All tagged Hugh Martin

Remembering High Spirits

There is not all that much about Noël Coward’s brilliant 1941 play Blithe Spirit that would initially make you think “this needs to be a musical.” It’s a drawing room comedy, with a relatively small cast, and tightly-written That doesn’t leave itself room for opening up or expanding in the way that musicals traditionally are. On the other hand, Blithe Spirit features an array of colorful, larger-than-life characters, including a wacky medium and an insane diva who happens to be a ghost. Suddenly, the prospects for musical comedy seem just a bit more accessible. That must be what Timothy Gray and Hugh Martin had in the front of their minds when they conjured up the musical High Spirits, adapted for the musical stage from Coward’s Blithe Spirit

How Judy Garland Shaped A Showtune Into a Holiday Classic

If you love your movie musicals like I do, you have no doubt fallen in love with that special niche known as "The Judy Garland Musicals." Not many fans of classic Hollywood can get away with not having at least one Garland film amongst their favorites. In fact, many of us consider Judy Garland to be the premiere female star of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer years, with her tender and deeply felt interpretations of songs such as “You Made Me Love You”, "Over the Rainbow", "The Boy Next Door" and "The Man That Got Away". And yet, of all her great performances, arguably her most heartfelt and heartbreaking came from a song she herself helped to shape.