The Broadway revue
Two on the Aisle
marked the first collaboration between composer
Jule Styne
and lyricists
Betty Comden
and
Adolph Green
. By 1951, revues -- shows featuring independent songs and comedy sketches but no actual story -- were rare on Broadway, and
was the last major one. "There's no plot and there's no play/Just
Bert Lahr
Dolores Gray
," proclaimed the lyrics of one song, mentioning the two stars,
Lahr
, a longtime Broadway comic best remembered as
the Cowardly Lion
in the movie
The Wizard of Oz
, and
Gray
, an American who had made her name in the London production of
Annie Get Your Gun
and would go on to several films, including
Kismet
. The show was moderately successful, but as
John Lahr
put it in his biography of his father,
Notes on a Cowardly Lion
, "None of the songs lived." Certainly, no hits emerged from the score, yet there is some witty material, particularly
"If You Hadn't, But You Did"
(aka
"If"
), which is full of clever rhymes as it details the reason a woman is not only breaking up with a man, but also shooting him, and
"Catch Our Act at the Met,"
which recasts high
opera
as low
vaudeville
. The cast album features none of the comedy sketches, so it is dominated by
, who solos on five of the songs, with
, the biggest name in the cast, having only one number to himself,
"The Clown,"
while duetting with
on
"Catch Our Act at the Met."
As forgotten as the show itself, the cast album was out of print for decades until
Decca Broadway
reissued it on CD just in time for its 50th anniversary in the fall of 2001. ~ William Ruhlmann