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Pista
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Duración
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1. | Just Go to the Movies | | 4:33 |
2. | Famous Feet | | 3:52 |
3. | I Love a Film Cliché | | 3:21 |
4. | Nelson | | 3:16 |
5. | It All Comes Out of the Piano/Ain't We Got Fun/Too Marvelous for Words | | 12:22 |
6. | The Best in the World | | 5:05 |
7. | Doin' the Production Code | | 3:00 |
8. | A Night in the Ukraine | | 2:17 |
9. | Samovar the Lawyer | | 4:06 |
10. | Just Like That | | 4:16 |
11. | Again | | 3:32 |
12. | Natasha | | 3:51 |
13. | A Night in the Ukraine (Reprise) | | 1:00 |
| | | 54:31 |
A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine was one of those unlikely musical theater hits. As librettist/lyricist Dick Vosburgh puts in his liner notes to the original Broadway cast album, few could have dreamed that he, 'a Marx [Brothers] obsessed New Jersey-born comedy writer living in England, would adapt [Anton Chekhov's play] The Bear as a musical in the [Marx Brothers'] Night at the Opera style, find a man capable of both playing the 'Chico' [Marx] role, and of writing the music [Frank Lazarus], open in a tiny off West End theater..., see it transfer to the West End..., win a couple of awards..., and wind up a Broadway hit directed and choreographed by Tommy Tune....' (Opening at the Golden Theatre in New York on May 1, 1980, the show ran a healthy 588 performances.) The adaptation to which Vosburgh refers takes up the second, 'A Night in the Ukraine,' portion of what is actually a two-part musical revue with little in the way of plot. The first half is a tribute to and parody of Hollywood set at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and performed by some starstruck ushers that includes a musical recitation of the famous code that censored films of the 1930s to the 1950s and a lengthy medley of songs by movie tunesmith Richard A. Whiting ('Ain't We Got Fun,' etc.). That isn't the only interpolation; Jerry Herman of Hello, Dolly and Mame fame contributes three songs, among them one in which a Jeanette MacDonald soundalike questions the manhood of one 'Nelson (Eddy, of course). The six-person cast handles the material well, even if David Garrison isn't quite convincing as Groucho Marx, and the album, as the stage production did, works well as a small, two-piano musical effort that is both affectionate and mocking toward Hollywood's golden age.