BOOTLEG FILES 881: “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” (1956 television musical starring Kay Starr, Louis Armstrong, Buster Keaton and Robert Stack).
LAST SEEN: On Internet Archive and YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Music clearance issues and a poor quality surviving kinescope.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Nope.
One of all-time favorite books is Arthur Shulman and Roger Youman’s “How Sweet it Was,” which chronicles American television from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s. While many of the entries in the book are well-known, there was one photograph that always intrigued me – it was for a 1956 musical called “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” and it showed Buster Keaton wearing a polka dot clown costume and his trademark flat hat while playing a calliope. Next to Keaton was Kay Starr, a popular singer in the 50s, who had a straw hat and a cane while wearing a striped blouse and a long black skirt. The caption for the photo only said that the show was a musical with a circus setting and co-starred Robert Stack, Dick Haymes and Louis Armstrong. (Yes, that’s the photo at the top of this page.)
For years, I always thought “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” was a great title for a production – but I knew nothing about this show until the other week when I stumbled over a bootlegged upload of the offering on YouTube. To my disappointment, there is no scene in “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” with Keaton and Starr performing that photographed moment – it was one of many publicity photos with the performers used to hype the show.
To my delight, I discovered that “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” is an unfairly forgotten work that offered a fun distraction.
“The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” is based on a story by Patrick Malloy about a small town in Kansas that has challenged by a seemingly endless drought. The town’s elected officials want to hire a rainmaker to bring much needed downpours to the devastated farmland, but the local pastor insists that the best solution is to pray for rain. A commonsense solution is offered by the town’s veterinarian (played by crooner Dick Haymes) – he suggests that the townsfolk pray for rain and also hire a rainmaker.
Alas, the town has no money to hire a rainmaker. But as luck would have it, a small traveling circus arrives and the town’s venal sheriff begins to hit the show with a series of expensive fines totaling $250 – which was quite a sum in 1956. The sheriff also threatens to jail the circus owner (Kay Starr) unless payment is made immediately. Over the objection of her boyfriend and the circus’ manager (Robert Stack), the circus is forced to give up its $250 in savings.
The circus is now in a double mess – it cannot pay its workers and it is unable to bet the $250 on its star horse, which was scheduled to run in an upcoming race at a county fair. Stack’s character disguises himself as a rainmaker by using a long beard, a derby and a Yiddish accent – trust me, this you must see to believe – and he recaptures the $250 from the sheriff while doing a phony rainmaker routine. Except that, amazingly, his act coincides with the coming of rain – and while that’s good news for the rain-starved town, it is bad news for the circus because their horse favors a dry track and is a sure-fire loser on a muddy racing surface. However, the Lord seems to play favorites when it comes to helping the circus when they need His help the most.
“The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” was presented as part of “Producers’ Showcase,” an anthology series that ran from 1954 to 1957 and offered live 90-minute plays starring A-list talent. An unusual feature of the show was its broadcast in color – at that point in time, most households only had black-and-white television. However, “Producers’ Showcase” used a compatible color technology that enabled viewers with black-and-white televisions to enjoy the program without any visual degradation. And while most of the “Producers’ Showcase” offerings were dramatic, but the series occasionally offered musicals including broadcast of “Peter Pan” starring Mary Martin and “Our Town” starring Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint.
Starr’s husband at the time, Hal Stanley, collaborated with Jo Swerling on the musical with uncredited help from blacklisted writer Paul Jarrico. Starr was also under contract at the time to RCA Victor records – and NBC was owned by RCA, which was also pushing the color televisions that would have enabled viewers to enjoy “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” as intended. Thus, she was a shoo-in for the show. And, in fairness, she does a decent job in handling the show’s dramatic segments and is a pure delight in belting out the songs in her inimitable style.
Dick Haymes is also a good singer, although he was a bit of a bland presence as an actor. Robert Stack was no one’s idea of a song-and-dance man, but he gamely gives it his best shot and is clearly enjoying himself. Buster Keaton, cast as a clown in Emmett Kelly-style make-up, has relatively little do except to occasionally comment on the commotion swirling around him. The real energy comes from Louis Armstrong as the circus’ trumpeter – he has two numbers that stop the show and he always manages to snag the viewers’ attention whenever he is on screen.
The one weak link of “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” is the show’s score – no hit songs emerged from the production, which may explain why it quickly became forgotten after its live broadcast on September 17, 1956. RCA Victor put out a record of Kay Starr performing selections from the score, but it was not a popular seller.
There is no surviving copy of the original color broadcast, and the show was considered lost until a black-and-white kinescope emerged. A commercial home entertainment release is unlikely, given the music rights issues, the visual quality of the kinescope and a perceived lack of commercial value. However, it can be seen online – and if it not a musical classic, it is an enjoyable bit of mischief that scores as a light entertainment offering.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
Listen to Phil Hall’s award-winning podcast “The Online Movie Show with Phil Hall” on SoundCloud and his radio show “Nutmeg Chatter” on WAPJ-FM in Torrington, Connecticut, with a new episode every Sunday. His new book “100 Years of Wall Street Crooks” is now in release through Bicep Books.