Little Me (1962 Original Broadway Cast) [CAST RECORDING]

Carolyn Leigh, Mickey Deems, Virginia Martin, Gretchen Cryer, Sid Caesar, Nancy Andrews, Cy Coleman

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 9, 1993)
• Original Release Date: 1962
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Cast Recording
• Label: RCA
• ASIN: B000003FDV
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #24,052 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ArkivMusic Brings a Wonderful Coleman/Leigh Musical Back from the Dead . . . . . . . . , August 8, 2007

By	J. T Waldmann "yaakov98" (Carmel, IN, located just north of Indianapolis in Hamilton County.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Long before the advent of Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton (1961, to be exact), there "lived" another shapely blonde of dubious talent whose claim to fame consisted primarily of her notoriety. Her life story was the subject of Patrick Dennis' (author of "Mame") literary happening entitled "Little Me: The Intimate Memoirs of that Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television, Belle Poitrine (as told to Patrick Dennis)." "Considered pretty risqué at the time (several of [the] photographs were rejected by censors), LITTLE ME tells the rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches, etc. story of Maybelle Schlumfert, an overdeveloped and self-deluded girl who rises to become Belle Poitrine, (French for 'Pretty Bosom,' aka 'Gorgeous . . . '). (To fill in the blank, go to wikipedia.com, the source of these quotes.)

Belle's colorful - yet inspiring - story is the stuff of which Broadway musicals are made, and the authoress chose the young, up-and-coming playwright Neil Simon to transform her memorable prose (with help from Patrick Dennis) into a dramatic opus. However, at one point during their collaboration, Ms. Poitrine and Mr. Simon simultaneously shouted: "Let's rent a theater and do a musical!" When the news was broadcast on the front page of "Variety," Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, great fans of Ms. Poitrine's memoir, practically broke down the door of Mr. Simon's suite at the Plaza in their eagerness to supply the music and the lyrics. And that, my friends, is how LITTLE ME, the musical, was born.

Well, maybe it didn't happen exactly that way. But it could have, were not Belle Poitrine merely a figment of Patrick Dennis' fertile imagination.

LITTLE ME opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 17, 1962 and ran for 257 performances. Sid Caesar, (7 Emmy nominations, 2 wins) gave bravura performances "in multiple roles with multiple stage accents, playing all of Belle's husbands, each of whom comes to a propitiously untimely end." Nancy Andrews won a Tony for portraying Old Belle, and Virginia Martin was her ditziest best as Young Belle. Swen Swenson, as one of Belle's suitors, oozes sex and sleaze with his show-stopping "I've Got Your Number."

LITTLE ME boasts one of Cy Coleman's most tuneful scores and some of Carolyn Leigh's most witty lyrics. (From "I Love You"): "Though other girls are so far above you./To show you I am democratic,/Considering you're riff-raff/And I am well-to-do." (From "The Other Side of the Tracks"): "And the muscles keeping your nose up/Are the only muscles you tax./Oh, I envy someone who grows up/On the other side of the tracks." And my personal favorite, "Real Live Girl," a waltz sung by World War I sad sack Fred Poitrine when he first sets eyes on Belle: "Pardon me, miss, but I've never done this/With a real live girl./Straight off the farm with an actual arm/Full of real live girl./Pardon me if your affectionate squeeze/Fogs up my glasses and buckles my knees,/I'm simply drowned in the sight and the sound/And the scent/and the feel/Of a real live girl."

LITTLE ME is a premier example of the kind of musical designed to do nothing more than entertain, and it does so in grand fashion. David Barbour ("The TheaterMania Guide to Musical Theater Recordings"), in giving the original RCA recording a 5-star rating, writes: "The album starts with one of the most exciting overtures ever and takes off from there, thanks to orchestrator Ralph Burns. With Cy Coleman's tough, sophisticated melodies perfectly matched to Carolyn Leigh's mind-bending word games, the entire score of LITTLE ME is a treat. . . . " Amen.

My only complaint is the sound quality. ArkivMusic writes this about it CDs-on-Demand: "The music on the disc is exactly the same as the original and has not been processed or altered in any way." Pity, because this one suffers from RCA's notoriously bad 1990s digital transference. Although we should all be grateful to ArkivMusic for this and other re-issued RCA shows, they really deserve the kind of superb remastering Sony/BMG has lavished upon the Sondheim reissues.

In spite of the sound quality, I'm giving LITTLE ME five stars. It's a show I will return to again and again. You will too. Highly recommended.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars for Carolyn Leigh, December 25, 2008

By	steve lowenthal "at the piano" (NYC) - See all my reviews

Despite complaints about sound quality, and whatever one's opinion regarding vocal talent (I for one would rather listen to Gwen Verdon than to Sarah Brightman) -- anyone with a taste for sharp, witty songwriting MUST own "LITTLE ME"! With all due respect, that's a no-brainer.
Laugh-out-loud funny.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A JOYOUS TRIP BACK INTO TIME WITH BELLE POITRINE, June 2, 2008

By	Alan W. Petrucelli (THE ENTERTAINMENT REPORT (ALAN W. PETRUCELLI)) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Based on the hysterical Patrick Dennis novel, Little Me is the musicalization of the fictional biography of that great star of stage, screen, television and the tabloids, Belle Poitrine. If your French isn't up to it, her name translates as her two best features. In the course of the story, La Belle goes through husbands, fortunes and careers while trying to remain true to herself. The CD of this musical, recorded more than 45 years ago and long out-of-print, has been re-issued by ArkivMusic, to whom praise, kudos, and lots of business should be given. It is a brassy, bouncy, bodacious score---music and lyrics by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, and it weathers the years admirably. As a matter of fact, it sounds a hell of a lot better than a spate of recent Broadways shows. There are some standards ("Real Live Girl," "Here's to Us"), a song or two that was popular ("I've Got Your Number," "The Other Side of the Tracks") and a few really funny and really touching sleepers that deserve to be remembered. The show's star was Sid Caesar, an incredibly popular television comic, but the supporting players were all Broadway musical stalwarts of the period, and this reissue is like taking a time capsule back to the `60. Unpretentious, touching, rollicking and bold, this score deserves a listen. And a relisten.