Madeline Kahn interprets lyrics like it is her job to interpret resigned, half-bemused sorrow for the damn United Nations.
I also can’t remember the last time I heard Madeline sing something that really shows off the lower half of her register, and it’s so gorgeous! I think of her as this very flute-y soprano but this is just the greatest and it’s very rich and low. Also! It’s so lovely that she doesn’t play this song as just MOPING TIME, which many otherwise great singers do, there’s a sense of joyfulness and wryness here that makes it FUN, rather than just “oh no I want the bad sex,” which is all to the good.
I also have NO IDEA where the last two bars come from, I have never heard the bit about spending her husband’s money before! From whence does this spring, does anyone know?
She’s amazing. Sound pours out of her so perfectly and purely that I want her to sing and say everything. She is both technically, textbook perfect, and also brimming with feeling, wonderful, womanly, FEELING. It is almost not fair to have so much talent in one person!
Also, this song is so much longer than I realized! There are so many verses! I, too, never heard the bit about Current Lover spending her husband’s money! Madeline Kahn Mondays is rocking my world.
I just played this one for my friend who once sang “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” in a college play, and it sent us into a rabbit warren of related searches. In one direction: we had no idea that in the original context (the music Pal joey) the song was sung by a married woman to her male sugarbaby! In another direction, he played a clip of Madeleine Kahn singing “Glitter and Be Gay” from Candide, and it’s just…. it is full-on opera soprano, and she slaaaaaays.
I just googled “Madeline Kahn Glitter and Be Gay” and I would like to personally thank you for bringing that joy into my life. Truly, hers is the Bernstein interpretation I have been waiting for!
Is there a version that’s not just audio? That’s all I can find. Still good, but just curious.
I couldn’t find a video version of it, sadly, which is KILLING me because hearing the audience react to her is not enough, dammit!
I love this song and its entire narrative arc! Lorenz Hart was a genius. Highly recommended as a breakup song.
I’ve been watching this on repeat for an hour. And making my bosses watch. Oh Madeline, an absolute gem.
I’ve heard a number of versions of that song, including the studio version from 1950 that inspired the 1952 revival and re-established PAL JOEY as a classic, but there’s a pretty good chunk of that song that I don’t recognize. However, I have never seen a production of PAL JOEY, and I know that recorded/radio versions were frequently altered from what was heard in the theatre mid-century. Does anyone know what the actual original lyrics were, and what got altered/cut/added in various subsequent recordings/productions?
Also, this is a great version of one of the greatest songs. Hurrah, as always, for Madeline Kahn.
I just googled "Madeline Kahn Glitter and Be Gay" and I would like to personally thank you for bringing that joy into my life. Truly, hers is the Bernstein interpretation I have been waiting for!
I've never heard the husband's money part before either! But all I know about the song is from hearing the original and bowdlerized versions compared on the radio. Maybe it's an ad lib so you can get her slowly realizing what's up and the mood shift in the reprise feels less abrupt? I can believe she'd come up with the perfect verse on her own <3
I think her version of the “slow blink at the memory of being surprisingly well-fucked” is the best I’ve ever seen. See also “you’d be surprised.”
In looking into the extra lyrics, I came across this tweet from Fred Barton who did the arrangement, and am now desperate to hear the stories.
Edited because I’m incapable of embedding…
In looking into the extra lyrics, I came across this tweet from Fred Barton who did the arrangement, and am now desperate to hear the stories.
Edited because I'm incapable of embedding…
After one whole quart of brandy
Like a daisy I awake
With no Bromo Seltzer handy,
I don’t even shake.
Men are not a new sensation;
I’ve done pretty well, I think.
But this half-pint imitation
Put me on the blink
REFRAIN
I’m wild again
Beguiled again
A simpering, whimpering child again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I
Couldn’t sleep
And wouldn’t sleep
Until I could sleep where I shouldn’t sleep
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I
Lost my heart but what of it?
My mistake I agree.
he’s a laugh, but I like it
because the laugh’s on me.
A pill he is
But still he is
All mine and I’ll keep him until he is
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered
Like me.
Seen a lot
I mean I lot
But now I’m like sweet seventeen a lot
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I
I’ll sing to him
Each spring to him
And worship the trousers that cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I
When he talks he is seeking
Words to get off his chest.
Horizontally speaking
He’s at his very best.
Vexed again
Perplexed again
Thank God I can’t be over-sexed again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I
(This is where the comment on the spending my husband’s money comes in.)
(Reprise at the end of the show)
Wise at last
My eyes at last
Are cutting you down to your size at last
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered no more
Burned a lot
But learned a lot
And now you are broke, though you earned a lot
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered no more
Couldn’t eat
Was dyspeptic
Life was so hard to bear;
Now my heart’s antiseptic
Since you moved out of there
Romance-Finis
Your chance-finis
Those ants that invaded my pants-finis
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered no more.
I don’t know the entire libretto, but this summary might lead to the reason for the extra lyric:
A cheap nightclub emcee Joey Evans, what hey use to call “a heel” , ditches his naive girlfriend Linda to romance a rich older woman, Vera Simpson. Vera set him up his own nightclub, and thus exposes herself to a cheap blackmail attempt but one of Joey’s former colleagues, dancer Gladys Bumps, and her boyfriend Ludlow Lowell. This fails when Linda warns Vera what they are planning and Vera calls her friend the Police Commissioner; but she decides to kick Joey out anyway.
Apparently, Joey was spending Vera’s husband’s money.
She is just so magical.
I have lots of feels for this show, and Madeline is AWESOME as Vera. Somewhere in the multiverse there is a timeline where Mme Kahn and Gene Kelly got to do “Pal Joey” together. (Gene was cast b/c the production team wanted Joey to be more of a dancer than singer, and they felt they needed an actor who could make a creepy douchey character likable.)
IMO “Pal Joey” was Rogers and Hart at their cynical best, back when musicals were written for ADULT audiences (refrains from rant about how ALW has ruined RUINED musical theater….). I love their cynicism, because it’s not hate-filled for the *characters*, but towards schtoopid rom-com and musical tropes.
R & H pushed the envelope on their lyrics so far out that much of the score from Pal Joey was banned from broadcast. Other notable firsts – Joey is often pointed to as the first modern “antihero” in musical theater, and may have invented Negging.
Both Vera Simpson and Linda are wonderfully drawn, complex women. Vera in particular is an amazing charter – she’s a wealthy socialite (the money she spends on Joey is *hers*, not her husband’s) who is more or less in the habit of getting what she wants. She’s also a middle aged woman LEAD, which, yeah, how many romantic lead roles have ever been written for women over 40? R & H don’t let her get duped – she’s clear-sighted enough to see the writing on the wall, and strong enough to give Joey the boot.
I couldn't find a video version of it, sadly, which is KILLING me because hearing the audience react to her is not enough, dammit!