University of Illinois Press American Music: This Content Downloaded From 110.21.42.77 On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:46:17 UTC

Dramas with Music: Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and the Challenges of
Music for the Postwar Stage

Author(s): Annette Davison
Source: American Music, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter 2011), pp. 401-442
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/americanmusic.29.4.0401
Accessed: 16-11-2017 00:46 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/americanmusic.29.4.0401?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to American Music
This content downloaded from 110.21.42.77 on Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:46:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ANNETTE DAVISON
Dramas with Music:

Tennessee Williamss
A Streetcar Named Desire
and the Challenges of Music
for the Postwar Stage
The music created for theatrical productions is notoriously ephemeral. It

is not uncommon to find that the only information about a productions
music to survive is a credit for the composer and/or performers in the
plays program or playbill and, occasionally, a few lines about the music
in reviews of the play. We are more fortunate in the case of the debut
production of Tennessee Williamss A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947.
In 1992 Brenda Murphy provided a detailed discussion of the produc-
tions music drawn from archival sources, as part of her research into
the nature of the collaborative relationship between Williams and Elia
Kazan, the director of the debut production.1 More recently, additional
documentation concerning the plays music has come to light, some of
which had previously been sealed to scholars.2 These discoveries also
include a recording of the plays cues performed by the musicians of the
second touring company in 1949.
Possible reasons for the survival of the material include the immense
success of the original production and the unique character of the mu-
sical world created for it, discussed below. The fact that there were a
series of disagreements between the producer and the musicians union
concerning the plays music, along with a number of legal disputes that
also concerned the plays music and its musicians, perhaps provides a
Annette Davison is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Edinburgh

where she researches and teaches on music for/in film and television and musi-
cology. Her most recent book was Alex Norths A Streetcar Named Desire: A Film
Score Guide (Scarecrow, 2009). She is currently writing about cinema musicians in
the period prior to synchronized sound in Britain (unionization, and the impact
of the Performing Right Society) for a collection she is co-editing with Julie Brown
(OUP, forthcoming). A chapter on credit sequences for contemporary television
serials is forthcoming (2012) in The Oxford Handbook to New Audiovisual Aesthetics.
American Music Winter 2011
2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
402 Davison
more pragmatic explanation, however. An exploration of these disputes

led me to interview George Avakian, the feted jazz producer, whose role
in the productions music has not previously been considered. Informa-
tion from Avakian shed considerable light on both the character of the
productions music and the legal cases that followed.
The debut production of Streetcar opened at the Ethel Barrymore The-
atre in New York on December 3, 1947, following tryouts in New Haven,
Boston, and Philadelphia.3 Streetcar was the Irene M. Selznick Compa-
nys second theatrical production, and the first to reach Broadway.4 Its
Broadway success led to productions in theatres across the world within
months of the plays debut. While visiting overseas productions of the
play, however, Williams was dismayed at the state of the plays music
and suggested that in at least one case the music had almost ruined the
entire mood of the play.5 As Selznick recognized, the most obvious and
efficient means of protecting the integrity of future productions in terms
of music would be to offer recordings of the music used in the original
production. Indeed, the particular character of the plays music meant
that scores, by themselves, could not convey the nature of the music ac-
curately. Most of the plays music falls into one of two categories: the
first, described by Williams as a polka tune and referenced by Selznick
as Blanches memory music, was performed on the worlds first poly-
phonic synthesizer, the Hammond Novachord, with its unique series of
alterable parameters; the second category of cues was performed by a
live band performing tunes in the manner of the then-current revival of
Dixieland (traditional) jazz. On the one hand, the Novachord and the
sounds it could produce were still relatively novel and, on the other, the
difficulties of notating the idiomatic performance attributes of jazz are
well known.
The American Federation of Musicians refused the company authori-
zation to record the plays music and the fact that the request was made
during the unions second recording ban in 1948 did not help Selznicks
case. This was not the first battle that Selznick entered into with the AFM
over Streetcars music. On opening night the union classified Streetcar
as a drama with music, a new classification category introduced in
1946. The judgment would increase the productions music costs sig-
nificantly. Selznick refused to accept it. When the dispute was finally
settled, however, its consequences were far greater than the productions
music budget.
As a play, Streetcar is now considered a seminal work of twentieth-
century American theatre. How exciting, then, that the debut production
of this play also provides a fascinating case study of musical practice
in postwar theatre. It stands at a nexus in terms of key shifts in the con-
ceptualization of music and music for theatre: between the live and the
recorded, scored versus improvised music, changing approaches to the
Dramas with Music 403
authorship and ownership of jazz and musical arrangements, and the

unions classification system for music performed in theatres. What this
reveals about music in American postwar theatre sui generis, however,
is a moot point. Does Streetcars music reflect standard practice for the
period or was it unique? The proliferation of documentation regarding
Streetcars music does, at least, enable us to form a more detailed picture
of this productions music than currently exists, and may thus help to
move us further forward in answering this question.
Streetcars Music Prior to Production

As a playwright, Tennessee Williams was a serial revisionist. The de-
velopment of the play that was to become A Streetcar Named Desire can
be traced back through a number of earlier fragments and drafts, some
with titles (e.g., Electric Avenue, Go, Said the Bird!, The Primary
Colors, The Poker Night), others untitled, some dated, some not.6 To
complicate matters further, published versions of the plays script also
differ, and notably so in the treatment of music.7 Nonetheless, a recon-
struction of the evolution of the plays music is possible.8
The play has eleven scenes, organized into three acts for production.
The action takes place in a rented two-room apartment in New Orleans,
situated next to the L&N railway tracks. A long-widowed sister (Blanche
Du Bois) arrives for an extended stay with her younger sibling, Stella,
who is married to Stanley Kowalski (a second-generation Polish immi-
grant) and pregnant with their first child. The sisters are the last gen-
eration of an aristocratic Southern family fallen on hard times. Blanche
stayed on at the family estate (Belle Reve) nursing the older generation
until their deaths and the subsequent loss of the estate, while Stella left
to pursue a life of her own. Blanche blames herself for her young (and
later to be revealed as homosexual) husbands suicide: unbeknown to
her husband, she had caught a glimpse of him in bed with a man. Later
the same evening, when she told him that he disgusted her he ran to
the lakeside and shot himself. Blanche is haunted by the music that was
playing as she heard the shot (aka Williamss polka tune); they had been
dancing a Varsouviana.9
Blanches arrival has an unsettling effect on the relationship between
Stanley and Stella. Stanley is both irritated by and suspicious of his sister-
in-law, angered by her patronizing yet flirtatious behavior toward him.
Blanche is affronted by Stanleys rough manners and lack of refinement,
and disturbed by the physical basis of her sisters love for him. When
Blanche meets Stanleys unmarried friend, Mitch, she sees him as a last
desperate hope, someone who might protect and take care of her. He
finds her imagination and flights of fancy exotic, where, for Blanche, this
striving for magic and illusion is a refuge from harsh reality. The situa-
404 Davison
tion becomes more complex when we the audience are privy to Blanches
desire for young men, in the form of a collector for a newspaper; she
kisses the stranger just moments before Mitch is due to arrive for a date.
The suddenness of Blanches arrival was apparently due to a leave
of absence from her job as a schoolmistress; she tells Stella that she is
suffering from shattered nerves. In time Stanley discovers that Blanche
was dismissed for indiscretions with a seventeen-year-old student, and
hears too of her exploits at a low-class hotel, which she was eventually
asked to leave. He informs Mitch and thereby destroys her only hope for
protection. The night that Stella gives birth to his baby, Stanley extends
the hand of friendship to Blanche, but she continues to patronize him.
His anger grows as he realizes that her comforting illusions are lies. He
flies into a rage and interprets her terrorshe smashes a bottle to protect
herselfas an invitation for some rough-house.10 He overpowers her.
The play ends with Blanches removal to an asylum; after the rape she
loses her grip on reality entirely. Stella refuses to believe her sister as to
do otherwise would mean the end of her marriage.
The music Williams described as the polka tune, also labeled Var-
souviana, forms a key role in the plays musical world. As the music that
Blanche remembers was playing when her husband shot himself, this
was the first musical element Williams integrated into the draft plays
scripts.11 Prior to the collaboration with Kazan, Williams concentrated
the polka cues in the latter half of the play. In scene 6, the music enters
when Blanche tells Mitch of her husbands death.12 In scene 9, the cues
demonstrate more clearly the disintegration of Blanches mental state:
she drinks to escape the music that invades her mind. Later in the scene,
she asks Mitch if he also hears it (which, of course, he cant). In the final
scene, Williams suggested that the polka tune enter gently as the Doctor
rings the doorbell. Blanche believes that an old beau has come to take
her away on a cruise. The musics volume is increased when Blanche
realizes this isnt the case and is finally faded out as she is carried from
the apartment. The cue does not close the play, however: Williams gave
that role to the blue piano [sic] (hereafter, blues piano), one of a series
of cues in a blues or jazz style.13
Boyd Johns dates the first mention of blues piano to the profession-
ally typed draft of February 1947 where it features in the opening stage
directions for scene 1. Williams placed these blues piano cues, at times
expanded to a band of negro entertainers, or hot trumpet and drums,
across several scene changes.14 Such cues are essentially structural, cover-
ing the time needed to change the set and lighting set-ups, and for actors
to change costume, but they also offer further opportunities to establish
the plays locale and even provide commentary in places. Blues piano
cues were also indicated at key moments within scenes, with placement
relatively consistent in that such cues are heard at moments of loss, lone-
liness, and melancholy, with a modified, more up-tempo version of this

music suggested for anxious situations.15 Williams thus appears to have
had more of a conception of the plays use of jazz than had previously
been thought, at least in terms of placement.
In Production:
The Musical Advisor(s) and the Musicians
Selznick approached Alan Lomax to take on the plays musical direction.
This was an informed choice given the ethnomusicologists research trips
to the southern states and his familiarity with traditional African Ameri-
can music, not least including extensive interviews with and recordings
of Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton for the Library of Congress in 1938.16
Early discussions with Lomax in June 1947 went well, though a less suc-
cessful meeting followed. Williams was worried by the ethnomusicolo-
gists lack of theatrical experience. He was afraid that he was more the
theoretician than implementer.17 Lomax was replaced.
Lehman Engel, a musician far more experienced in producing music
for theatre than Lomax, was contracted as the plays musical advisor in
July.18 How large a role Engel played in developing the plays music is
unclear, however.19 Having been booked to do the incidental music
for the play, Engel subsequently discovered that he was required only
to select (not compose) New Orleans (Dixieland) jazz.20 Furthermore,
once Engel started choosing material, he found that Selznick, Kazan and
Williams had different and quite specific ideas for the plays music, with
economics playing a key role in the producers view. Selznicks inten-
tion was to use music based on traditional songs or improvised tunes
of the kind she had heard associated with New Orleans and other hot
players. Indeed, Selznick told Schneider that once they had Lomax
under contract she would emphasize to him that they should try not to
use popular or current tunes in order to avoid hefty royalty charges.21
Engel requested to be let out of the contract but was refused. Since
some form of improvisation would be required, he recognized that the
selection of players was key and that hand-picked men should be used
instead of theatre musicians.22 To that end, he consulted George Avakian,
then associated with Columbia Records. Although Engel could not pay
him, Avakian was enthusiastic about the project and keen to be involved.
In the productions playbill, Avakian is credited only with assembling
the players, though it seems he actually played a greater role, consulting
with Kazan on the plays music with and via Engel; by this point in the
proceedings, Williams was not participating much in decision making
concerning the music.
Avakian selected the musicians and began the process of rehearsal
by playing a series of Jelly Roll Morton (General Label) records to the
406 Davison
group; these were to form a basis for the productions blues and/or jazz
cues.23 Over the summer a number of Avakians first-choice musicians
became unavailable, and another group of musicians was brought on
board days before the first tryout. This final set of musicians comprised
John Mehegan (piano), Eddie Barefield (clarinet), Dick Vance (trumpet),
and Denny Strong (drums), with Barefield listed as the official contrac-
tor.24 Late in the day, however, Selznick realized that money could be
saved by using songs published by companies owned by her father, L.
B. Mayer, despite already having a suite of music cues in place; several
cues were replaced by numbers from the Feist-Robbins catalogue.25 At
the request of Selznick, Barefield later wrote down the bands parts so
that a basic reference score would exist.26
In production, Williamss blues piano (occasionally with trumpet and
drums) was expanded to a four-piece ensemble: trumpet, clarinet, piano,
and drums. The musicians performed in an upstairs dressing room to
give the impression that the music was played by a band in a club lo-
cated around the corner.27 Cued by a light and a buzzer activated by the
assistant stage manager, the music was broadcast into the theater via
speakers located on the stage. Notes made by Selznick during the New
Haven tryouts suggest that the arrangement was not as successful as it
might have been, however; it sounded as though the musicians were
positioned in the wings rather than from a location around the corner.28
The problems continued a week before the shows Broadway debut, as
is clear from notes made at a technical rehearsal late in November.29 A
number of suggestions were made with a view to improving the sound
of the productions music: change the size, location, and soundproof-
ing of the room used by the band, and place the speakers in alternative
positions (for it seems that the speakers could not play the music loudly
enough without distortionalternative mikes were also suggested); to
enable Blanches singing to be heard more clearly, a square should be
cut into the bathroom set; a cheap piano should be bought and used
for the New York run, to create the tinny sound required, and the No-
vachord speakers should be in different positions rather than one set
position. It was even suggested that the Novachord be replaced with a
piano with paper or tin-foil inserted (Novachord [ ... ] always suggests
an organ).30
The Novachord was played by Max Marlin and was situated back-
stage.31 Marlin was asked by Kazan to adapt the tune Varsuviana [sic]
for the Novachord, for which he provided a suite of arrangements of the
tune Put Your Little Foot (Right In).32 Marlin also performed Good-
night Ladies on the Novachord, along with some original compositions,
complementary to the Varsouviana cues.33 While the Novachord can
imitate acoustic instruments, it also generates a host of original sounds
via the manipulation of several dials and pedal, which enable variability
in attack, sustain, decay, and release. The Novachords defamiliarized

and unique sound helped to establish the idea that the Varsouviana was
music heard only by Blanche, though not wholly unambiguously.
In Production: The Varsouviana Cues

