form a song of its own. It raises the expectation of a song, but it
sustains the drama by underscored segments in the meantime.
Suddenly the orchestra leads Magnolia out of the 3/4 time of
the sixteen-bar exchange into a 2/4 allegretto in a new key:
“The game of just supposing is the sweetest game I know,” she
sings, offering a new eight-bar theme that Gaylord then an-
swers in eight-bars too. This is actually the verse to “Make Be-
lieve” in the sheet music version, but here it seems another
sixteen-bar continuation of the flirtation, to which the orches-
tra then gives a further extension into F minor, a poco animato
of sixteen bars for Magnolia on the theme of “banishing all re-
gret” through make-believe. Magnolia takes the lead in the al-
legretto and poco animatosegments, with the orchestra setting
the pace and the key changes. On her word “regret,” which is
what she imagines can be “banished” through make-believe,
the orchestra transforms the expected A-flat chord into a new
key and follows that with a half-diminished chord that shadows
the optimism of the lovers’ game with the sorrow that will fol-
low from it. Regret will indeed not be banished, and the young
soprano will be the one to bear its burden. One could learn a
lot from underscoring orchestras if one could stop to think
about what is being implied down there in the pit, but things
hasten on.
The orchestra’s darker chords are changing the key for Mag-
nolia’s reprise of “Make Believe” in D-flat.^5 We are returning
to a complete song structure now, but the orchestra has modu-
lated up a half-step for Magnolia’s version (Gaylord’s was in
C), as though a transaction more substantial than Gaylord’s
usual offering is now going on. Magnolia’s D-flat version is
joined by Gaylord after the first eight measures, making it a
duet. He takes the harmony while she soars to the high note of
the song, the first time we have heard this climax, a high F. She
shines forth, a stunning reversal from the girl of the piano ditty.
THE ORCHESTRA 133
(^5) I follow the revised keys of the 1946 revival, which are now reflected in
the piano-vocal score. Swain, The Broadway Musical, pp. 34–40, thoroughly
discusses the music shared between Magnolia and Ravenal in this scene, using
the keys of the 1927 version. Block, Enchanted Evenings, pp. 23–27, summa-
rizes revisions made for the 1946 revival.