The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last Twenty-Five Years of the Broadway Musical

History of the Broadway Musical #7

by Ethan Mordden

For Ethan Mordden, the closing night of the hit musical, 42nd St. sounded the death knell of the art form of the Broadway musical. After that, big orchestras, real voices, recognizable books and intelligent lyrics went out the window in favor of cats, helicopters, yodeling Frenchmen, and the roof of the Paris Opera. Mordden takes us through the aftermath of the days of the great Broadway musical. From the long-running Cats to Miss Saigon, Phantom, and Les Miserables, to gems like The Producers, he is unsparing in his look at the remains of the day. Not content to scold the shows' creators, Mordden takes on the critics, too, splaying their bodies across the Great White Way like Sweeney Todd giving a close shave. Once more, it's "curtain going up," but Mordden is not applauding.

Genres: Theatre, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2004

Reviews

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all of Mordden's other books about the history of the Broadway musical, this is equal parts fun and frustrating. He includes lots of information about the shows (in this volume, from 1980 to 2005) and some entertaining backstage gossip, but he also assumes that the reader already knows as much about Broadway as he does. I probably have as much Broadway background in my head as any average gay man who lives outside of New York City, but some of his references escape me, and he doesn't leave many clues that would allow me to track down the missing information. His idiosyncratic style is sometimes fun, sometimes irritating. I enjoyed this overall, but marked it down a notch due to his incessant personal critical judgments which are often not well backed up.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

✳️NOTE:

The book pictured here and my copy have the same ISBN numbers but they look nothing alike. My copy was published by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press. It is a first edition, from October, 2004. The book itself is black; the only printing is on the spine. The dust jacket is predominantly purple and yellow, with white and black printing. There are pictures that are credited but without saying who the people are or what shows they are from. One, a drawing, obviously represents Cats; another is a photograph of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick from The Producers. I don't know who the other people shown are.


This is the seventh and, as of 2018, last volume of Ethan Mordden's history of the Broadway musical. I may have missed this, but I don't believe that there is anything in this book to explain the title. It is (almost) a line from the show Cabaret. This is the section of that song, taken from metrolyrics.com:

I used to have a girlfriend
known as Elsie
With whom I shared
four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call
a blushing flower...
As a matter of fact
she rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbors
came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes
from too much pills and liquor."
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen
She was the happiest... corpse...
I'd ever seen.

I think of Elsie to this very day.
I remember how she'd turn to me and say:
"What good is sitting all alone in you room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum
Come to the Cabaret."

I believe that Mordden does not intend any of the uplifting sentiment here to apply to either this book or to the Broadway musical. I think that he is saying that the singing/dancing aspects of The Fabulous Invalid are no longer just ill; they are dead and gone.

He is wrong, of course. This book gives enough praise to enough shows to demonstrate that Mordden himself is not entirely that gloomy.

But parts of this book certainly are. The Introduction alone seems to portend not just the death of the Broadway musical but that of Western civilization as a whole. I am going to quote one paragraph from the Introduction - a paragraph dripping with venom.

Today the musical is suffering dislocation and alienation. It no longer leads the culture. It follows, adopting the degenerative policies of schlock. Smart creators share the stage with inarticulate idiots specializing in worthless forms based on old song catalogues and the staging of movies. Present-day America has summoned up a new kind of musical, coarse and uneducated, Broadway's equivalent of the lower lifeforms that have become our national idols - Adam Sandler, Anna Nicole Smith, Eminem, the Osbournes. In the decade books, I have discussed every important or interesting title, or even virtually any show that ran at least a few months. In this book's period, 1978 to 2003, shows that ran years might not deserve discussion, even mention.

Or in other words, get off my lawn, you kids!

And here is the last paragraph of the book:

So there is still a Broadway of musicals. But the fad police have begun11 hijacking it, ordering it to change its music, its subject matter, its audience, its age. This assault on the Great Tradition reminds me of the old Pennsylvania Station: let's kill something beautiful with our greed for now. It's sacrilegious, or something: but it's so now. It's yes now, so pop Parade. Yes, the theatre has its Parade. Pop morons shit their pants and say, Look, it's my Broadway musical.

There is value to all of Mordden's Broadway musical series, very much including The Happiest Corpse. It is good to learn about what has happened on Broadway, and to be dismayed - or pleased - at all we never saw. (Or, if the reader actually did see these shows, to have the fun of reliving the experience.)

But what of the shows from this period that Mordden liked - or loved? Were they really trash after all? Here are a few (most of which I haven't seen):

Colette
The Human Comedy
Phantom of the Opera
Dreamgirls
The Secret Garden
Marie Christine
Wind in the Willows
Grand Hotel
Amour
Passion
Thoroughly Modern Millie

And if the Broadway musical was dead by 2003, what about another show that I haven't seen but have heard a few favorable comments about - Hamilton? Maybe that too is admired only by morons with shit in their pants.

But I doubt it.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ethan Mordden is a bit of an acquired taste. He is incredibly opinionated which can be fun when but also very irratating. This book is essentially about the end of the golden age and the crisis of modern Broadway musicals. The book isn't very coherent in terms of an overarching theme and doesn't follow a strict chronology. Also, if you don't know much about musical theatre Mordden's books are not a place to start. He assumes that the reader has a quite a good background and throws names around without explaining who these people are. If you love musical theater and enjoy snarkiness then Mordden is right for you.

[Scott Vandrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The state of the American Broadway musical is in disarray; it’s true, packed full of jukebox musicals, movie musicals, and messy, disjointed jumbles passing as cohesive storytelling. Toss in the fact that our great composers and lyricists have all passed (except John Kandor, of course!), and you have the setup for a raging rant of a book. It’s an angry read with unnecessary details about shows only a handful of people know or remember. This is skim-reading as you dodge the author’s deep disappointment at the state of The Street.

[Scott Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mordden really hates rock musicals. He really hates most of what makes today's musical theatre exciting and ground-breaking. So this is a pretty depressing book.

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy Mordden's books on musical theatre very much. He is quite opinionated and funny in his writing. I have the whole set, except for his volume on the 1920s (which is incredibly expensive on the used book market).