Wonderful Town: One Hundred Ways to Lose a Man

The “wonderful town” in question is New York or, more specifically, Greenwich Village where two sisters from Ohio, Ruth and Eileen Sherwood, have come to seek their fortune. As if Leonard Bernstein didn’t have enough trouble in writing the score for Wonderful Town in little more than four weeks, he had to cope with the limited singing abilities of the Hollywood actress Rosalind Russell, who had played the part of Ruth in a film version of the same story and who was to star in the musical too. “Listen, Leonard,” she told him, “I've got exactly four notes in my voice and you've got to write for just those four notes." The hit number of the show, “One Hundred Ways to Lose a Man,” is a brilliantly witty example of what he could do for her.

The second of Bernstein’s three New York musicals - preceded by On the Town in 1944 and followed by West Side Story in 1957 - Wonderful Town opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City in 1953 and was immediately greeted as the best musical since Guys and Dolls.

R.A.