never be forgotten.

A lovely analysis. One note: the three-act musical was not falling out of fashion in 1964. It had been dead for decades. PORGY AND BESS (1935,) is in three acts, but I can't think of a major musical after OKLAHOMA (1943) that isn't in two acts.

Amazing video!! Could you make a video on why Dear World flopped??

1. The Beatles debuted on the Ed Sullivan two months before "Whistle" opened so there were no hippies or bell bottoms yet in 1964. There might've been some anti-Vietnam feeling but that had not really escalated yet in 1964. 2. Are you sure about Ragni and Rado writing "Hair" back then? In '64, Rado was two years away from appearing in Lion in Winter and I thought I read somewhere that he and Ragni ni didn't start writing "Hair" until "Winter" was over. Otherwise, a very, very sound analysis.

I've never seen it performed, sadly. But I do love the Bakula/Peters/Kahn/Lansbury recording.

That was an incredibly insightful analysis of what I've always considered a "Puzzling But Fun Musical". I did it in college - at Yale back in 1976. It was chosen by the undergraduate Dramat group because one of the members was dating Stephen's godchild - which meant that both Stephen and Arthur both showed up opening night. I was one of Cora's four "boys" - so I danced more than I sang. But I always liked the score. By the time of this Yale re-staging, Sondheim had obviously had many groundbreaking successes, so of course people flocked to our re-staging to see this "first Sondheim musical". They came away for the most part saying that it reminded them of "King of Hearts", the 1966 movie starring Alan Bates about a small town during WWII where inmates from the local lunatic asylum take over after the residents flee as the enemy approaches. Maybe if audiences in 1964 had been more familiar with "King of Hearts" Sondheim would have had more success - or maybe Sondheim should have just waited until "King of Hearts" was released and then applied the "Anyone Can Whistle" score to a musical version of the movie? At any rate, on the second weekend of our run, our performance was supposed to be a benefit for local private school. The patrons all arrived: blue-haired ladies in furs and grey-haired men in tuxes. THEY ALL LEFT AT THE END OF THE FIRST ACT. Yep - that was my experience performing in "Anyone Can Whistle".

People came to musicals in the 60s for escape, for laughter, for entertainment. ANYONE CAN WHISTLE was entertaining and had it's humorous moments, but for the most part it wasn't really escape. The dark town with the Cookie Jar is a lampoon of the real world, but there are places like it out there. The corrupt mayoress seems a very likely parallel to many politicians of the time. And the uncomfortable reality of a lot of the show might have hit a little too hard for 1964 audiences. After all, this was the year of such nonthinking shows as HELLO DOLLY, FUNNY GIRL, I HAD A BALL... nothing wrong with any of those shows, but people didn't expect a subtle lecture from their musicals in 1964, at least they didn't want to see one if they didn't know that was what it was. Besides, Sondheim's previous shows were both pretty tame and easy to stomach (WEST SIDE STORY was an exception), and this one was very, very different.

You may just be my new favorite Youtuber, you talk about musicals like I do, I love theatre analysis. Love it.

I was fortunate enough to be in a production of this show my freshman year of High School. Almost no one in the cast knew what the hell to make of the show, but it quickly became one of my all time favorites.

I got to play HAPGOOD in 2009. Everybody Says Don’t is a joy to sing!

Interesting reasoning, but historically off the mark. I was in high school, in NYC, in 1964. So I was there, y'know? This was a transitional period in countercultures, the Beats were increasingly irrelevant, but hippies simply hadn't happened yet, not for another three years at least. You couldn't even find bellbottoms except in maritime supply stores (which is where I bought my first pair, in 1967, down on the Battery, menswear only and they didnt want to sell to me...) Tie dye? Not yet. If your point stands, and I think it could , it'd be more correct to say that there wasn't in America in 1964 any well defined and recognizable group of societal misfits that the theatergoers could relate to as the "cookies". Sondheim might have been simply too early.