Kazan added Varsouviana cues to the first and second scenes, at the
first mention of Blanches husband, cementing a connection between
the Varsouviana and the tragic figure of Grey. In scene 1 this resulted
in the director discarding the blues piano music Williams suggested for
the discussion of Belle Reve.34 Kazan felt that if any incidental music
were heard prior to the cue, it would suggest that the Varsouviana was
also incidental rather than subjectivethat is, heard only by Blanche.35
Selznick was clearly also anxious about how this could be conveyed:
in notes for Jessica Tandy (playing Blanche), the producer states that
Blanche should always have [a] characteristic gesture, no matter how
slight, which indicates she is hearing something unrealistic. Think it
should be established very first time V[arsouviana] is used. We should
not wait until she is forced to clap hands over ears. Otherwise sounds
like movie background music.36
This first of these cues is an arrangement of the traditional American
tune Put Your Little Foot (as is the second, third, and fifth of the seven
Varsouviana cues). The repetition within the melody lends itself to the
generation of a lilting waltz rhythm. The two phrases are repeated but
the answering phrase gets stuck: the first and second bars are repeated,
with increasing volume and speed. Although this is the first time the cue
is heard, ideas of haunted repetition and of a life arrested at a signifi-
cant moment are clear. Blanches explanationthat her young husband
diedcontrasts with the tunes major key and light, sunny character.
The disjunction implies that there is more to be said on the matter.
A similar disjunction is created in scene 2, though this time within the
Varsouviana cue itself. The simplicity of the original tune and accom-
paniment is made dissonant and melancholic by providing the melody
(in A-flat major) with an accompaniment in a different key and in the
Example 1. The first appearance of the Varsouviana, an arrangement of Put

Your Little Foot (trad.), by Marlin.
Slow waltz
8va
408 Davison
minor mode (A minor), and by moving to the subdominant minor (d

min) rather than to the dominant (E). For Selznick, the cue provides the
intangible correlate to the tangible evidence of the love letters: The
minor Varsouviana is her unhappiness. The major Varsouviana is the
nostalgia. The analysis is astute and highlights the complexity of the
relationship between Blanche and her memories of the Varsouviana.37
Kazan split Williamss suggested cue for scene 6 (when Blanche tells
Mitch about her husband) into two parts, and thus better supports the
changing emotional landscape of the scene. The first part is a straightfor-
ward, largely unaltered version of Put Your Little Foot, cued to begin
when Blanche first mentions the drive out to the casino. The second part of
the cue (pitched a major third lower, in B flat) begins quietly as Blanche ex-
plains why her husband shot himself. It was to be performed at a slightly
slower tempo (tendersustained), here with maximum vibrato, in-
creasing in volume but cut off immediately as Mitch kisses Blanche.38
The Novachords settings for this latter cue, along with its slower tempo,
emphasize Blanches loss and her loneliness as expressed in her telling of
her story. In cutting the cue short when Mitch kisses Blanche, regardless
of where in the musical phrase this occurs, the music helps to establish
that Mitch has the potential to bring her loneliness to an end: he might
become her protector.39
In production, Williamss next Varsouviana cue was begun earlier:
when Stanley presents Blanche with a bus ticket back to Laurel toward
the end of scene 8, rather than at the start of scene 9.40 The cue here is
the first of Max Marlins original pieces composed to complement the
Varsouviana cues, and its resemblance to the previous arrangements is
clear in terms of melodic figuration, harmonic language (based on triads),
and the waltz rhythm. But here the phrases are heavier and more plod-
ding.41 The simple (tonic dominant) harmonic language of the previous
arrangements is here colored by more slippery harmonies. The original
cues composed by Marlin are more overtly melancholy, or appear so, by
comparison to the simpler, more sentimental arrangements of Put Your
Little Foot heard previously. Arguably, they are also more poignant.
The specific capabilities of the Novachord were employed to good effect
here, by distorting the cues sound.42 At this point, the possibility that
Mitch might be a potential suitor has passed. Starting the cue earlier, at
the moment that Stanley makes clear that he plans to remove Blanche
from his home and send her back to Laurel, links her further retreat from
reality more directly to Stanleys behavior.
Kazan added a further Varsouviana cue in scene 9, at the approach
of the Mexican Flower Vendor, chanting (Flores para los muertos).43
The cue is a repetition of the Marlin composition heard in the previous
scene (scene 8).44 The return of this Varsouviana-variant ensured that
the legacy of Belle Reve loomed large. Both Marlins music and the rep-
etitious chanting of the flower seller continue beneath Blanches mono-

logue about death and desire. This juxtaposition (of the Novachord,
the chanting, Blanches monologue) generated and supported one of the
plays emotional highpoints: the moment at which Blanche reveals the
truth of her past to Mitch.45
Kazan retained the last of Williamss Varsouviana cues, but delayed its
entrance in the final scene. Williams had suggested the music enter when
Blanche realizes that the Doctor is not her old beau and play on through
the scene until she is carried out. In production, it entered much later, at
Blanches now infamous line Whoever you are [ ... ], and continued
until the curtain fell.46 This final cue was essentially another repetition
of Marlins original composition, and thus a more melancholic variation
of the original Varsouviana tune. Not only would this leave audiences
thinking of Blanche, but would perhaps also suggest that the legacy of
her later life at Belle Reve contributed to her mental instability. This is a
significant shift from Williamss suggested return to blues piano to close
the play, and one that may well have been motivated by the need to bal-
ance the performances of Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy as Stanley
and Blanche.47
In Production: The Jazz Cues

Notes made by Selznick during the New Haven performances suggest
some uneasiness concerning the music performed by the jazz band. She
felt that the music was too syncopated and that the plays opening
music was too jazzy. In her view, the plays music should be either
slow, lonely, miserable blues or slow and very dirty music.48 Syncopated,
jazzy music persisted, however. In putting the play into production, ad-
ditional cues were required to cover scene changes, and to open and close
acts. While most of the scene changes were covered by jazz cues, the cues
also added value by presenting appropriate local color, that is, the kind
of music that might be heard through the apartments louvered windows
and doors. The number that opens the play, Claremont Breakdown, is a
good example.49 The cue was composed by John Mehegan and performed
by the band.50 Bright and bouncy with a major key feel and just a smat-
tering of blue notes, the number is basically a twelve-bar blues, varied
through the progressive verses, incorporating performance elements that
support the New Orleans location.51 The same is true of the second jazz
cue, Winin Boy, which covers the scene change into scene 2.52
Other curtain or scene change cues potentially combine this dual func-
tion with a third: the possibility that the songs lyrics may comment upon
the action. The arrangement of Byron and Hellmans 4 or 5 Times,
performed on clarinet, piano, and drums, may have functioned in this
way. The number signals the start of act 2 (scene 4 of the play).53 The
410 Davison
lyrics of this popular tune barely attempt to mask their double-entendre

character; it is possible that some members of the audience may have
heard the number as a crude commentary on the action that closes the
preceding scene (scene 3), discussed below.
In a similar way, the cue that covers the scene change between scenes
5 and 6 also appears to comment on the action on stage, though here
as a result of instrumentation and musical style.54 Woke Up Blues is
another twelve-bar blues. The number features a mournful though high-
pitched clarinet lead, with interjections on trumpet marked growl, the
stage directions emphasizing both the cues mournful and its dirty
character.55 Blanche lavishes her attention on Mitch, who has just arrived,
only seconds after we have seen her attempt to seduce a young stranger.
Here the musical material clearly comments upon Blanches behavior.
The cue Williams suggested should cover the change from scene 2 to
scene 3 offers another example, as Murphy also highlights. In produc-
tion, the cue (Walter Donaldsons Sundown) was started earlier in the
scene, on Blanches line about Stanleys big, capable hands: here, the
trumpet with its direct expression of sexuality, ... encoded an intense
ironic subtext when Blanche tried to escape her own desire. This was
emphasized further a little later, with the trumpet cued as the tamale
vendor was heard calling Red-hot!56
The presence of music that seems incongruous to the unfolding action
invites interpretation. Though Williams indicated honkytonk music
at the end of scene 7, a point at which Blanche realizes her situation has
changed (Stanley has told Stella the sordid details of her sisters recent life
in Laurel), in production the band performed a short recapitulation of the
shows opening cue, Claremont Breakdown.57 The stage directions urge
that the performance emphasize the brash quality of this bright up-tempo
number.58 But why remind us of the start of the play and Blanches arrival
by including an abridged recapitulation of Claremont Breakdown?
Was this nasty stomp chosen to emphasize Stanleys lack of compas-
sion toward his sister-in-law? The number certainly seems to form an
unexpected backdrop for the dismal birthday supper that it introduces.
Williams also suggested that honkytonk music should enter with
Stanley in scene 10 and continue through the scene.59 In production,
once Goodnight Ladies had been faded out soon after the scenes
opening, the rest of the scene was left unscored. After the blackout at
the end of the scenethe moment of the implied rapethe band re-
turns with a rendition of Wang-Wang Blues, which continues until
the curtain rises on the final scene. This lighthearted, jaunty number
follows a sixteen-bar blues structure.60 This lithe, upbeat cue seems ut-
terly anempathetic to Blanche and the sexual violence she is subjected
to at this point.61 Neither, however, does it empathize with Stanleys
aggressive domination over her. Was it Kazans intention that the music
should appear so at odds with the preceding action? Or was the cue
simply to function as curtain music? The final scene opens with poker
banter between Stanley and Pablo, a context that better suits this music,
though the mood presented by the music remains significantly counter
to that which follows.
Several other jazz cues are contained within scenes and, on two occa-
sions at least, help to present the intensity and perhaps also the physical-
ity of the relationship between Stella and Stanley. In scene 3, for example,
the number F B Blues enters when Stanley becomes distraught after
beating his wife. The musicians understood the cues initials to stand
for Funkey Butt, a seemingly trivial piece of information that was to
take on more significance in time, as explored below.62 Stage directions
and cues indicate a close association with the scenes action: Plaintive,
milk it, slide into it [ ... ] STELLAHHHHHH!!!!!!! Flash orchestra for
clarinet.63 The trumpet leads and the clarinet harmonizes through the
first sixteen-bar section, which is repeated. When Stanley wails for his
wife the music cuts to another section of the cue, signaling also a change
of focus onto the relationship between the couple, as expressed also in
Stanleys distressed calls to Stella and Stellas return to Stanley down
the stairs from the apartment above.64 Later, in scene 8, Art Hickmans
popular song, Rose Room is played on piano and clarinet, underscor-
ing Stanleys attempt to comfort Stella as he holds her in his arms on
the porch, explaining that once Blanche has gone and the baby has been
born, their relationshipand their sex lifewill be rekindled.65
The solo piano cue Williams suggested should be heard when Blanche
attempts to seduce the boy collector was removed in production. Such a
cue may have appeared heavy-handed: perhaps it would overemphasize
Blanches carnal needs and thereby paint her character less ambigu-
ously. Another solo piano cue was added in the following scene (scene
6), however, at Blanches somewhat ironic line, I have old-fashioned
ideals, spoken as she halts Mitchs amorous advances. Stage directions
for the cue are: Slow, whimsical, sexy.66 Perhaps the intention was to
emphasize that Blanche is not being entirely honest with Mitch. Given
her fears that Mitch would not be interested in her if he knew more about
her, the humor implied in underscoring the line with music described
as whimsical, sexy seems more gentle and affectionate than damning.
This simple cue, with its relative lack of blue notes and chromaticism,
may have helped to establish Blanches behavior as coy.67
In putting Streetcar into production, Williamss original suggestions
for blues or jazz cues were expanded, in places removed/replaced, and
in others, developed. A good number of these changes were most likely
due to the requirements of putting a script on stage, such as adding cues
to cover scene changes. In addition, formal boundaries in some cues
were used to establish a change of pace or focus on stage. Elsewhere
412 Davison
cues were used to encourage empathy with particular characters, or, in

their incongruity, perhaps to better reflect the ambivalence that Williams
built into the play.
In his preparatory work on the play, Kazan stated that he felt Wil-
liamss blue piano was appropriate to describe Blanches lonely, aban-
doned soul: It tells, it emotionally reminds you what all the fireworks
are caused by. In production, however, the plays blues/jazz cues seem
to have been less focused on presenting the human side of Blanche,
beneath her frenetic duplicity, her trickery, lies, etc., and rather more
on setting the locale, and on presenting the latent physical sexuality
that lies at the heart of the play, whether characters are conscious of
its power, expressing it in their words and actions (Stanley and Stella),
or whether the music expresses its power over them, in their denial or
suppression of it (Blanche).68 In this way, it is possible to read the jazz
cues as racially coded in quite stereotypical fashion for the period, with
the Varsouviana cues their binary opposite.69 Indeed, in production,
empathy for Blanche is encouraged more by the Varsouviana cues. The
Varsouviana cues added in the opening scenes helped to assert that
Blanches mental state had been fragile for some time, certainly well
before her arrival in New Orleans, and also encouraged the audience to
feel some degree of sympathy for the character as she is bundled away
by the doctor and matron at the end of the play.
Williamss suggestions for the polka/Varsouviana cues in the prepro-
duction scripts invite an interpretation of the play that is arguably more
bleak than that which developed as a result of Kazans and Selznicks
involvement. This is true particularly of the plays final scene, where
Williamss musical suggestions assert that Blanches visit changed little
for the Kowalskis, the music implying a return to the plays opening. Yet
Williamss conception of the blues piano in the preproduction scripts,
and as understood by Kazan, seems to engender more sympathy for
Blanche. Thus it seems likely that this rebalancing of the plays music in
productionwith changes made to the number, placement, and charac-
ter of both the Varsouviana and the jazz cueswas necessary to balance
the performances of Tandy and Brando and to retain the openness to
interpretation of Williamss characterization of Blanche and Stanley.70
Once the production was up and running, musical concerns turned to
what was to become an extended disagreement between Selznick and
the union over classification of the play and its music. The dispute re-
sulted in an appeal to the International Executive Board of the American
Federation of Musicians (AFM). This documentation provides a surpris-
ing amount of detail about the production, including not only timings
but also insights into how the productions music was conceived by
the Selznick company and interpreted by the union (though, of course,
these views were somewhat biased). During 1948 the Selznick company
requested permission to record the debut productions music. The cor-

