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"SOLILOQUY" FROM CAROUSEL
BY RICHARD RODGERS & OSCAR
HAMMERSTEIN
JOHN RIATT WHO ORIGINATED THE ROLE OF BILLY BIGILOW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCUapUEFkY
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Carousel is a musical by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics) that was
adapted from Ferenc Molnár 's 1909 play Liliom , transplanting the Budapest setting of Molnár's play to a New
England fishing village. The show includes the hit musical numbers If I Loved You , June Is Bustin' Out All Over ,
and You'll Never Walk Alone . Carouselwas innovative for its time, being one of the first
musicals to contain a tragic plot.
The original production opened
on Broadway on April 19, 1945, and ran for 890
performances. The musical has enjoyed award-winning revivals
(particularly the 1994 revival at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre ) and has
been adapted as a Cinemascope 55 film in 1956 and as a made-for-television special on
videotape in 1967. It is particularly well-regarded among musicals by
the theatre community, and Richard Rodgers, in his autobiography Musical
Stages , said it was his favorite musical. Time magazine named it the best musical of the 20th
century.
Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner of the Theatre
Guild , producers of the blockbuster musical Oklahoma! , proposed to Rodgers and Hammerstein that they turn Molnár 's Liliom into a musical. At first reluctant—they felt that audiences might be
put off by the original setting (Hungary), the dark story, and a
criminal anti-hero leading character who kills himself—they agreed to
take on the project. Moving the setting to the New
England coast was the key.[ 1]
Both
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II said Carousel was
their favorite collaboration. They broke new ground in musical theater
storytelling with their extended music-and-dialog scenes, such as the
"bench scene", which features "If I Loved You", and the haunting
"Soliloquy" in which Billy imagines his future child. These scenes,
especially the former, treat singing like spoken dialog set to music
(much as in opera recitative , with the "recitative" singing
leading up to the actual song). The final anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone "
has assumed a life of its own as a funeral and graduation standard. It
is also customarily sung by supporters of several association football (soccer) clubs,
beginning with Liverpool F.C. [ 2] in the 1960s.[ 3] Since 1964 Jerry Lewis had ended the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon with an
emotional rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone .
In 1999, Time magazine in its "Best of the Century" list,
named Carousel[ the Best Musical of the 20th century, writing
that Rodgers and Hammerstein "set the standards for the 20th century
musical".
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Billy
I
wonder what he'll think of me
I guess he'll call me the "old man"
I
guess he'll think I can lick
Ev'ry other feller's father
Well, I
can!
I bet that he'll turn out to be
The spittin' image of his dad
But
he'll have more common sense
Than his puddin-headed father ever had
I'll
teach him to wrestle
And dive through a wave
When we go in the
mornin's for our swim
His mother can teach him
The way to behave
But
she won't make a sissy out o' him
Not him! Not my boy! Not Bill!
Bill...
My boy Bill
I will see that he is named after me, I will.
My boy,
Bill! He'll be tall
And tough as a tree, will Bill!
Like a tree
he'll grow
With his head held high
And his feet planted firm on
the ground
And you won't see nobody dare to try
To boss or toss
him around!
No pot-bellied, baggy-eyed bully
Will boss him around.
I
don't give a hang what he does
As long as he does what he likes!
He
can sit on his tail
Or work on a rail
With a hammer, hammering
spikes!
He can ferry a boat on a river
Or peddle a pack on his
back
Or work up and down
The streets of a town
With a whip and a
horse and a hack.
He can haul a scow along a canal
Run a cow
around a corral
Or maybe bark for a carousel
Of course it takes
talent to do that well.
Aha-ha-ha-ha!
He might be a champ of
the heavyweights,
Or a feller that sells you glue,
Or President of
the United States,
That'd be all right, too
His mother would like
that
But he wouldn't be President if he didn't wanna be!
Not
Bill!
My boy, Bill! He'll be tall
And as tough as a tree, will
Bill
Like a tree he'll grow
With his head held high
And his
feet planted firm on the ground
And you won't see nobody dare to try
To
boss him or toss him around!
No fat-bottomed, flabby-faced,
Pot-bellied,
baggy-eyed bully
Will boss him around.
And I'm hanged if
he'll marry his boss' daughter
A skinny-lipped virgin with blood like
water
Who'll give him a peck
And call it a kiss
And look in
his eyes through a lorgnette...
Hey, why am I talkin' on like
this?
My kid ain't even been born, yet!
I can see him when he's
seventeen or so,
And startin' to go with a girl
I can give him
lots of pointers, very sound
On the way to get 'round any girl
I
can tell him ...
Wait a minute!
Could it be?
What the hell!
What
if he is a girl?
What would I do with her?
What could I do for
her?
A bum with no money!
You can have fun with a son
But you
gotta be a father to a girl
She mightn't be so bad at that
A kid
with ribbons in her hair!
A kind o' sweett and petite
Little
tin-type of her mother!
What a pair!
My little girl
Pink
and white
As peaches and cream is she
My little girl
Is half
again as bright
As girls are meant to be!
Dozens of boys pursue
her
Many a likely lad does what he can to woo her
From her
faithful dad
She has a few
Pink and white young fellers of two or
three
But my little girl
Gets hungry ev'ry night and she comes
home to me!
I-I got to get ready before she comes!
I got to
make certain that she
Won't be dragged up in slums
With a lot o'
bums like me
She's got to be sheltered
In a fair hand dressed
In
the best that money can buy!
I never knew how to get money,
But,
I'll try, I'll try! I'll try!
I'll go out and make it or steal it
Or
take it or die!
