Kern–Leave Jane Overture youtube

We have enjoyed the first two collaborations of the Bolton-Wodehouse-Kern team, Have a Heart and Oh, Boy! Now, we are about to embark on their third collaboration–Leave It to Jane. College life and football go hand-in-hand, so it is no wonder that Leave It to Jane was about…college life and football. We would see this theme repeated in other musicals, such as Good News and Too Many Girls.

The libretto does not sit well with me, because the plot involves subterfuge and dishonesty. For most of the show, the message seems to be that all is fair in love and football. I understand that the libretto implies that the show is laughing at itself, is a satire on college sports and is suggesting that it should not be taken seriously. Unfortunately, this is America, and we like people who play by the rules. Of course, we also like winners, but we don’t like cheaters.

So, getting down off of my soapbox after delivering a stinging rebuke to whatever, let’s talk about the plot of the show. Atwater is a mid-west college, run by President Witherspoon. His daughter, Jane, is still young but has devoted herself to solving problems that arise from time-to-time at the college. Gerald Bordman calls her a “college widow,” and the audience rightly worries that she may become a spinster, whose love of the college outweighs her desire for a personal life.

Atwater’s main rival is Bingham; and, even in September as classes begin, the big Thanksgiving Day football game between the two schools is on everyone’s mind. Atwater has no star player, and one of players they seek is Billy Bolton, who is rumored to prefer Bingham because of his father’s attachment to Bingham. And so a plot is hatched to lure Billy to Atwater. The lure is Jane, who is asked to use her feminine charm to land this “big fish.” She does, Billy comes to Atwater, and he attends under a false name so that Bingham and his father will be none the wiser.

Of course, Billy wins the game for Atwater and then has to face his father. The ironic twist to the ending is that Jane becomes a victim of her own seduction and falls in love with Billy. While the book is mostly nonsense, the Kern score is excellent. The one thing the score misses is a romance between Billy and Jane that can be put to music, but this is overcome by the variety of music offered to us. The show had a respectable run on Broadway, was revived in 1959 and ran for two more years and then was revived again in 1985 at the Goodspeed Opera House, with Rebecca Luker as Jane.

We are going to listen to the Overture and nine songs from the show, so let’s settle in and get acquainted with this lovely Kern score.

Here is the Overture recorded by John McGlinn for EMI in 1989, with the songs in order of appearance:
1. Leave It to Jane
2. 1:02–Wait Till Tomorrow
3. 1:34–Sir Galahad
4. 2:30–The Crickets Are Calling
5. 3:38–I’m Going to Find a Girl (Someday)
6. 4:15–Leave It to Jane