respondence between the AFM and the Selznick company, and between
Irene M. Selznick and her assistant, Irving Schneider, shows that not
only did the AFM refuse permission to record the productions music,
but it also refused the companys request to use recordings in theatres.
The letters also reveal the genesis of the recordings of the productions
cues as performed by the second national touring company in 1949.
Irene M. Selznick Production Company

vs. the American Federation of Musicians
Until Labor Day in 1946, the AFM classified theatre productions as either
dramas or musicals, with each category entailing a different wage scale
and minimum number of musicians. The decision to further supplement
these was taken by Local 802, the New York branch of the AFM, following
an approach from the League of New York Theatres. According to the
secretary of the Local, Charles R. Iucci, the decision to add the category
drama with music was taken in response to an aesthetic change. Where
previously musicians might have been asked to perform an overture,
entracte music, and an exit march for dramatic productions, often with
the selected music unrelated to the production, Iucci noted that more re-
cently composers had been employed to write special scores for dramatic
productions, for atmospheric effect, perhaps. Here, though, the music
was not merely incidental; it was an integral part of the performance.71
The unions intention in adding a further category was to enable produc-
ers to include more music without the need to employ the large number
of musicians that productions classified as a musical required. The clas-
sification of the production depended on five guideposts: the amount
of music; use of music in the production; the nature of the production; the
amount of playing time; and the amount of time the musician was in the
pit. Meeting just one of these tests was enough to cause the production to
be classified as drama with music. Iucci conceded that the definition of
each criterion is not easy, but argued that the union believed the system
had worked well in the period that it had been enforced.72
The producers did not agree. Rather, this broad and fluid approach
to the criteria led to a certain amount of confusion.73 Producers could look
into the classification of other recent productions of course, but a certain
amount of guesswork was also required to budget for music. In the case
of Streetcar, Selznicks assistant, Irving Schneider, spoke to Iucci in June
1947 to try to gain further insight into the distinctions between the three
categories. After discussing the productions musical needs, Iucci told
Schneider that he felt certain Streetcar would fall into the same class as
The Glass Menagerie and Burlesquethat is, dramathough he added that
the production would still need to be reviewed by the Local.74 A drama
414 Davison
classification would require four musicians booked for the production,

paid at dramatic scale. Schneider noted that shows with as much as fif-
teen minutes of music had been classed as dramatic. He continued, It
depends on the way the music is used, whether its purely incidental, at-
mospheric, or whether it is used for numbers or to advance the story.75
The shows that had been classed as drama with music included Anita
Looss Happy Birthday and George Bernard Shaws Androcles and the Lion,
each of which had involved pretty lengthy original scores and required
eight to ten players. With Shakespeares Henry VIII, the (notated) score
was clocked at forty-five minutes, the orchestra was in the pit throughout,
and there was a conductor and a dance sequence.76 In that instance, the
union had required that the musicians be paid at musical scale.
The Executive Board of Local 802 reviewed Streetcar on December 1,
1947, and notified Irene Selznick two days lateropening nightthat
the production had been classified as a drama with music, which re-
quired a minimum of eight musicians paid at musical scale. This clas-
sification meant a 70 percent increase in the cost of the plays music.77
Selznick requested that the Local reclassify the production. The Theatre
Committee met to consider the request but upheld the Executive Boards
decision. The same decision was given again on December 18, two days
after Selznick appeared before the board to give her view.78 On Decem-
ber 19 Selznick wrote Iucci a lengthy letter expressing her dismay at the
decision, which left her the choice of either removing all music from the
play, or fighting the union over the classification.
It is worth recounting Selznicks facts on the nature and use of music
in the play as she explained them to Iucci in full:
1. Of the five musicians employed, four of them comprise a jazz
band which performs in a dressing room upstairs. Accordingly,
they are piped in. The fifth instrument is a Novachord, which is
played offstage.
2. There are only 82 seconds of music which can conceivably be
considered as an integral part of the play. The sole function of
this music is to reflect the emotional instability of one of the char-
acters. It is played by one single instrumentthe Novachord.
No other musicians are involved.
3. Aside from the 82 seconds of integral music, the balance of the
music is purely atmospheric and incidentalall or any part of it
can be easily eliminated without in any way affecting the play. (As
evidence of this fact, I wish to point out that this past summer the
author suggested that no music at all be used for fear that it would
obtrude on the play, but I prevailed upon him to retain it.)
4. There is no score, and no original music has been written for the
show.
5. Although custom has prevailed to use amplification to increase

the volume of music, thereby making a small orchestra sound
like a large one and causing musicians to be deprived of jobs, our
sound-control system is used particularly to reduce the volume
of music.
6. The addition of three more musicians is not only a physical im-
possibilitythere is no room for them to play even if we needed
thembut the added orchestration would distort the nature and
intent of the jazz music; artistically, it would be destructive to
our production. (Presently there is one member of the jazz band
who is actually superfluous, but we are continuing to use him
because he is under contract and to preserve the morale of the
ensemble.)
I have done everything possible to seek consultation and col-
laboration. I have offered to reduce or amend the music, the use
of same, the volume of same, the number of cues. If the union
did not care to advise me in what way I could amend it to meet
the minimum classification, I offered to undertake to do it myself
if only the local would be good enough to send a committee to
review my efforts to conform.79
Selznick continued by noting that the League of New York Theatres
arranged an emergency meeting about the Streetcar situation without
her knowledge; she refused their assistance in the hope that she would
be able to demonstrate by her own means that the union and theatri-
cal managers could collaborate. On the classification of drama with
music, Selznick regretted to see producers increasingly avoid music
with straight plays rather than run the risk of unpredictable and arbi-
trary classification and the resulting prohibitive costs. Yet the decision
to so classify Streetcarwith only eighty-two seconds of music integral
to the play, according to Selznick, and that performed by a single musi-
ciansuggests that such an attempt by the union is a violation of the
spirit which led to the creation of the additional classification.80 On
the final page of the letter, Selznick quotes from a memo she had just
received from her attorney, Morris Ernst, in which he stated that the
position taken by the union violates your legal rights. ... The unions
position is in general terms one of obvious featherbedding, which is
scarcely concealed by the quilt of phraseology contained in concepts
such as arbitrarily used by the union for different types of productions.
Selznick closed the letter stating that she hoped she wont be forced to
defend [her] rights in other forums, adding that she was not sending
a copy of the statement to the press. Not yet anyway. She did, however,
send a copy of the letter to James Petrillo, president of the AFM, whom
she hoped had been spared this recent batch of trouble.81
416 Davison
Iucci responded to Selznick a few days later, confirming that she had
the right to appeal the decision made by the Locals Executive Board.
An appeal was made: Selznick wrote to Leo Cluesman, secretary of the
AFM, at the end of the month.82 The International Executive Board ac-
knowledged its receipt of the appeal in January 1948. The next month the
Local stated in their rebuttal of the appeal that Selznick had been less
than candid with the International Executive Board: the musicians play
in each act (five times in the first act, five in the second, and eight in the
third: a total of eighteen cues) in response to cues which are given by
light signals.83 The Local clocked the period the musicians played for
as twenty-nine and a half minutes. The Novachord is played alone for
nine minutes, twelve if playing at the same time as the band is counted.
They added,
We regard A Streetcar Named Desire as a drama with music be-
cause it makes extensive use of the musicians throughout the play
as an integral part of the performance of the play. In a very real
sense the musicians are woven into the play as performers therein.
They are required to stay at their posts from the opening to the
final curtain. They must remain alert throughout the performance
to respond to their cues like any other performer of the play. And,
however the music itself may be described, it obviously contributes
to the dramatic purposes, developments and necessities of the play
as performed on stage.84
They went on to note that in straight dramatic plays musicians usually
perform only entracte music, thus allowing them to do their own thing
during the production, unlike the situation with Streetcar. Contra Sel-
znick, the Local also argued that the amplification system was used to
produce a sound level that was often much louder than that normally
produced by four musicians. For all the reasons given, the decision of
the Executive Board of Local 802 should be sustained.85
In its response on February 22, 1948, the Irene M. Selznick Company
provided a rebuttal of each statement made by the Local. In particular,
the disagreement concerned the designation of cues and whether or not
they contribute to the dramatic purposes, developments and necessi-
ties of the play, a decision that really requires interpretation. Selznick
stated that she never sought to hide the amount of music used in the
playindeed she presented the Local with repeated clockings of the
plays music in support of her argumentbut that beyond eighty-two
seconds of music performed on the Novachord, the rest of the music
could be easily eliminated.86
All the other music is jazz emanating presumably from down the
street, used to emphasize environment; music used to bridge the
waits during scene changes, and other incidental bits which are
purely atmospheric. None of this can artistically or practically be
said to bear any relation to dialogue, action or plot, and, as many
times stated by me, can be easily eliminated.
If the music did not contribute to the atmosphere and effect, if
it did not serve the practical use of masking our scene changes,
it would indeed be a sorry reflection on me and my fellow work-
ers that we had burdened ourselves with musicians to no fruitful
purpose.87
For Selznick, a key point was whether a production could be classified
as a drama rather than as a drama with music when more than two min-
utes of music were heard within the play: she noted that several other
productions had indeed been so classified. Selznick rebutted the Locals
claim that her musicians were used extensively, since the band performed
for only around twenty minutes of music in total, and the Novachord
player under nine minutes. She reiterated her original offer to the Local
to reduce the musicians playing time to a level that would enable the
production to be classified as a drama, though Selznick felt it was not
unreasonable to ask that musicians must remain alert throughout the
performance; she would expect such an attitude to lie with the musi-
cians themselves. Selznick also rebutted the claim that the amplification
system was being used to amplify the sound of the musicians:
[It] is necessary that the music seem remote in order to give a feeling
that it is emanating from a distance, presumably down the street.
Sound apparatus is therefore used to reduce volume. Although the
volume is increased during scene changes, it never exceeds what a
four-piece band would produce in the pit.
Inasmuch as we are trying to convey the impression of a small
honky-tonk combination in a cheap caf of the rather poor French
Quarter in New Orleans, the charge that we are trying to simulate
a larger orchestra than we employ is a baseless one.88
Selznick added that not all four musicians played in every cue; indeed,
the decision was made to reduce the band for some cues to serve the
purpose of realism.
The Locals sur-rebuttal was sent on March 5, 1948. Effectively, the
decision hung on whether the International Executive Board agreed with
the Local that the plays music contributed to the dramatic purposes,
developments and necessities of the play. The board met on June 12,
and on June 24 the Selznick Company was informed that their appeal
had been sustained.89 Irene Selznick had taken on the union and won.
In her autobiography, Selznick stated that as the appeals and rebuttals
continued she enlarged [her] goal. She felt that bitterness between the
418 Davison
union and the producers could be avoided if there were a formula by

which producers could determine musical costs in advance instead of
suffering arbitrary decisions after the fact. So she went to the top, ar-
ranging a meeting with AFM president James Petrillo through a mutual
acquaintance. Selznick asked Petrillo to see the show himself, which he
did. Selznick recounted that on whiski[ng] him into to a bar immedi-
ately afterwards Petrillo told her that he wouldnt have known there
was music in it if [she] hadnt told him. Perhaps somewhat surprising,
the pair continued their conversation at Selznicks apartment. Petrillo
made it clear that it was difficult for him to intervene in local matters,
but added new policies might be considered at the unions national
convention in June.90 Indeed, in a brief article published in Billboard in
November 1948 it was reported that the League of New York Theaters
and Local 802 of the AFM were together working on a formula to avoid
disputes concerning the classification of scripts that use incidental music
as dramas with music.91 In March 1949 the League contacted their mem-
bers to explain the agreement with Local 802 with regard to dramas
with music:
1. The present condition as to the amount of time devoted to over-
ture, entre-acte and exit music plus a brief period of incidental
music shall remain as is.
2. If music in a drama does not exceed 25 minutes, and no overture,
entre-acte or exit music is placed, the rule shall be four men at
the appropriate (contracted or non-contracted) dramatic scale.
3. If some pit music is used and some background music but the
aggregate of which does not exceed 25 minutes, the rule shall be
the same as in the second category.
4. Such music, however, shall not consist of musical accompani-
ment to a ballet; grand opera music; vaudeville; singing (in ex-
cess of an aggregate of sixteen measures per performance) or
regular or interpretative dancing instrumentally accompanied.
If such music is used then the musical scale shall apply, and a
minimum of six men shall be required.92
The AFM, Recordings, and Music for Theatre

