Ben Bagley's Make Mine Manhattan

Before he Revisited, Ben Bagley created musical revues, starting with Shoestring Revue, which he produced at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Then there were other Shoestring revues, The Littlest Revue, The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter – the revue was a world Ben loved, and he found and gave opportunities to a whole slew of songwriters who’d go on to have great success in musical theater. And so, this album was very dear to his heart, preserving the utterly delightful Make Mine Manhattan along with a slew of other revue songs in a bonus section called Great Revues Revisited.

Make Mine Manhattan opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater in 1948 and was a smash hit, running 429 performances. The music by Richard Lewine is a tuneful delight and the lyrics of Arnold Horwitt are witty, smart, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. The show was notable for introducing someone named Sid Caesar to Broadway audiences – just a short time later he’d team up with Make Mine Manhattan’s sketch director, Max Liebman, in a little TV show called Your Show of Shows.

The additional songs are from a variety of other musical revues by some great songwriters. Bagley’s cast for this recording is starry and wonderful and includes Nancy Andrews, Carleton Carpenter, Helen Gallagher, Dolores Gray, Estelle Parsons, Lynn Redgrave, Arthur Siegel, and Elaine Stritch. This is one of Ben’s most enchanting albums and features terrific arrangements by Dennis Deal and Judd Woldin.

As we’ve done for all the Ben Bagley releases, we’ve considerably spruced up the sound. And the cover art is, of course, by the great Harvey Schmidt.