Fiorello!

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Fiorello! is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1959 Broadway musical about New York City mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, a reform Republican who took on Tammany Hall. The book was by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, music by Jerry Bock. It opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on 23 November 1959 and ran for 795 performances. Harnick and Bock later went on to write Fiddler on the Roof.

The musical contains several songs built around a group of machine politicians: "Politics and Poker", in which Republican machine politicians try to pick a congressional candidate in a district they consider hopeless, while playing a game of poker; "The Bum Won", in which these same politicians commiserate with one another after LaGuardia has won the election without their support; and "Little Tin Box", in which they imagine a series of Tammany politicians attempting to explain to a judge that their wealth came from their scrupulous habits of saving ("I can see Your Honor doesn't pull his punches/ And it looks a trifle fishy, I'll admit,/ But for one whole week I went without my lunches/ And it mounted up, Your Honor, bit by bit./ Up Your Honor, bit by bit.") In "I Love a Cop", woman factory worker describes her hapless situation of having fallen in love with a policeman who was called out against a strike by her union; "The Name's La Guardia" has LaGuardia campaigning in English, Italian and Yiddish. There is also a ragtime number, "Gentleman Jimmy" about bon vivant mayor James J. "Jimmy" Walker, and "Marie's Law" in which Marie proposes a "law" about how husbands should treat their wives ("Every girl shall have a honeymoon, which will last at least a year,/ During which aforesaid honeymoon, every care shall disappear…").

Besides the inevitable invention of some peripheral characters, the musical plays a bit fast and loose with some basic facts of LaGuardia's life. In fact, LaGuardia's first wife, Thea, died after only three years of marriage, but the fictional Thea lives another eight years, so that her death can be one more calamity during LaGuardia's unsuccessful 1929 mayoral campaign; also, the script downplays LaGuardia's generally successful congressional career to make him seem more of an outsider and increase the triumph of his eventual mayoral victory in 1933.

[edit] Songs

Act I:

"On the Side of the Angels"
"Politics and Poker"
"Unfair"
"Marie's Law"
"The Name's LaGuardia"
"The Bum Won"
"I Love a Cop"
"I Love a Cop" (reprise)
"Till Tomorrow"
"Home Again"

Act II:

"When Did I Fall in Love"
"Gentleman Jimmy"
"Gentleman Jimmy" (reprise)
"The Name's LaGuardia" (reprise)
"Little Tin Box"
"The Very Next Man"
"Politics and Poker" (reprise)
"The Very Next Man" (reprise)
"The Name's LaGuardia" (reprise)

An additional song, "Where Do I Go from Here?" (originally written for Marie to sing in Act I) was cut out of town; it can be heard on the Liz Callaway album Lost In Boston (Varese Sarabande VSD-5475). "Till Tomorrow" and "Unfair" were written "on spec" before Bock and Harnick were hired for the show. "Little Tin Box" was added on the road in Philadelphia. [1]