Following its success on Broadway, Streetcar was soon performed all
over the world, with the first productions overseas appearing in Havana
(July 1948), Argentina (September), Brussels and Amsterdam (October),
and Mexico (December). By 1949 productions had also opened in Rome
(January 1949), Sweden (March), London and Paris (October), and Zur-
ich (November). Selznick also signed two companies for a national tour
to satisfy demand. The first of these companies appeared at the Ethel
Barrymore Theatre in July 1948, while the cast and crew of the original
production took a vacation.93 The same company then embarked on a
ten-month tour in September 1948, which began with an extended (five-
month) stay at the Harris Theatre, Chicago, and culminated in a return to
New York in July 1949, where the company took over from the original
cast until the production closed on Broadway in December 1949.
In March 1948 Selznick contacted Petrillo directly about music for a
projected tour by a road company to Chicago. The producer was con-
cerned that she would have to eliminate the productions music for tour-
ing productions if the situation became unduly complicated. Selznick
added that she hoped a means of including music could be found, for
we feel the music adds greatly (this despite the fact that Selznick was
simultaneously arguing that almost all of the productions music would
likely be eliminated if the show was not reclassified as a drama!) It
was in this context that Selznick asked permission to record the music
used in the Broadway production, though it is not clear at this point
whether the intention was to use the recording on tour while paying
for the employment of an equivalent number of musicians or use the
recording as a reference to guide the musicians who would perform the
music on tour:
Because of many technical difficulties we have encountered in our
present operation, and because of the requirements of the Chicago
local we trust a plan may be approved whereby such music as we
used could be recorded here, and an equal number of men be given
employment in Chicago and subsequent cities.94
Selznicks letter was forwarded to the secretary of the Local in Chi-
cago, Edward Benkert, who also recognized the possibly intentional
ambiguity concerning use of the recording. In her response, Selznick
made clear that her intention was to use recordings of the musicians
currently performing in the Broadway production while employing the
same number of live musicians in the theatre in Chicago. There were
three points to her argument: first, that the jazz is used in incidental
fashion to emphasize environment, to bring the waits between the nu-
merous scenes and to heighten mood and atmosphere; second, that
despite placing the musicians in an upstairs dressing room and piping in
their performance, it has not been possible to maintain consistent sound
levels across performances; third, because the music is improvisatory
there is no written score, though there are definite numbersthus not
only do sound levels vary, but so do interpretations in the performance
of the music. In order to avoid such situations with the road company
which can seriously affect the balance of the over-all performance and
only lead us to the drastic possibility of removing all music, Selznick
argued that recording seemed the most practical solution, hence her
420 Davison
consultation of Mr. Benkert. Once again she stressed that her plan was
not to displace musicians, for she planned to employ as many as were
required in making the recordings.95
Selznicks response was forwarded to Petrillo, who in turn responded
on April 19, 1948. Petrillo stated that the request could not be allowed
due to the AFMs recording ban. He informed Selznick that, following
discussion with the unions attorneys, our entire recording position
would be prejudiced if we granted the request you made. Hence, I regret
that permission cannot be given you to make the recording.96 Selznick
responded to Petrillo on May 4, 1948, naming a precedent: the Theatre
Guild play Foolish Nation, which used musicians in New York, was
allowed to use a recorded version of its music not only in Chicago but
throughout the country on tour. The producer also noted that touring
productions of Williamss The Glass Menagerie also enjoyed the privi-
lege of using records. With regard to compromising the unions entire
recording position, Selznick stated that her intention had been to favor
this by including a comparable complement of live musicians.97 For
fear that the earlier request was misunderstood, she included a sum-
mary of her position:
(a) I intend to provide employment for an equal number of musi-
cians, and
(b) my reason for requesting the use of recordings is purely an artis-
tic oneit is the only practice and balanced method of projecting
the music peculiar to this play and production.98
There was no response.
Selznick wrote to Petrillo again on July 22, 1948, enclosing a copy of
her previous letter. Meanwhile, Schneider continued to try to identify
possible musicians for the tour, necessary if permission for a recording
was not forthcoming. His problems included finding hand-picked men
to play for scale (since the Schuberts were apparently unlikely to share
on overscale rates), and locating a Novachord, given that no further in-
struments were being manufactured, though he also noted that the main
Hammond office was in Chicago. Schneider asked George Avakian for
advice once more, then passed on the list of suggested names to Pete
Cavallo, a Chicago-based contractor.99 In the end, Schneider managed to
persuade Eddie Barefield, the clarinetist and contractor from the origi-
nal Broadway production, to audition the musicians to be booked for
Chicago and to assist with passing on the music.100
Petrillo responded to Selznicks July letter with a reiteration of his
earlier point, that for legalistic reasons her request to make recordings
could not be granted since the AFMs interests would be prejudiced
as a result. The subject was closed until Selznick reopened the matter
in April 1949.101 Here the producer was following up recent discussions
with Rex Riccardi, Petrillos executive assistant, including a request for

permission to have a library recording made of the music used in both
the New York and touring companies. Once again, the reasons she gave
were threefold: first, the need for a permanent record for the purpose
of archiving the productiona reference copy that could be used by
future revivals; second, it would help the musicians stay on track; third,
it would be for use only in dire emergencies, particularly with regard
to the touring company, in case of musicians missing train connections
or being ill.102 Selznick offered to post a bond to ensure that such a re-
cording would only be used in the circumstances described, with the
company submitted to a severe financial penalty should infractions
occur. In addition, given that she was due to co-produce the play in
London shortly, she also asked for permission to use such a recording
there, since the musicians union in Britain has always permitted the
use of recordings for dramatic plays.103 Her view was that no US musi-
cians would lose work, since they would not have been allowed to play
in London Theatres anyway; no UK musicians would lose work, since
the use of recordings was apparently common practice; US musicians
would benefit by receiving additional compensation for recording the
music. Even if English musicians were contracted to perform the plays
music, given the improvisatory nature of the music and the lack of a
score, the only means by which these musicians could hear the original
music would be via a recording. Riccardi declined Selznicks request,
worried that a precedent would be set. In the view of the producer, such
precedents already existed, though without the AFMs consent.
From Petrillos response it is clear that the problem was not now the
recording ban directly (which ended on December 14, 1948), but rather the
closely related issue of the displacement of live musicians by recordings:
I should like to point out that we have never permitted any other
company to make the type of recordings that you request. If such
recordings were made and used, they were made and used without
our knowledge and consent.
As a matter of policy, Federation cannot grant you permission
to make and use the recordings that you describe. I deeply regret
this, but I have no choice in the matter, and I am sure you will un-
derstand when I tell you that it involves a fundamental principle
of the Federation.104
Having tried and failed to gain the cooperation of the AFM in making
these recordings, it appears that the Irene M. Selznick Company made the
recordings anyway.105 Selznick was in Europe for much of the period, and
letters between the producer and her assistant, Irving Schneider, provide
details of the developing situation. In the summer of 1949, Thomas J.
Valentino was engaged to make the recording; he already had a five-year
422 Davison
contract with the union to make recordings, which had started when
the second recording ban ended. Valentino put in a recording request to
the Local, but they were somehow tipped off that it was for Streetcar.106
On each job, [Valentino] sends in a contract form to the Local, list-
ing the names of the musicians, the monies due the musicians, the
date and place. He is usually not obligated to list what music he is
recording. Most of the time he will say mood music, or back-
ground music, just as the Muzak firm would do. This is how they
got away with Death of a Salesman records. He did not specify that it
was for the show. Just the names of the musicians. Im sure the Local
manI think its Knopfmust have recognized from the names of
the men on the Salesman application and must have known what
was going on, but since nobody around was talking, he could let
it slip through. (Im sure that Valentino slipped him some dough.
As a matter of fact, I know it, and I know he tried to do the same
on ours.) However, since the secret on Streetcar became so open, he
got cold feet, and therefore, it was referred to higher chambers.107
Next, Schneider tried tape recording or out and out bootlegging.
It was not possible to record the music in the theatre, however, because
there was an understanding between the stagehands union and the AFM;
the stagehands were in control of any tape or wire recording machines
brought into the theatre. Schneider was worried that the AFM would
undoubtedly be informed were he to take this route. Instead, Valentino
tried to persuade Barefield to record it in bootleg fashion out in Long
Island, but the musician felt it was too risky, despite the compensation
on offer. Barefield was even offered a set of new musicians who were
nothing to do with the production, which he would rehearse for the job,
but still he was shaking in his boots about it and wouldnt do it. With-
out someone to rehearse new musicians, this approach was also out.108
Schneiders next plan was to record the music played by the number
two group in San Francisco, far away from Local 802. He explained that
he might have to talk to J. E. (Don) Cardon himselfCardon led the
other musicians in this touring companythough he hoped to keep a
distance from the deal itself. After seeking legal advice, Valentino be-
lieved that the union was violating his contract since it is supposed to
cover any kind of music. Schneider persuaded Valentino not to chal-
lenge the union over the situation, however, since it would slow down
the process and would probably cost money, with the Selznick Company
having to foot some of the bill.109
The situation took another intriguing turn just days later when Sch-
neider contacted Riccardi with a new request. Selznick had been ap-
proached by the producers of the French production of Streetcar over the
music, leading to a new and further potential benefit to the musicians

in the original production:
Quite obviously they are at a loss as to how to duplicate the required
music. Mrs. Selznick advises me that the producers are willing to
pay royalty to musicians here for recording the music for exclusive
use in their production. Apparently, the play is already in rehearsal
for Mrs. Selznick emphasized that the time element was vital and
could an immediate answer be obtained.
I can quite understand the difficulties these foreign producers are
encountering. As you know most of the music is of an improvisatory
nature, and there is no orchestration in the usual sense available to
indicate sufficiently the quality and manner of interpretation. We
here had a similar experience when the road company of the play
was formed. It was necessary to bring the road musicians in from
Chicago to listen to and be coached by the musicians here at the Bar-
rymore, and eventually we had to send out our leader to rehearse
them on the road.110
Schneider went on to explain that the music in productions the world
over had hitherto largely been unsatisfactory, for while detailed instruc-
tions can be sent overseas for all other theatrical elements, this was not
the case with the plays music. He urged again that a recording by the
original musicians would solve the problem, even if it were only to be
used as a guide.
Max Siegel, of the Selznick Company, continued discussions with Ric-
cardi while Schneider traveled to San Francisco. On August 23, 1949, the
Selznick Company received another letter from Petrillo again refusing to
give authorization to make recordings of the productions music. Siegel
urged the union to reconsider in a letter sent the next day. Here an ad-
ditional argument was made in light of a plea from Tennessee Williams,
after he witnessed several reproductions of his play abroad, notably in
Rome and in Scandinavian countries, and was appalled by the music
he heard and felt that artistically this faulty music distorted, and in one
case almost ruined, the entire mood of the play.111 Siegel emphasized
that the French producers were willing to pay the American musicians a
royalty as well as a recording fee. He pointed out that if the union refused
to authorize the recording, it would deprive the American musicians of
additional earnings. Siegel reiterated that the recordings would never
be used by either of the two American companies. Petrillo responded a
week later, August 30, 1949, once again refusing to permit that a record-
ing of the music be made.
As September began, the plot thickened. Through Valentino someone
in San Francisco had been found who would record the music. Cardon
424 Davison
was brought on board by a figure outside of the Selznick Company, and

the other musicians joined him. Unable to secure a Novachord outside of
the theatre, the group decided to record the Novachord in the theatre at
6.30 a.m., before the doormen and stagehands arrived at 8 a.m. But the
recordist was late, which explains why one or two of the Novachord
cues are not altogether satisfactory.112 Things did not go according to
plan in recording the jazz cues, either. Valentinos contact identified a
studio where the owner was away, and where the engineer was talked
into accepting the job. But the owner returned early:
The recording had been made but had not been transcribed from
tape to acetate, and all material was still in the hands of the studio.
The first report from the owner was that someone had reported the
recording job. This threw us all into a tizzy for twelve hours. Then
it turned out to be unfounded, that the owner was really afraid of
the whole idea, that some other studio had been caught the previ-
ous week and he was afraid of losing his license. Our woman spent
hours with him, and was finally able to persuade him to release all
the material to her to get all the evidence out of his office. All this hap-
pened after I cabled you that recording accomplished message.113
The excitement continued in New York where, soon afterwards, Valen-
tino and others were working on the master in a union studio:
In walked an inspector, and they all had to run. But for a time there
it looked like the end of everything. Jean grabbed her script and ran,
Ethel pretended to be a poor little secretary who didnt know what
she was working on, and Valentino double talked (I hope). We may
yet not hear the end of it.114
Nonetheless, it appears that the recordings had arrived in London
by September 6, 1949.115 Within a week, Laurence Olivier, director of
the London production, had heard the recordings but, according to Sel-
znick, was displeased that the recordings are timed and that the fades
are in. Selznick was by then certain that Olivier had never intended to
use the recordings: He has always wanted an orchestra. He is presently
having the score taken down from recordings and is going to have new
V[arsouviana]. recordings made, (which I dont believe. He is just going
to re-record ours) and then plans to use a live orchestra for the rest.
Apparently Olivier had also been considering incorporating recordings
used in Williamss The Glass Menagerie.116
On September 22, 1949, the Selznick Company received a wire from
Petrillo, granting permission to record the music:
You may accept this wire as authorization and permission to make
recordings of the show A Streetcar Named Desire. The recordings
however may only be used abroad. Under no circumstances may

they be used in the United States and Canada. It is understood that
the musicians making the recordings will receive the prescribed fee
for their services.117
The reason for the sudden turnaround is not entirely clear, but perhaps
Petrillo had not been in receipt of the full information concerning the
offer of additional payments to the American musicians by the French
producers.
The recordings exist on a set of four 78-rpm shellac discs among the
Streetcar production files in the Irene M. Selznick Collection.118 They
match the handwritten scores for the music cues held within the same
collection: the score of the jazz cues handwritten by Eddie Barefield some
weeks after the production had started, and cues for the Novachord,
including the instruments settings. I was able to play a copy of these
recordings to George Avakian, only to hear his disappointment at what
must have happened to the music through the many performances, and
two companies, since the productions debut on Broadway. Avakian
recognized several of the numbersnotably Claremont Breakdown
and Morningside Bluesbut was dismayed at the performances; they
were only a pale imitation of those that he had been instrumental in
producing from the players who had opened the show on Broadway, for
despite his contractual difficulties with the Selznick Company (or rather
lack-of-contract difficulties), Avakian visited the production regularly
in its opening weeks at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. He suggests that
a better sense of the sound of these performances can be heard via the
recordings of Sidney Bechet with Bob Wilbers Wildcats that he made
in July 1947.119
Jazz and Copyright

