“I
Believe in You”
Composer:
Frank Loesser
Performer:
Michele Lee, 1967 (film version)
Composer:
Frank Loesser
Performer:
Robert Morse, 1961 (original Broadway recording)
Composer:
Frank Loesser
Performer:
Robert Morse, 1967 (film version)
Composer:
Frank Loesser
Performer:
Robert Morse (Tony Awards program)
Composer:
Frank Loesser
Performer:
Matthew Broderick, 1995 (revival)
Composer:
Frank Loesser
Performer:
Daniel Radcliffe, 2011
Frank
Loesser’s beautiful song from his How to
Succeed in Business without Really Trying is sung twice in the 1961
Broadway production, once as a kind of love paean to the young would-be
executive, former window-washer, J. Pierrepont Finch. The second time it’s sung
by the now on-the-rise businessman Ponty as a love song to himself, while all
around him other young executives plot his downfall with a sub-song “Gotta Get
that Man,” wherein the other employees even beg the audience “Don’t let him be
such a hero!”
Only Robert Morse perfectly captured the totally
self-captivated, yet utterly charming character he represented, although later
Matthew Broderick and the elfin Daniel Radcliffe bravely tackled the dichotomy
of a man so enchanted with himself that he is simply beautiful to watch as he
stands at a sink before the mirror that reflects his charming smile—to both
himself and to us. Like the secretary Rosemary Pilkington (in the original
stage musical Bonnie Scot and in the movie version the glorious singer Michele
Lee), we love Morse despite his obvious inability, until late in the show, to
share love with anyone else. When he finally does, in the beautiful crescendo
of “Rosemary” and the later all-team love-a-thon “Brotherhood of Man,” he moves
on to become the Chairman of the Board of the mysterious World Wide Wicket
Company.
The young Morse—long before his drag
queen days of Sugar and his one-man
impersonation of Truman Capote in Tru,
was a cute, as my older aunts might have expressed it, as a button, with even
the great gay-oriented Carl Van Vechten putting him before the camera —in real
life, Morse was married, and had five children. But you wouldn’t know it, even
as early as his heterosexual Finch in How
to Succeed, given his satirical gay-winking delight with his audiences. As
a character, he’s utterly terrified of women, including the well-endowed Hedy
LaRue. And when he finally does fall for Rosemary, it is only after she has
done nearly everything in the secret book of “How to Catch a Husband” to lasso
him in, at the very moment she is not so sure that she wants her trophy. Still,
she’s “Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm,” and is absolutely ready to retire to New
Rochelle, even though, ultimately the couple move into the World Wide Wicket
Suite for the Chairman of the Board.
The great composer Loesser’s songs
include some very engaging pieces, including “The Company Way,” “A Secretary Is
Not a Toy,” and the nearly impossible to dance, Bob Fosse’s “Coffee Break”
(we’re told they simply could not recreate it for the movie). But there’s only
one song you might go home humming, the smug commitment to the self so
beautifully expressed in “I Believe in You.”
Executives:
Gotta
stop that man,
I
gotta stop that man cold . . .
Or
he'll stop me.
Big
deal, big rocket,
Thinks
he has the world
In
his pocket.
Gotta
stop, gotta stop,
Gotta
stop that man.
FINCH:
Now
there you are;
Yes,
there's that face,
That
face that somehow I trust.
It
may embarrass you to hear me say it,
But
say it I must, say it I must:
You
have the cool, clear
Eyes
of a seeker of wisdom and truth;
Yet
there's that upturned chin
And
that grin of impetuous youth.
Oh,
I believe in you.
I
believe in you.
Los Angeles,
September 18, 2017
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