six, seven, eight” turning into “one, two, three, four” over a
sustaining and open harmonic structure without the pauses by
which an individual singer gains a toehold, so to speak, for de-
livering a star number.
These are all diegetic examples of numbers called for in the
book. One of the ways the book can pay attention to the musi-
cal time that will bring it to a pause is by calling for a number,
finding only part of it, searching for the rest, and making a
dramatic moment out of the successful completion. We will
see in a later chapter that this search-for-the-completed num-
ber can even occur beyond the diegetic convention, in the
out-of-the-blue mode (the example will be Sunday in the Park
with George, where the climactic act 2 duet “Move On” takes
song elements from act 1 and combines them into an over-
sized AABA song). But for the moment, as we are examining
the diegetic convention to see how far the book can go toward
recognizing the power of the number, the leading example
must be Lady in the Dark(1941) by Kurt Weill, Ira Gershwin,
and Moss Hart.
The Special Case of Liza Elliott
The book of Lady in the Darkturns on the search for a song
the heroine, Liza Elliott, cannot remember. It is buried trau-
matically in her childhood. She also cannot decide which of
her ardent suitors she should accept—Nesbitt, or Randy, or
Charley. When Charley is discovered to be the right man, he
also knows the childhood song, “My Ship,” and sings it with
the heroine. They are working together in the offices of the
glamour magazine of which Liza is the editor. Liza hums a bit
of “My Ship.” Charley looks up in surprise and sings a line,
himself. “Why—do you know that song?” says Liza in aston-
ishment, and they sing it together. Happily ever after takes
shape because two people know the same song. This could
only happen in a musical comedy, and that is the point. A book
that searches for a Weill/Gershwin song while entertaining us