George Avakian had taken in copies of a series of Jelly Roll Morton rec-
ords to the musicians he was rehearsing for the production; he consid-
ered these records representative of the style of music he hoped that they
would replicate since they were Mortons reminiscences of an earlier time
in New Orleans.120 Relatively late in his life Morton had formed his own
publishing company with his friend Roy Carew (Morton died in 1941).
Carew was an ardent fan of Mortons music and realized that Morton
had not protected his copyrights well. The company Tempo Music was
formed in 1938 and in this an attempt was made to take control of what re-
mained of Mortons legacy. In a study of Mortons time on the West Coast,
Phil Pastras noted recently that of the twenty four works copyrighted by
Tempo, most were unremarkable, though the collection also included a
small number of his best pieces. In addition the publisher had laid claim
426 Davison
to two pieces that were not Mortons but had never been copyrighted
by anyone else: Buddy Boldens Blues and Mamies Blues [ ... ], tunes
that have long been considered blues and jazz standards.121 Although
Morton died in 1941, in time his estate was to benefit from Carews move.
In 1950 Roy Carew brought a case against Irene Selznick (as the IreneM.
Selznick Company), Lehman Engel, and Elia Kazan regarding the use
of two songs by Jelly Roll Morton in the production of Streetcar without
permission or payment: F. B. Blues and Winin Boy. In response, the
companys lawyer, Howard Reinheimer, began collecting information
from the Selznick Company concerning the use of music in Streetcar in
December 1950. Irving Schneider presented the lawyer with a list of the
shows music cues and an outline of the situation in the final days of
rehearsal:
It was in the latter stage of rehearsal that the numbers were selected.
At the time, we all made efforts to use either public domain tunes or
those from the Feist-Robbins catalogue, which had been made avail-
able to us. According to my records, both F. B. Blues and Winin
Boy were deemed public domain materials. I do recall at the time
that many inquir[i]es were made to ASCAP to determine the status of
song material. These calls were made at various times by the assistant
stage manager, Joanna Albus, the secretary here in the office, and I
assume Lehman Engel himself. As regards the written score for the
jazz music: You may remember that our jazz musicians took certain
melodies, many of them traditional, and improvised arrangements.
They were done on the spot and were not written down. It was not
until many weeks after the New York opening that the leader of the
group finally wrote down as close a written arrangement of what was
being played as possible. ... If I may surmise, I gather from talks to
jazz musicians that many so-called copyrighted numbers are actu-
ally adaptations of traditional tunes. I am wondering if this applies
in the case of the two Jelly Roll Morton items. Are they traditional
tunes that Jelly Roll adapted?122
Schneider provided Irene Selznick with an update on the situation in
June 1951, informing her that she would have to appear before Carews
lawyer for an interrogation. As Schneider understood it, Jelly Roll was
one of the first musicians in the New Orleans area, who could compose,
arrangeunlike most of the others who just blew things out of their
head. There are a great many songs attributed to Jelly Roll, but it seems
generally agreed that traditional blues and other items are the bases [sic]
of some or all of them.123
F. B. Blues was used immediately after the fight scene, and through
the scene of Kim coming down the stairs, etc. Barefield stated that he
was taught to play the song by Sidney Bechet in the mid-1930s but that
he didnt know that it was also known as I Thought I Heard Buddy
Bolden Say by Morton. As a result, when the song was checked with
both ASCAP and BMI for copyright, no record was found and it was
thus assumed to be traditional. None of the musicians could remem-
ber who had raised the number for consideration, though apparently
Avakian told Reinheimers office that he was pretty sure he had sug-
gested both F. B. and Winin Boy, and had considered them at the time as
traditional or public domain material. Schneider added that he thought
this was likely, though equally he didnt feel able to rely on Avakians
testimony because the musician had also offered to testify for Carew by
telling them that he had taught the musicians to play songs from Jelly
Roll Morton records he had played to them. In other words, even if
they were only arrangements, the arrangements were being infringed
upon. Schneider noted that Barefield refuted Avakians statement and
testified to the same. Schneider reminded Selznick of Avakians earlier
suit against the musicians, which had also rested on proving how much
involvement he had had in the development of the shows music, and
which had been thrown out of court.124
Reinheimer engaged a musicologist, Alex Kramer, who made a thor-
ough investigation of the plaintiffs songs and of prior art, as well as
research into the life of Jelly Roll Morton. It seems that Kramer was
engaged in the hope of proving that Morton did not compose the two
songs. With Buddy Boldens Blues, Kramer met with some success: in
an article in Downbeat from 1938 written by Morton, the composer had
stated that another musician, Buddy Bolden, wrote, I Thought I Heard
Buddy Bolden Say. The musicologist also discovered that the song was
identical to St. Louis Tickle, which had been published in 1904, becom-
ing public domain in 1932. In his own deposition, Carew stated that that
St. Louis Tickle was a variant of Buddy Boldens Blues. The shows
musicians were unaware of this title, however: the reference score used
the title F. B. Blues, where they understood the initials to stand for
Funkey Butt, though these words apparently appear in a salacious
version of Buddy Boldens Blues.125
With Winin Boy, the musicians in the show believed the song to be
a traditional folk ballad, though they could offer no evidence to sup-
port this. Kramer established that as performed in the show, the song
was indeed substantially similar to the music in Winin Boy Blues,
registered for copyright by Carew for Morton in 193940. Kramer was
also able to find similar sequences of notes in earlier works, however,
including Just a Year Ago Tonight (1933), On the Winding Santa Fe
(1930), Dont Cross the Blues (1944), and in an anonymous composition
from 1909 not under copyright.126 In addition, the wording on a record-
428 Davison
ing contract between Carew and RCA for a recording by Morton that
featured Winin Boy lists the song itself as traditional, with Morton
named as arranger.
Evidence was also found to suggest that a recording of Winin Boy
was made prior to the date of the songs first registration of copyright.
It was not known whether copies were sold, or whether the recording
was used for public performance. Da Silva noted a legal precedent where
it had been decided that the making and distribution of commercial
phonograph records prior to the copyrighting constitutes publication,
which dedicates the song to the public and forfeits the right to obtain a
valid statutory copyright. The lawyer also noted, however, that the case
was regarded by copyright lawyers as bad law; thus, as a precedent, it
could not guarantee the outcome they hoped for in a case in New York.127
In addition, the fact that the words Winin Boy appeared on the score
of the show and upon records of the shows music did not help the
Selznick Companys case.128 Carew settled out of court with the Selznick
Company in July 1953: for dismissing his claim against the company he
received a payment of $6,750.00.129
Max Marlin was not so successful in his claim against the Selznick
Company. Marlins attorney, Robert Helfand, outlined the musicians
claim in January 1958: it concerned Marlins commission to
provide the score for the production of Streetcar Named Desire
after the background mood music, written by Lehman Engel, was
discarded prior to that plays initial performance. ... Mr Marlins
subsequent composition was incorporated in the show and despite
countless promises of remuneration for his efforts in that regard, he
has received absolutely no compensation whatever.130
Marlin hoped that the letter would open negotiations with the company
to settle the matter out of court. A handwritten note on the letter sug-
gests that given that the statute of limitations in such claims is six years,
no case could be brought successfully. There would thus be no need to
open negotiations with the composer.
These cases suggest that the relationship between copyright and musi-
cal arrangements was perhaps not as clear as it could have been at this
point, particularly in the case of jazz arrangements. Multiple titles for the
same or highly similar numbers also caused confusion. Tempo Musics
copyrighting of Buddy Boldens Blues appears astute, and perhaps
went some way toward providing recompense for the many situations
where Morton had not benefited from copyright as a jazz composer,
arranger, improviser, and performer. By contrast, the handwritten note
on the letter from Marlins attorney states that whatever the situation,
the musician had applied too late. The fact that Marlin was paid more
than the other musicians (with the exception of the stated contractor),
even after rental of the Novachord is excluded, suggests thatat least as

far as the Selznick Company was concernedhe had received financial
reward to cover the use of his arrangement (or composition), as had the
bands pianist, John Mehegan.
Conclusion
With perhaps the exception of canonic musicals, relatively little is known
about theatre music in New York in the postwar period. The wealth of
surviving documentation concerning Streetcars music suggests, how-
ever, that it may be possible that more information survives than we
have thus far assumed. Though we may already be too late to obtain
oral histories from the musicians, directors, and producers, as more and
more archives are made accessible to the researcher, and as finding aids
for such archives are digitized and published online, so it may become
possible to build a much more rich and detailed picture of the use of
music in theatrical productions in the postwar period.
Music clearly played an important role in the Selznick Companys
presentation of A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway during its spec-
tacular original run of 855 performances, despite Irene Selznicks argu-
ments to the contrary as presented during the classification dispute with
the AFM. Consideration was given to Blanches memory music so as to
ensure that it conveyed the sense that it was to be heard as subjective, as
is evident in the discussions and decisions made concerning the choice
of the Novachord and its settings, the means of transmitting its sound
into the auditorium, the composition and arrangement of the cues, the
actors physical gestures, and even the placement of other cues in rela-
tion to it. Detailed attention was also paid to the selection, arrangement,
and performance of authentic music to provide added value in covering
scene changes, and establishing the locale of the play. Contemporary
technology was key. Through the transmission of a musical performance
happening elsewhere in the theatre, the company attempted to simulate
the acoustic signature of a band performing around the corner from
the apartment presented on stage, and in doing so an opportunity was
opened up for the music to act as commentary. In his score for the 1951
film adaptation, also directed by Kazan, Alex North developed this am-
biguity further.131
Kazans contribution to musical decisions was clearly vital. His di-
rection, but also his discussion and collaboration with Williams, Sel-
znick, Engel, Avakian, Marlin and others, created what is perhaps a
less harsh interpretation of Streetcar than that which exists in Williamss
preproduction scripts, and music played a key role in this. In produc-
tion, placing additional Varsouviana cues earlier in the play suggested
that Blanches mental state was fragile prior to her arrival in New Or-
430 Davison
leans. As Murphy highlights, introducing Varsouviana cues throughout

