Finian's Rainbow (1947)

Finian's Rainbow (1947)

Credits

Music by Burton Lane
Lyric by E.Y. Harburg
Book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy

Directed by Bonnie Hellman
Choreographer: Jayne Zaban
Choreographer: Cindy Goldfield

Playbill Notes

E.Y. Harburg had a quixotic nature that earned him the nickname Yip, short for Yipsl, the Yiddish term for squirrel. He grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan at the turn of the century where Italian, Irish, Russian, and Jewish families lived and worked, bound together by their poverty. At an early age Harburg took note of the various verbal idiosyncracies of his immigrant neighbors, which would one day inspire his lyric writing. It was this same environment that engendered in him a love of all kinds of music.

Harburg's musical theatre career had been going strong for nearly twenty years when he and Burton Lane came up with Finian's Rainbow. The show starring Ella Logan as Sharon and David Wayne as Og, opened to rave reviews in January, 1947. Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon followed Finian's two months later and Broadway was under the spell of Gaelic fantasy for two years.

Harburg was known for his unique imagery, and though he found lyric writing nerve-racking and brain wracking, pure inspiration often took over. For Finian's Rainbow's most famous, song Harburg was researching Irish poetry when he stumbled upon two Gaelic names, "Glocca" and "Morra." Although they had little meaning on their own, when Harburg combined the two words, they sounded like a lucky name and seemed to reflect the optimistic spirit of the musical he envisioned.

Although he enjoyed writing about love, Harburg knew that songs could also help impliment social change. He delighted in attacking sacred cows but usually concealed the subversive side of his writing within the safety of munchkins, genies, witches, and leprechauns. He claimed he could "tackle any problem that had proufundity, depth, and real danger...by destroying it with laughter."

In later years he would muse that science had unraveled many of the natural wonders that had insprired both poets and lyricists for so long. The moon and stars were no longer the awe-inspiring mysteries they once were. But, ever the optimist, Harburg beleived that every generation would find their own rainbows to write about.

Speaking in 1970 at the Lyrics and Lyricists series in New York, Harburg said "The magic in song only happens when the words give destination and meaning to the music and the music gives wings to the words. Together as a song they go places you've never been before. The reason is obvious: words make you think thoughts. Music makes you feel a feeling. But a song makes you feel a thought. Songs are the pulse of a nation's heart, a fever chart of its health. Are we at peace? Are we in trouble? Are we floundering? Do we feel beautiful? Do we feel ugly?...listen to our songs...The lyricist, like any artist, cannot be neutral. He should be committed to the side of humanity."

Plot Summary

A combination of whimsy, romance, and political satire, the plot revolves around Finian McLonergan, who has emigrated from Ireland to the town of Rainbow Valley in the mythical state of Missitucky with his daughter Sharon, intent on burying a stolen pot of gold in the shadows of Fort Knox, in the belief it will grow and multiply. Hot on their heels is Og, a leprechaun intent on recovering his treasure, before the loss of it turns him permanently human. Complicating matters are a corrupt senator who makes no effort to conceal his racial bigotry and the wishes made by those unknowingly in the vicinity of the hidden crock, including Sharon, who gives the senator a taste of his own hateful medicine by accidentally turning him black (temporarily). In the ultimate happy ending, Sharon marries the handsome, cocky young Woody Mahoney; and Woody's mute sister, "Susan the Silent", acquires the power of speech and falls in love with Og, who decides that being human is not so bad after all.