The Musical as Drama

women not by means of dialogue in a book scene but by means
of shared music in the numbers they perform. This sharing of
musical material can happen in out-of-the-blue numbers, but
the diegetic convention makes the sharing more pointed. What
Kern wanted to do by turning Magnolia’s piano ditty into Kim’s
“It’s Getting Hotter in the North” would have been an artful
application of the diegetic convention, and sophistication of this
kind runs through the history of the musical, increasing as the
twentieth century moves along. The convention by which the
musicals are performed becomes the thing being dramatized.
Rodgers and Hart shows are laced with diegetic innovations of
this kind. On Your Toes(1936) builds a Russian ballet troupe
into the book and makes the plot hinge on whether these clas-
sically trained dancers can learn to dance to swing and jazz.
Moreover, it works that question into a diegetic number in
which American dancers show the Russians how to swing, and
the Russians show the Americans what “on your toes” really
means. This is the number called “On Your Toes,” and it galva-
nizes the conventions of dance into the turning point of the
book. Pal Joey(1940) has the nerve to center on second-rate
dancing at a seedy Chicago nightclub, thanks to the sophistica-
tion of knowing that second-rate dancing can only be made
credible by first-rate dancers.
The Rodgers and Hart Boys from Syracusehas an inspired
moment for a diegetic song built into the plot—a love duet
that the heroine sings to her husband’s twin brother by mis-
take. The husband is in the marketplace bragging to the fel-
lows about the wonderful sentiments his wife Adriana ex-
presses to him. To illustrate, he sings the verse and chorus to
“The Shortest Day of the Year,” based on the conceit that the
shortest day may have the longest night, but even that night is
the shortest when I am with you. (The verse includes the fine
Hart couplet, “I measure time by what we do, / And so my cal-
endar is you.”) The husband is singing Adriana’s verse within
the book, not bursting into song from out of the blue. This is
how she sings to him, in their more romantic opportunities.
We then discover that at this very moment, Adriana is at home
singing this lovely tune to the wrong twin brother, the other

THE DRAMA OF NUMBERS 115