the play also integrated it with the music of the band, that which drifts
into the apartment from the Four Deuces bar, embedding the plays
juxtaposition of subjectivity and objectivity in the productions musical
code. Elsewhere I have argued that the changes made by Kazan in the
course of rehearsals and tryouts generally amplified elements already
present in Williamss scripts, notably the use of music in juxtaposition
or counterpoint with dialogue, emphasizing the dramatic purpose of
these devices more pointedly, as with Sugar Blues, for example.132
Indeed, Williamss suggestions in the preproduction scripts present a
relatively sophisticated conception of music, and one that is integral
to the play.133 While Selznick was correct that much of the music could
have been removed while keeping the heart of the play intact, such a
production would have been far less rich and subtle than the one that
ran at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre from 1947 to 1949.
Streetcar would have presented a borderline case for classification
under the formula that resulted from Selznicks appeal, but its devel-
opment, Selznicks appeal against classification, and the debate that
ensued provides a wealth of information about the shows music in
production. These documents also highlight at least two other impor-
tant points that future research could usefully explore. First, the New
York League of Theatres believed there was an aesthetic transformation
in process with regard to the commissioning of scores for plays in the
period. Second, not only was an agreed formulae necessary to enable
producers to budget adequately for their music in light of classification,
but also the formulae may have allowed producers to make greater use
of music within plays from this point on.
The correspondence concerning Selznicks repeated attempts to obtain
permission to record Streetcars music provides copious explanatory in-
formation that the 78-rpm records lack, alongside insight into how the
AFM understood their strategies for the recording ban, and for the use of
recorded music, in relation to theatre musicians and theatrical production.
It is not clear, however, why it took so long after the end of the recording
ban for Selznick to gain permission to make the archive recordings. The
delay meant that the recordings that were finally made, in a somewhat
surreptitious manner, and bizarrely just days before the AFMs authoriza-
tion, were not recordings of the musicians who performed in the original
production, but those at one remove, possibly two. While Barefields score
more or less matches the music captured on the records, without witness-
ing George Avakians disappointment on hearing the recordings, I might
have understood the recordings on less critical terms, as stand-ins for what
audiences in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre actually heard.
Selznick supported the decision to employ jazz musicians to supply the
music for Streetcar, agreeing to pay them above-scale fees, and offering
them run-of-play contracts at the behest of Avakian and Engel, over fears
thatsince they were not theatre musiciansas other work came up,
they would likely leave the production.134 Employing jazz musicians to
improvise around specified numbers, even improvising their own num-
bers in three cases, also meant that Selznick gained added value from
the musicians: employing composers and/or arrangers for the price of
performers, we might say. While Mehegan appears to have received a
premium for the additional labor involved in creating the three impro-
visations/numbers with which he is credited, since these numbers were
effectively owned by the Selznick Company he would gain no further
income from their performance in future productions. The notion of in-
tellectual property is thus moot here, as the dispute over the unauthor-
ized use of works under copyright to Tempo Music reveals, particularly
in relation to the genealogies of blues and jazz tunes and those deemed
traditional. The same confusion is emphasized by the fact that Carew
was able to lay claim to other copyrights as a means of offsetting the loss
of income Morton had experienced in previous years, and by the fact
that Selznick Company staff were not able to locate copyright owners
for Winin Boy and F. B. Blues. Improvising jazz musicians are, of
course, still burdened with some of the same difficulties that result from
their hybridized character as composer performers.
Yet the excitementthe edginessof having improvising musicians
reproduce the atmospheric sound of New Orleans in the theatre each
night also brought with it certain risks for the producer, in particular,
the difficulties inherent in replicating the musicians performances when
the production was mounted elsewhere. For Selznick, recordings offered
the solution to the problems of live performance entailed in this kind of
music: that it is embodied in particular musicians, and that musical in-
terpretation and dynamics would vary through the course of production.
In short, recordings would allow Selznick to regularizeand control
the music for Streetcar. The AFM was involved in a much greater battle
at this time, however: the displacement of live musicians by recorded
music. Indeed, if Tim J. Anderson is correct in his assessment that the
two nationwide recording bans, their resolution, and the loss of power
by the AFM ... signal the end of a music industry based on performances
and the beginning of one in which the production of recordings creates
a standing reserve of music, then we should not wonder at the AFMs
reluctance to grant Selznick permission to use recordings in theatrical
productions. The union had much more to lose. The threat of musicians
unemployment grew exponentially from the arrival of synchronized film
sound and its displacement of cinema musicians, through the increased
popularity of jukeboxes in other public spaces such as hotels, bars, and
restaurantswhich the economic downturn of the Depression helped to
supportand the use of commercial recordings on radio.135
432 Davison
While the union won some concessions in the agreements that signaled
the end of the recording bans of 194142 and 1948, the battle itself was not
won. The unions crusadethat musicians be engaged to perform live
instead of using recorded musiccontinues. As I write, the AFM is lead-
ing a campaign to Save Live Music on Broadway. This action follows
strikes on Broadway over the same issue in 1975 and 2003. Following
James P. Kraft, it seems that until society comes to view technological
change as a social problem as well as a matter of labor productivity,
dramas with music will persist.136
NOTES
First and foremost, I would like to thank George Avakian, who gave up several hours to
talk with me in May 2010. Several curators have also been tremendously helpful: J. C.
Johnson of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University; Richard
Workman (and L. Christine Amos) of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas; Joan
Miller of Wesleyan Universitys Cinema Archives; Suzanne Eggleston Lovejoy of Yale
Universitys Music Library; and Brian Lavigne of the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Suggestions made by Neil Lerner, Tom Perchard, and Simon Frith improved the article
significantlythank you all for the time spent reading an earlier draft of this essay. I would
also like to thank Cari McDonnell and Mary Robb. This research was made possible by
grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, for which
I am grateful. All errors remain my own.
1. Brenda Murphy, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2833. Both Murphy and Williams scholar
PhilipC. Kolin misattribute composition of the productions music to Alex North, who was
to score the film adaptation in 195051, also under the direction of Kazan. Kazan elided
the play and the film in the discussion of Streetcars music in his autobiography. See Elia
Kazan, A Life (London: Andr Deutsch, 1988), and Philip C. Kolin, Williams: A Streetcar
Named Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16.
2. The key collections this research draws upon are the Tennessee Williams Collection,
the Audrey Wood Collection, and the Theater Arts Collection, all held by the Harry Ran-
som Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. These collections hold the
majority of the preproduction materials, correspondence to and from Williams and Wood,
plus copies of the Novachord cues and copies of some of Barefields handwritten parts for
the jazz band cues, and the stage managers Prompt script. The Irene Mayer Selznick Col-
lection, held by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, includes
a preproduction script, the production files for the 1947 stage production of Streetcar and
the touring companies that followed, the Novachord cues, Barefields handwritten short
score of the jazz cues, recordings made in 1949 by the musicians of the second national
company, and correspondence to and from Irene M. Selznick. The Elia Kazan Collection
is held within the Cinema Archives of Wesleyan University and includes the directors
notebook, an annotated rehearsal script, and letters.
3. In New Haven, performances ran from Thursday, October 30, to Saturday, November
1, 1947. In Boston performances ran in the week beginning Monday, November 3, at the
Wilbur Theatre. The Philadelphia run was longer, from November 17 to 29, 1947.
4. Selznicks first production had been Arthur Laurents Heartsong, which closed dur-
ing tryouts. The shows failure was not considered to be a reflection on Selznicks nascent
skills as a theatrical producer, however. See Audrey Wood with Max Wilk, Represented by
Audrey Wood (New York: Doubleday, 1981), 15153.
5. Max Siegel (of Irene M. Selznick Company), letter to Mr. Rex Riccardi (AFM), August
24, 1949. Williams was unhappy with the music in the Swedish and Rome productions.
Box 45, Folder 37, Irene M. Selznick Collection (hereafter Selznick Collection), Howard
Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
6. As George W. Crandell notes, Williams never thought of a work as finished. Cran-
dell, Texts, in The Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia, ed. Philip C. Kolin (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2004), 269. In terms of Streetcar, see Sarah Boyd Johns, Williams Journey
to Streetcar: An Analysis of Pre-Production Manuscripts of A Streetcar Named Desire,
PhD diss. (University of South Carolina, 1980); Vivienne Dickson, A Streetcar Named Desire:
Its Development through the Manuscripts, in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Thorpe
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), 15471; Murphy, Tennessee Williams and
Elia Kazan, 2023.
7. In general terms, the Reading Version of the play is similar (though not identical) to
Williamss preproduction scripts, while the Acting Version is closer to the play in produc-
tion in terms of music cues. Brenda Murphy notes that although the Reading Version of
the play published by New Directions is fundamentally the same as the preproduction
script, significant differences can be found between the two in several of the plays ele-
ments. Music is one of these. Murphy, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, 2223.
8. My interpretation of the role of music in Streetcar prior to rehearsal and production
draws on manuscripts held in the collections of Tennessee Williams and Audrey Wood
(Williamss agent) at the Harry Ransom Center, along with typed versions of these prepro-
duction scripts held by the Historic New Orleans Collection, and the Irene Mayer Selznick
Collection, alongside views of the plays development presented by Johns, Williams
Journey to Streetcar, Dickson, A Streetcar Named Desire, and particularly Murphy, Ten-
nessee Williams and Elia Kazan, 2831.
9. The dance originated in France in the mid-nineteenth century and traveled to America
soon after. A genteel variation of the mazurka, incorporating elements of the waltz, it
would have been danced to a variety of songs or tunes that featured appropriate rhythms.
Maurice J. E. Brown, Varsovienne, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, www.grovemusic
.com (accessed July 5, 2006). See also Annette Davison, Alex Norths A Streetcar Named
Desire: A Film Score Guide (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), 8283. I use the spelling
Varsouviana as used by Williams in the Reading Version of the play. Tennessee Wil-
liams, A Streetcar Named Desire [Reading Version] (New York: New Directions Publishing,
1947/2004).
10. Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire [Reading Version], 162 (scene 10).
11. Reference to the polka can be found in drafts that Boyd Johns dates as composed
between 1945 and 1946, after the (undated) fragment The Primary Colors, but prior to
the first professionally typed draft in late February 1947. Dickson dates its first inclusion
to the composite manuscript of The Primary Colors. The association of the polka with
the title Varsouviana first appears in a pencil emendation in a later version of this group
of revisions (those made prior to the typed draft that Williams sent to his agent, Audrey
Wood, in February 1947); Blanche says that she remembers the polka and that Grey, her
young husband, taught me how to do the Var Sous Vienna. Johns, Williams Journey
to Streetcar, 82. The fact that the Varsouviana is a dance step rather than a tune is thus
correctly noted here, though in later revisions it comes to stand for mention of the polka
itself. It should also be noted that the dance step is not traditionally associated with a
polka, but a waltz; it is a dance in triple time.
12. A Poker Night (aka Streetcar), Box 44, Folder 11, Tennessee Williams Collection
(hereafter Williams Collection), HRHRC. See also Johns, Williams Journey to Streetcar,
82.
434 Davison
13. Although Williamss use of the label blue piano is evocative, even conjuring the
idea of a piano that is sad perhaps, for the purpose of this article I have elected to use the
term blues piano in its place. I have made this change because this seems to better reflect
what Williams probably intended in musical terms.
14. Johns, Williams Journey to Streetcar, 119. Blues piano opened and closed the play
and was used at the end of scenes 2, 3, 4, and 7. Honkytonk music/blues piano was to be
used throughout scene 10, the scene that culminates in the rape.
15. Examples of moments of loss, loneliness, and melancholy include: the loss of Belle
Reve (scene 1); Blanches realization that she will not experience motherhood (scene 2);
Stanleys grief at beating his wife and Stellas flight from him (scene 3); the loss of Blanches
youth and the limited options she has left. Examples of anxious situations include Stellas
horror that Stanley has told Mitch about Blanches past, and Blanches realization that she
cannot escape it (scene 7); Stanleys eruption at the birthday party (scene 8), where Wil-
liams makes reference to negro entertainers; and Blanches growing sense of anxiety in
the scene that leads to the rape (scene 10).
16. See Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole
and Inventor of Jazz (London: Pan Books, 1959).
17. Selznick, memo to Schneider, June 11, 1947, and Schneider, memo to Selznick, July
2, 1947, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection. Schneider also states that Lomax got off on
the wrong foot with Williams immediately by criticizing Laurette Taylors performance:
That, to Tennessee, is heresy.
18. The decision delighted Williams: Engel had been Williamss second choice after
Paul Bowles, who was not available. Schneider, memo to Selznick, July 19, 1947, Box 44,
Folder 28, Selznick Collection. The replacement of Lomax did cause some difficulty for
Audrey Wood, Williamss agent. At the suggestion of Selznick, Lomax had apparently
started talking to potential musicians, although he had not yet himself signed a contract.
He believed he should be paid the first installment of his fee in lieu of the work he had
already undertaken.
19. Engel himself stated that his experience on Streetcar was not a happy one. Lehman
Engel, This Bright Day: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 158. A memo from
Williams sent during the second series of tryouts in Boston calls into question Engels role.
Williams tells Wood that the only name that should be at the top of the list of other credits
is Lehman Engel, by usual practice: I believe that is the proper place for it and that it
will provide criticism if it does not come there, regardless of any dissatisfaction that may
exist about Lehmans work. Williams, letter to Audrey Wood, undated, but on headed
paper from the Ritz-Carlton, Boston, Box 55, Folder 2, Williams Collection.
20. Engel, This Bright Day, 158 (emphasis in original). Kazan also asked Engel to compose
some original music for the end of scene 10 (the implied rape) during rehearsals, though,
if Engel created the cue, it was not used. Varsouvienne adaptation into an elegy which
Lehman will write. Handwritten on Elia Kazans Rehearsal Script, Box 19, Folder 4, Elia
Kazan Collection, Cinema Archive, Wesleyan University.
21. Irene M. Selznick, memo to Irving Schneider, June 11, 1947, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick
Collection.
22. Engel, This Bright Day, 158.
23. Avakian remembers these records thus: A series of reminiscences you might say
of Jelly Roll of New Orleans and the selection of music was rather broad so it was a good
base to start with. Authors interview with Avakian, New York, May 24, 2010 (hereafter
Avakian interview).
24. Selznick, letter to American Federation of Musicians, Attn Mr. Maccarro, Local 802
(New York), Oct. 27, 1947, Box 28, Folder 59, Selznick Collection. Eddie Barefields CV
for the period noted that he played clarinet, and alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones.
He had played with Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington, and conducted Ella Fitzgeralds
orchestra. He had also been a staff musician and arranger for ABC under Paul Whiteman
for four years. He had arranged for Glenn Miller, Jimmie Dorsey, Charlie Barnett, and
Lionel Hampton. He was a graduate of the Juilliard School and was teaching commercial
arranging and musical theory at the School of Music of Brooklyn Free Musical Society.
Barefield was paid $170 a week as the bands official contractor. John Mehegan was at this
time supplementing his performing career by teaching; he was head of the jazz depart-
ment at the Metropolitan Music School and started teaching at the Juilliard School in 1947.
Mehegan composed or improvised three of the shows numbers: an improvised piano solo
titled Sugar (or Sugar Blues) and two numbers for the band, Claremont Breakdown
and Morningside Blues. This probably explains why Mehegan was paid $125 per week,
$15 more than Vance and Strong. Vance had played first trumpet for Fletcher Henderson,
Chick Webb, Charlie Barnett, and others, and produced arrangements for Duke Ellington,
Cab Calloway, Tommy Dorsey, and others. He was studying at the Juilliard School. Strong
was a little younger and then playing with Bob Wilburs Wildcats, the band that had formed
the first of Avakians line-ups for Streetcar, from which only Strong remained.
25. These were Sundown by Walter Donaldson, Four or Five Times by Byron Gay
and Marco Hellman, Art Hickmans Rose Room, and Wang Wang Blues, by Henry
Busse, Gus Mueller, and Buster Johnson, with lyrics by Leo Wood. See memo attached to
letter from Howard E. Reinheimer to Selznick, Dec. 5, 1950, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick
Collection. See also the productions promptbook: Mimeo/Prompt Script, A Streetcar Named
Desire, Richard Downing Collection, HRHRC.
26. A short score, with the handwritten words Scored by Eddie Barefield, Box 34, Folder
8, Selznick Collection. Copies of some of the individual instrumental parts can also be found
in Box 18, Folder 1, Audrey Wood Collection (hereafter Wood Collection). The existence of
this score subsequently played an important part in action that Avakian later took against
the musicians. At the suggestion of Selznicks lawyer, Howard Reinheimer, it was agreed
that Avakian would be paid in the form of a commission from the musicians; above-scale
rates were negotiated for the musicians to this end. Avakian took legal proceedings when the
musicians refused to pay him for his work, but to no avail. There was no written contract,
a score existed in Barefields hand, and Barefield had retained Avakians Jelly Roll Morton
records. Barefield apparently argued that Avakians involvement in the planning of the
music had not been significant, and the physical evidence strengthened his position. It is
also probable, however, that changes were made to the musical selections after Avakians
involvement had ended. Engel, This Bright Day, 15859, and Avakian interview.
27. See Robert Downing, Streetcar Conductor: Some Notes from Backstage, Theatre
Annual 8 (1950): 2533.
28. Notes Made on Saturday Night Performance, 1 November [New Haven] (hereafter
Notes Made on Saturday Night Performance), Selznick, memo to Kazan, Nov. 2, 1947,
Box 46, Folder 46, Selznick Collection.
29. Other suggestions included the following: echo chamber be used for the applause
repeats; music cues for the scene changes be lengthened, as they were too short to fade
down with the dim-ups in lighting; and that public domain alternatives be tried out
for the rise of act 1. It was also noted that it was Difficult to set volume readings in an
empty house. Sound and Music for Technical Rehearsal, 11am Wednesday November
26, 1947 by Joanna Albus (assistant stage manager), Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick Collection
(hereafter Sound and Music for Technical Rehearsal).
30. Ibid. Selznick found the Novachords similarity to the organ problematic. See also
Notes Made on Saturday Night Performance. The original decision to use a Novachord
may have come from Williams, who had suggested that the polka tune/Varsouviana should
be distorted or in some way made strange: weird little music rises and dies out. Fourth
page of an undated fragment labeled The Poker Night. Works, Box 44, Folder 9, Williams
Collection.
31. Marlin was musical director on Williamss previous (and first) full-length Broadway
production, The Glass Menagerie (194546). Paul Bowles had written the plays incidental
436 Davison
music and had been Williamss first choice to compose music for Streetcar. Selznick, memo
to Schneider, July 19, 1947, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection.
32. Undated typed statement signed by Marlin concerning his role in preparing the
memory music for Streetcar, Box 18, Folder 1, Wood Collection. The existent Novachord
parts support this, along with the recordings, plus a wonderful, if rather bizarre, record-
ing of Tennessee Williams, John Mehegan, and assistant stage manager Joanna Albus
presenting a short spoof version of the plays final scene, along with the sound of the
cathedrals chimes (bong!) and the Varsouviana, sungwith lyricsto Put Your Little
Foot. Tennessee Williams, Collection of Non-commercial Recordings, 1948 (catalogue no.
b14530314; Research call number *L [Special] 8935), Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives
of Recorded Sound, New York Public Library.
33. There is evidence that Marlin, rather than Engel, was the arranger and composer, as
well as the performer of these cues: Marlin is mentioned in a discussion over providing
extracts of the plays music to accompany excerpts from the play to be performed by Jessica
Tandy and Hume Cronyn (as Blanche and Mitch) for an episode of the US arts television
program Omnibus (see letter from Hume Cronyn to Tennessee Williams, Oct. 24, 1955,
Box 13, Folder 5, Wood Collection); the deposition in which Marlin sets out his claim of
authorship (see previous note), alongside the set of Novachord cues written in his hand.
Box 75, Folder 4 (plus oversize box 2), Williams Collection; and letters sent from Marlins
lawyer to the Selznick Companys lawyer in which Marlin asks for financial reparation
for the composition/arrangement of these cues. Attorney Robert Helfand, letter to Irene
Selznick Company, Jan. 7, 1958, Box 44, Folder 27, Selznick Collection. I should note that
there are some minor differences between the Varsouviana cues written in Marlins hand
and the copied-out cues. Since the recordings appear to relate more closely to the copied-
out parts, my comments about these cues refer to the copied-out parts.
34. Kazan replaced Williamss suggested cue with the sound of a train. A discussion
between Selznick and Kazan after the Boston tryouts (Nov. 1011, 1947) suggests that the
removal of the scenes blue music was still only a tentative decision at this stage.
Kazan, letter to Selznick, Nov. 11, 1947, Box 46, Folder 46, Selznick Collection.
35. Kazan states that he worked and worked to get this over. Ibid.
36. Selznick (undated), Notes to Tandy via Kazan, Box 46, Folder 46, Selznick Collection.
In the same memo Selznick also suggests that Tandy should put her hand to her head in
scene 6, to indicate hearing the Varsouviana, and that Tandys singing of My Bonnie in
scene 3 and Paper Moon in scene 7 be louder.
37. Selznick, in notes written to herself regarding Uta Hagens performance of the scene,
No. 2 company, in June 1948. Box 46, Folder 47, Selznick Collection. A memo sent from
Selznick to Kazan during the tryouts, however, suggests that, initially at least, they may
have used two Varsouviana cues here: first a major version, which Selznick suggested
should die out on intimate nature, with the minor version beginning almost immediately
at the mention of Ambler and Ambler, and in this way establish itself as the misery
tune. Selznick to Kazan, Oct. 27, 1947, Box 46, Folder 46, Selznick Collection.
38. Max Marlin, Cue Sheet, plus Clues 3 and 3a, Box 75, Folder 4, Williams Collection.
See also oversize box 2.
39. That this was the case is underlined by comments made by Selznick during the
tryouts, in which she slams Mr Novachord for swelling the Varsouviana when Mitch
rises, instead of fading when he touches Blanche, and stopping as he kisses her. Notes
Made on Saturday Night Performance.
40. The music continues through the blackout and curtain up into scene 9, halting when
Mitch rings the doorbell.
41. The phrases start on the downbeat, rather than with an anacrusis. The upward mo-
tion of the arpeggiated bass line pushes the cue forward, while the downward leaning
melody drags it down.
42. A memo sent from Selznick to Kazan after the tryouts in New Haven suggests that
they could benefit by an increasing distortion of Varsouviana (not in arrangement but

