Each month, Jason Fortner spotlights one or more musical theatre composers and/or lyricists, offering his own unique perspective on the songwriting legends of musical theatre. Send your comments/questions on this column to happgood@aol.com.

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This month we look at the shows & songs that never were, ideas that dead ended before they had a chance to be seen on the Great White Way. Concepts that worked on paper but didn't succeed in the ruthless world of Broadway.

First up is WONDERFUL TOWN, the delightful musical with a score by Leonard Bernstein and Betty Comden & Adolph Green. The Original Broadway Cast featured Rosalind Russell and Edie Adams as sisters Ruth & Eileen Sherwood; and ran for 559 performances at the Winter Garden Theater. What's not generally known is that the songwriters were a last minute replacement, having only 5 weeks before the start of rehearsals to create a score for the show due to the firing of the original writers, composer Leroy Anderson & lyricist Arnold Horwitt. Mr. Anderson, known for his orchestral creations like Sleigh Ride, Blue Tango and The Syncopated Clock, did get represented a few years later on Broadway with the musical GOLDILOCKS and Horwitt had such shows as PLAIN & FANCY and TWO'S COMPANY, but neither writer got to be heard in as big a hit as WONDERFUL TOWN. (I'd love to hear that score someday.)

Speaking of towns, there was a show in 1962 with the title WE TAKE THE TOWN, featuring Robert Preston, star of THE MUSIC MAN, in a role he was born to play - Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa! As you scratch your head in disbelief you must realize that Preston had made a career of doing B-westerns, and prior to gaining leading man status as Harold Hill, he often played villains in Hollywood. The score was by Matt Dubey (lyrics) and Harold Karr (music) and featured such gems as I Don't Know How To Talk to a Lady, How Does the Wine Taste? and Silverware, which is one of the songs that Stephen Sondheim put on his list of songs he wished he'd written. The show closed in Philadelphia, after a tryout in New Haven, and has had only limited exposure of its songs. I, for one, would have paid good money to hear Mr. Preston read from the phone book, but this show disappeared in the dust before it ever had a chance. The songs are terrific, but apart from the UNSUNG MUSICALS type CDs, are largely unknown.

SMILE was a flop from 1986 featuring a score by Howard Ashman (book, lyrics & director) and Marvin Hamlisch (music). Based on the 1975 Michael Ritchie film, the show takes a cynical look at teenage beauty pageants, namely the Young American Miss Pageant, using the dark side of pageantry as a metaphor for the lost American dream. Featuring a talented cast that included Jodi Benson, Jeff McCarthy and Marsha Waterbury the show held on for 11 previews and 48 performances in New York. What puts it in this category is the first version of the show, featuring music by Hamlisch and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. Using the same story structure, this radically different score has been circulating over the years, largely in the form of demo tapes, but since neither version has had an official CD release, recordings of SMILE have become a highly sought after item. After Ms. Leigh left the project, Mr. Hamlisch wrote a new score with collaborator Ashman, but to add to the confusion, the printed version of the score/show that is available for production is a third version of the show, cutting some of the New York material and substituting newer material. So, in order to have all of SMILE, one needs to find all three major variations. Hold that pose!

There are lots of other shows that fit well in this column. Frank Loesser had a couple of roadkills that never made it into town, namely PLEASURES & PALACES, which told of the improbable romance between Catherine the Great & John Paul Jones that died in Detroit and the last show he was working on at the time of his death, SENOR DISCRETION HIMSELF. The former was based on Sam Spewack's play ONCE THERE WAS A RUSSIAN while the latter was based on Budd Schulberg's short story of the same name. PLEASURES & PALACES ended on the road, failing to gel in Director/Choreographer Bob Fosse's hands. SENOR DISCRETION HIMSELF had its world premiere this past Spring at Washington DC's Arena Stage and it will be interesting to see what the future holds for it.

If the powers that be had gotten their way we might have seen some interesting casting choices over the years as well. Noel Coward was the primary choice for the King in THE KING & I, which might have reunited Noel & Gertie on the Broadway stage but would have put the a whole new spin on the show. Cary Grant was desired for Professor Henry Higgins in MY FAIR LADY, perhaps playing opposite Mary Martin as Eliza Doolittle, had she not turned the show down, telling Lerner & Loewe that they had lost their touch. And speaking of MY FAIR LADY, Rodgers & Hammerstein were the first to take a crack at writing a score to G.B. Shaw's PYGMALION but they eventually abandoned it, claiming the material didn't "sing" after a year of trying.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's production of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN was to have featured a score by Jerome Kern (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics) but the untimely death of Jerome Kern paved the way for Irving Berlin to write his first score for a book musical in the post OKLAHOMA! era. Ethel Merman scored a hit as Annie Oakley but flatly refused to play Dolly Levi in the original HELLO, DOLLY!, even though the score had been written for her. She eventually relented a decade later, playing a triumphant Dolly in the last months of the New York run and allowing Herman to reinstate two Merman tunes he had taken out, Love, Look In My Window and World Take Me Back. Of course, changing the name of the show from DOLLY-A DAMNED EXASPERATING WOMAN to HELLO, DOLLY! also helped to secure its hit status.

And speaking of Dolly, astute readers will notice pictures and references in the original vinyl album liner notes to a number called Come and Be My Butterfly. This was Ambrose Kemper's song that he performed at the Harmonia Gardens, alongside some muses, nymphs, flowers and butterfly girls. Shortly after opening this was replaced by The Polka Contest but the original recording still has a clue to its existence, for instead of Dolly singing "we haven't missed the train yet thank the lord" we hear her sing "Ambrose let me hear that tonic chord" and the sound of Mr. Kemper vocalizing. That's the only remnant left to the number, which went the way of such abandoned tunes as Penny In My Pocket.

There have been so many "shoulda, woulda, coulda" moments in Broadway history. What if Ethel Agnes Zimmerman had remained a stenographer and had never stopped (and stole) the show in GIRL CRAZY? (Thank god she opened her mouth for the Gershwins to hear.) What if June Havoc had made good her threat to shut down GYPSY, forcing the creative team to use an alternative name for Baby June, calling her Baby Claire? Speaking of GYPSY, what would the score have sounded like had Stephen Sondheim been awarded both composer and lyricist duties as he so strongly desired? And speaking of Sondheim projects, what would WEST SIDE STORY have been like had it maintained the title EAST SIDE STORY and its Christian/Jewish love story, or even its casting title of GANGWAY?

And as for Jerome Robbins, what if he hadn't come to Washington to "doctor" A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM? Would the show have opened with Love Is in The Air and flopped? What if Sondheim hadn't penned Comedy Tonight or his greatest hit written in a hotel room on the road, Send In The Clowns from A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC?

What if Tommy Tune hadn't broken his foot in Tampa? Would BUSKER ALLEY / BUSKERS / STAGEDOOR CHARLEY have had a life in New York? Was David Merrick, the "Abominable Showman" correct to close BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S / HOLLY GOLIGHTLY in previews, depriving the world of the musical talents of Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain? Should he have closed THE BAKER'S WIFE out of town? Was Merrick right in firing the sets for SUGAR out of town? And was PRETTYBELLE ahead of its time when it closed in Boston or was it a wise choice on the part of producer Alexander H. Cohen?

To quote Fats Waller: "One never knows, do one?"