in tonal effects). Notes Made on Saturday Night Performance. Marlins cue sheet indi-
cates that resonators 2 and 3 are to be used, with no vibrato. Volume is also to increase as
the curtain falls. Max Marlin, Cue Sheet. Tennessee Williams Collection. Box 75, Folder 4.
See also oversize box 2. See also Music and Sound Cues, attached to memo from Joanna
Albus to Schneider, Dec. 26, 1947, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick Collection.
43. This is in addition to the cue earlier in the scene when Blanche explicitly mentions the
music. According to Sarah Boyd Johns, the chanting Mexican flower vendor first appears
in drafts dating from August 1947, after Williams had begun discussions with Kazan, and
thus may well have been included as a result of their collaboration. The vendor appears in
scene one as Blanche searches for Stellas apartment and again in scene 9, chanting flores
para los muertos beneath Blanches death/desire speech. Sarah Boyd Johns, Williams
Journey to Streetcar, 134.
44. Although some differences can be found in the handwritten versions of Marlins
three composed cues, the copied out parts for the Novachord present the cues as identical,
with the exception of occasional registral change and swelling then fading volume for the
final cue which continues through the plays final curtain.
45. The music is faded off when Mitch approaches Blanche at the end of the scene. Wil-
liamss cue to cover the scene change into scene 10, another Varsouviana, was removed
in production. The music was to begin at the very end of the scene after Blanche screams
Fire! She chases Mitch from the apartment and then drops to her knees, hands over
ears, the implication being that the Varsouviana is assailing her once more.
46. Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, scene 11. In her comments on the New
Haven tryouts, Selznick urged that the VARSOUVIANA should not start just at the mo-
ment that Blanche takes Doctors arm inasmuch as novachord [sic] has organ overtones
whole thing seems like bridal march. Notes Made on Saturday Night Performance.
47. See, for example, the description of exchanges between Williams and Kazan in Kazan,
A Life, 32930, 346.
48. Notes Made on Saturday Night Performance. In the same notes, Selznick also
states that she is happy to accept something snappier occasionally, however, as with,
for example, the scenes featuring the poker players.
49. Barefields handwritten score and the recordings made of the second touring company
demonstrate that the number wasnt replaced, despite criticism that continued through
tryouts up until the technical rehearsal in late November, when it was requested that other
numbers in available-public-domain catalogue for rise of Act 1 be tried. Specific sugges-
tions included: Vieux Carre Blues or even a version of Paper Moon, which Selznick
already had permission to use. Sound and Music for Technical Rehearsal.
50. The title of this number and of Morningside Heights referred to the location of
the Juilliard School, where Vance was a student, and where Mehegan had recently started
teaching. At this time the Juilliard School was situated on Claremont Avenue in Morning-
side Heights. Avakian interview.
51. The left hand of the piano part features sequences of stride style plus sequences of a
walking bass in octaves or tenths. Later verses incorporate call and response between the
right hand of the piano part and the lead instruments (clarinet, sometimes with trumpet).
The lead shifts from sustained arpeggio-based lines in earlier verses through to short snap
motifs and the basic rhythmic figure of the fifth verse, and from solo clarinet through to the
addition of trumpet, with verses that feature ad-lib solos on both instruments, sometimes
performed with a countermelody. As noted above, not all parties were satisfied with the cue.
52. This cue also indicates the elision of time between Blanches arrival and late the next
day as Blanche and Stella prepare for an evening out, to avoid the poker game.
53. The end of the previous scene was indicated by a variety of street cries, replacing
Williamss original suggestion of Paper Doll played by negro entertainers to cover
the scene change. 4 or 5 Times opens with clarinet (with piano doubling) playing a syn-
438 Davison
copated anacrusis, followed by a semi-breve. This is repeated (with the harmony beneath
altered), then lowered by a tone and modified to create the consequent four-bar phrase.
These four-bar phrases create a sixteen-bar unit (ABAB). Subsequent units involve the
repetition of the piano accompaniment, while the clarinet part is further elaborated.
54. See also Murphy, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, 30.
55. Blues tempogouge [dirge?]miseries. Clarinet leads trumpet fills. Muted and
dirty. Music and Sound Cues.
56. Murphy, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, 30. During the same cue it is also revealed
that Stella is pregnant. Though not presented here, the somewhat sentimental lyrics of the
song, as reflected in its subtitle, When Love Is Calling Me Home, would probably have
been familiar to at least some members of the plays audience, who might have recalled
these words and noted Blanches position as the third wheel in this new family scenario.
57. Tennessee Williams, A Poker Night (later retitled A Streetcar Named Desire),
preproduction typescript, Box 30, Folder 4, Selznick Collection (hereafter A Poker Night
typescript). Sarah Boyd Johns dates this typescript to late February 1947. See Johns, Wil-
liams Journey to Streetcar, 11829.
58. No chorusesno introduction, clarinet and trumpet leads nasty stomp (fade down
as curtain rises). Music and Sound Cues.
59. A Poker Night typescript.
60. Trumpet with hat. Long notes, forcefulbounce. Music and Sound Cues. Trumpet
leads, piano doubles, and clarinet harmonizes, occasionally adding ornamentation. After a
scalic anacrusis, the music features groups of three sustained pitches in step-wise descent
(e.g., G, F, E flat; B flat, A flat, G) joined by further scalic figures with occasional chromatic
alterations. Given the upbeat, light sound of the number, I disagree with Murphys statement
that the cue is the most obvious encoding of sexuality in the music (Murphy, Tennessee
Williams and Elia Kazan, 30). Prior to viewing the score for the cue written out by Barefield
and hearing the second company performing a version of it, I had elsewhere suggested that
this same cue could be taken together with those heard within scenes 3 and 8, to emphasize
a connection with Stanley. Indeed, making a point similar to Murphys, I suggested that
the cues articulate carnal desire. The first two cases [sc. 3 and 8] suggest the importance
of sex in the couples relationship, the last the potential for sexual violence when desire is
unrestrained by morality. Davison, Alex Norths A Streetcar Named Desire, 84.
61. Michel Chion introduced the term anempathy in relation to film music and/or sound,
but it is also apposite here. It refers to music or sound in a film that exhibits conspicu-
ous indifference to the situation, by progressing in a steady, undaunted, and ineluctable
manner: the scene takes place against this very backdrop of indifference. This juxtaposi-
tion of scene with indifferent music has the effect not of freezing emotion but rather of
intensifying it, by inscribing it on a cosmic background. [ ... ] The anempathetic impulse
in the cinema produces those countless musical bits from player pianos, celestes, music
boxes, and dance bands, whose studied frivolity and naivet reinforced the individual
emotion of the character and of the spectator, even as the music pretends not to notice
them. Michel Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 8.
62. Albert Da Silva of Reinheimers office, letter to Irene M. Selznick Company, July 25,
1951, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick Collection.
63. Music and Sound Cues.
64. This section is marked as cue 4 in the score. At this point, rising chromatic figures
in sets of quaver triplets are introduced on solo clarinet, built on a chromatic descent. The
cue continues until Mitch re-enters the scene, after Blanche has seen her sisters reunion
with Stanley in the darkness of the apartment. Those who are familiar with Kazans film
adaptation will note the similar importance attributed to the clarinet in the lead-up to
Stanleys cries for his wife. See Davison, Alex Norths A Streetcar Named Desire, 12526.
65. Rose Room is based on a sixteen-bar frame, though it is freer in style than one would
expect of a twelve- or sixteen-bar blues structure. Performed slowly, the clarinets melody
follows a wide-ranging, melancholic line that mixes sustained pitches with more mobile
eighth-note figures. The harmony is quite enriched and mobile also, and is performed in
a stride style on the piano, while in the upper register the pianist doubles the clarinet.
66. Music and Sound Cues.
67. The number Sugar Blues was composed and/or improvised by the bands pianist,
John Mehegan, for piano and drums. There is a lilting rhythm to the accompaniment gener-
ated by a repeated arpeggiated figure, and the melody describes a gentle quaver-led line. It
is likely that it was decided that Mehegan improvise this number at relatively short notice.
A letter from Harry Link at Leo Feist Inc. Music Publishers to Selznick, dated October 28,
1947, states that Link had just been notified that the request for the number Sugar was
involved in litigation: the song will have to be eliminated and Im sure there is something
else among the titles in the catalog I sent you that will substitute. Harry Link, letter to
Selznick, Oct. 28, 1947, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick Collection.
68. Elia Kazan, Notebook for A Streetcar Named Desire, in Directors on Directing: A
Source Book of the Modern Theatre, ed. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (London: Peter
Owen, 1973), 371.
69. That is, jazz presents the body, blackness, sexuality, and America, while the Varsou-
viana cues present nostalgia for old Europe, refinement, the mind, and denial of the body.
See also Davison, Alex Norths A Streetcar Named Desire, 97101.
70. According to reviews of the production, Tandys characterization of Blanche was
noted for its fragility, by contrast to the full-bodied and overtly sensual performance given
by Vivien Leigh in the debut UK production in 1949. See Leonard J. Leff, And Transfer
to Cemetery: The Streetcars Named Desire, Film Quarterly 55, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 32.
The reviews echo comments made by Karl Malden in comparing Tandys performance of
Blanche on stage with Vivien Leighs for Kazans later film adaptation of the play. Malden
played Mitch in both productions. Malden on DVD Commentary to Special Edition DVD
of A Streetcar Named Desire (Warner Bros., 2006).
71. Charles R. Iucci, Musicians Sound Sharp Notes, New York Times, Jan. 5, 1947. See
also Schneider, letter to Selznick, June 20, 1947, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection.
72. Iucci, Musicians Sound Sharp Notes.
73. Ibid. See also Schneider, letter to Selznick, June 20, 1947.
74. It should perhaps also be noted that The Glass Menagerie opened at the end of March
1945, prior to the introduction of the third classification category.
75. See also Schneider, letter to Selznick, June 20, 1947.
76. The plays incidental music was by Lehman Engel, with an orchestra conducted by
Max Marlin. King Henry VIII, Internet Broadway Database, http://www.ibdb.com/
production.php?id=1476 (accessed July 6, 2011). See also Engel, This Bright Day, 156
77. Fees would have been $138 for each of the musicians, for eight performances or less
in six days, and $207 for the manager of the personnel (i.e., 50% more). The cost would
have been $1,173 per week, rather than the $690 she was currently paying for the five
musicians Selznick had engaged.
78. Selznick, letter to Iucci (AFM, Local 802), Dec. 19, 1947, Box 45, Folder 36, Selznick
Collection.
79. Ibid. (emphasis in original). It should perhaps be pointed out that Selznicks fourth
pointno original music has been written for the showwas somewhat contentious.
Selznicks view was presumably based on the idea that Marlins additional Varsouviana
cues were arrangements or variations on Put Your Little Foot, and that the cues writ-
ten and/or performed by Mehegan (Claremont Breakdown, Morningside Blues, and
Sugar Blues) were improvisations.
80. Selznick, letter to Iucci, Dec. 19, 1947.
81. Selznick, letter to Jimmy [Petrillo], Dec. 19, 1947, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Col-
lection.
440 Davison
82. With the exception of the final paragraphs, the letter is almost identical to that sent
to Iucci at the Local.
83. Local 802, letter to AFM International Executive Board, Feb. 10, 1948 re: Case no.
770, 194748, Box 45, Folder 36, Selznick Collection.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Irene M. Selznick Company, letter to AFM International Executive Board, Feb. 22,
1948, Box 45, Folder 36, Selznick Collection; Local 802, letter to AFM International Execu-
tive Board, Feb. 10, 1948.
87. Irene M. Selznick Company, letter to AFM International Executive Board, Feb. 22,
1948.
88. Ibid.
89. Leo Cluesman (AFM, International Executive Board), letter to Irene M. Selznick
Company, June 24, 1948, Box 45, Folder 36, Selznick Collection.
90. We each had a limousine outside. Mine was without a bodyguard. We let his follow.
I took him to my apartment. Irene M. Selznick, A Private View (New York: Knopf, 1983),
314, 315.
91. [n.a.] NY Theaters, AFM to Settle Fuss on Dramas with Music, Billboard, Nov. 6,
1948, 50.
92. The League of New York Theatres, letter to their members, March 21, 1949, Box 45,
Folder 35, Selznick Collection.
93. Uta Hagen then performed as Blanche with the original cast for a further four weeks
while Tandy continued her break. Kolin, Williams, 3334.
94. Selznick, letter to Petrillo, March 8, 1948, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection.
95. Selznick, letter to Mr Benkert (Secretary, Local 10, AFM), April 7, 1948, Box 45, Folder
37, Selznick Collection.
96. Petrillo, letter to Selznick, April 19, 1948, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection. The
AFM had organized its first nationwide recording ban in 1941 in response to the displace-
ment of live musicians by recorded music. The ban not only led to anger in the broadcasting,
film, and recording industries, but it also drew the attention of the federal government. As
Tim J. Anderson explains in Making Easy Listening, a key demand of the first ban was that
a fixed royalty [ ... ] be administered and received by the union for each recording and
transcription manufactured and sold. This was to form the basis of the unions Recording
and Transcription trust fund, with income redistributed to live music projects that would
provide work for unemployed musicians, while also benefiting communities across the
country. In 1947 the Recording and Transcription Fund was criminalized via the Taft-
Hartley Labor Relations Act, which followed the Lea Act (1946), in which it made illegal
the AFM provision that broadcasters would have to hire musicians to offset the broadcast
of recordings. The second ban took place in 1948, and Anderson describes it as an attempt
to deal with counterreformation wherein private capital rolled back some of the AFMs
more important gains in order to reclaim power once lost. The four months notice given,
however, allowed the recording industry to rush through extra recordingsincluding a
great many cover versions of songs in their back cataloguesand stockpile them in ad-
vance of the strike. Negotiations during the second recording ban enabled the creation of
the Music Performance Trust Fund, which could operate legally within the Taft-Hartley
Act. Buried Under the Fecundity of His Own Creations: Reconsidering the Recording
Bans of the American Federation of Musicians, 194244 and 1948, in American Music 22,
no. 2 (Summer 2004): 241, 249. Parts of this article appear in chapters 1 and 2 of TimothyJ.
Anderson, Making Easy Listening: Material Culture and Postwar American Recording (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). See also James P. Kraft, Stage to Studio:
Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 18901950 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996), chap. 7.
97. Selznick, letter to Petrillo, May 4, 1948, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection.
98. Ibid.
99. Bud Jacobson seems also to have been involved. In a letter to Gertrude, written in
July 1948, Schneider states that Avakian has written to Jacobson, who knows jazz musicians
in Chicago. Avakian has written to him to make him aware of our problems. Schneider,
letter to Gertrude, July 28, 1948, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick Collection.
100. At least, that was Schneiders plan in July 1948. Schneider, memo to Selznick, July
28, 1948, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick Collection.
101. Petrillo, letter to Selznick, July 27, 1948, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection. In
Selznicks letter she states that she withdrew her earlier request to use a recorded version
of the music for the touring company of Streetcar because Mr. Riccardi explained that it
would prejudice the Federations position on standby labor. Selznick, letter to Petrillo,
April 7, 1949, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection.
102. It is the only practical method of helping our musicians to keep the original line,
tempo and mood of the music. Since the music is of an improvisatory nature and there is
no complete accurate orchestration to follow, deviations have been inevitable. Occasional
reference by our musicians to the recorded version is the only accurate way of correcting
themselves and insuring consistent performances. Selznick, letter to Petrillo, April 7, 1949.
103. Ibid.
104. Petrillo, letter to Selznick, April 21, 1949, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection.
105. The recordings exist. Box 34, Folder 8, Selznick Collection. A Streetcar Named Desire:
Music. a) Recording of jazz music (Separately wrapped) 78s.
106. Schneider, letter to Selznick, Aug. 19, 1949, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection.
Schneider assumed that Max Marlin was the culprit since he had initially been resistant
to making a recording.
107. Schneider, letter to Selznick, Aug. 19, 1949.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid.
110. Schneider, letter to Riccardi, Aug. 22, 1949, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection.
111. Max Siegel, letter to Riccardi, Aug. 24, 1949, Box 45, Folder 37, Selznick Collection.
112. Schneider, letter to Selznick, Sept. 4, 1949, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection. The
musicians who joined Cardon would likely have been H. Ray Durant and James Rosebaro,
though I have not yet been able to identify the Novachord player.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid.
115. The Beaumont people tell me the recordings are fine, but L.O. has not yet heard
them. Hope for the best. Apparently everybody there did a masterful job, not only on this
but also on all that technical stuff and big cue script you sent last week. Selznick, letter
to Schneider, Sept. 6, 1949, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection.
116. Selznick, letter to Schneider, Sept. 13, 1949, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection.
117. Petrillo , wire to Selznick, quoted in letter from Schneider to Selznick, Sept. 24, 1949,
Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection.
118. Box 34, Folder 8, Selznick Collection.
119. Avakian interview. Some of these tracks can be found on Sidney Bechet: The Essential
Collection AVC 994 (The Avid Group): Spreadin Joy, I Had It But Its All Gone Now,
Polka Dot Stomp, and Kansas City Man Blues.
120. These discs were on the General Label and, if Roy Carew is correct, they were likely
GL 1703, 1706, 1707 and 1710. R. J. Carew, Those Jelly Roll Songs, The Jazz Finder, August
1948, 34. Also available online via R. J. Carew: Articles on New Orleans, Tony Jackson,
Ragtime, and Mister Jelly Roll himself at http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/page26.html
(accessed Nov. 15, 2010).
442 Davison
121. Phil Pastras, Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2001), 20910.
122. Schneider, letter to Howard Reinheimer, Dec. 13, 1950, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick
Collection.
123. Schneider, memo to Selznick, June 7, 1951, Box 45, Folder 38, Selznick Collection.
124. Ibid.
125. Da Silva, letter to Selznick Company, July 25, 1951.
126. Ibid.
127. Ibid. The case regarded as bad law was Shapiro, Bernstein v Miracle Records, 86
Patent Quarterly 193, by an Illinois District Court. Ibid.
128. Da Silva, letter to Selznick Company, July 25, 1951.
129. Reinheimer, letter to Selznick, Jan. 11, 1954, with attached legal document concern-
ing Civil Action File No. 6273. Box 45, Folder 39, Selznick Collection.
130. Helfand, letter to Selznick Company, Jan. 7, 1958.
131. Davison, Alex Norths A Streetcar Named Desire, 84, 9597, 120, 131. A primary
means by which this ambiguity is developed is in presenting cues with formal structures
that approximate autonomous forms, such as the twelve-bar blues or a sixteen-bar song
structure, and with instrumentation that is similar to that performed by the musicians in
the Four Deuces. This is true of the films cues associated with Stanley, but also with the
theme which is to become associated with the growing fondness between Blanche and
Mitch, first heard during the poker game scene, which appears to be source music drift-
ing in through the windows. In the film, we also see these musicians, albeit partially and
briefly, as Blanche wanders along the street, trying to find her sisters apartment.
132. Murphy, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, 31; Davison, Alex Norths A Streetcar
Named Desire, 84.
133. Space has not, alas, allowed discussion of the song Paper Moon, sung by Blanche
in scene 7.
134. Engel and Avakian recommended that the musicians be offered run of the play
contracts, to offer a basic level of job security. Avakian and Engel argued that because
such handpicked musicians made a living through one-off or occasional jobs in New York,
leaving town for the tryouts (when there was no guarantee that music would be retained
when the production opened) would present a risky proposition for them. Selznick was
required to contract players who were members of the (New York) local branch of the
AFM. Schneider, memo to Selznick, June 11, 1947, Box 44, Folder 28, Selznick Collection.
135. Anderson, Making Easy Listening, 8, 1112.
136. Kraft, Stage to Studio, 201. Concerning the AFM-led strikes on Broadway in 1975
and 2003, see, for example, Gary Younge, Strike Gives Broadway the Show Stopper It
Did Not Want, The Guardian, March 10, 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/
mar/10/usa.arts (accessed July 12, 2011). Recent campaigns include Save Live Music on
Broadway, http://savelivemusiconbroadway.com/ (accessed July 12, 2011). The issue
is not confined to Broadway, nor indeed North America. In 2004 some of the orchestral
parts for the London West End production of Les Miserables were replaced by synthesized
samples when the production was moved to a smaller theatre, much to the chagrin of the
UKs Musicians Union. See, for example, Sally Bramley, MU Opposes Les Mis Replac-
ing Live Musicians with Machine at Queens, The Stage (News), http://www.thestage
.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/276/mu-opposes-les-mis-replacing-live-musicians, Jan. 20,
2004 (accessed July 12, 2011); Jack Malvern, Computer to Replace Les Mis Musicians,
Times Online, Feb. 13, 2004, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1019105
.ece (accessed July 12, 2011).

University of Illinois Press American Music: This Content Downloaded From 110.21.42.77 On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:46:17 UTC

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

University of Illinois Press American Music: This Content Downloaded From 110.21.42.77 On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:46:17 UTC

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

University of Illinois Press American Music: This Content Downloaded From 110.21.42.77 On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:46:17 UTC

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Dramas with Music: Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and the Challenges of

Music for the Postwar Stage

Dramas with Music:

The music created for theatrical productions is notoriously ephemeral. It

Annette Davison is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Edinburgh

more pragmatic explanation, however. An exploration of these disputes

authorship and ownership of jazz and musical arrangements, and the

Streetcars Music Prior to Production

liness, and melancholy, with a modified, more up-tempo version of this

in attack, sustain, decay, and release. The Novachords defamiliarized

In Production: The Varsouviana Cues

Example 1. The first appearance of the Varsouviana, an arrangement of Put

minor mode (A minor), and by moving to the subdominant minor (d

etitious chanting of the flower seller continue beneath Blanches mono-

In Production: The Jazz Cues

lyrics of this popular tune barely attempt to mask their double-entendre

cues were used to encourage empathy with particular characters, or, in

requested permission to record the debut productions music. The cor-

Irene M. Selznick Production Company

classification would require four musicians booked for the production,

5. Although custom has prevailed to use amplification to increase

union and the producers could be avoided if there were a formula by

The AFM, Recordings, and Music for Theatre

with Rex Riccardi, Petrillos executive assistant, including a request for

music, leading to a new and further potential benefit to the musicians

was brought on board by a figure outside of the Selznick Company, and

however may only be used abroad. Under no circumstances may

Jazz and Copyright

even after rental of the Novachord is excluded, suggests thatat least as

leans. As Murphy highlights, introducing Varsouviana cues throughout

they could benefit by an increasing distortion of Varsouviana (not in arrangement but

You might also like