Damn Yankees (1955 Original Broadway Cast)  (Audio CD) 
by Jerry Ross

Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, who were protegés of Frank Loesser, composed and wrote lyrics for only two hit shows of their own--The Pajama Game was the other. (Ross died in 1955, shortly after the opening of Damn Yankees.) But what great shows they were, in sensibility and subject matter entrenched in their Eisenhower era, yet eminently revivable today--and as much more than period pieces. Damn Yankees, which was based on Douglas Wallop's novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, neatly combined the national obsession with baseball and its dominant team with the Faust legend. The Devil himself (Ray Walston) offers a middle-aged fan of the Washington Senators the chance to turn into a Mickey Mantle-esque ballplayer (Stephen Douglass) to help his hapless team against those Bronx Bombers. The fan accepts, but with an escape clause in the interest of story-line complications. What makes the plot problematic is not its proven fantasy level; it's that the leading lady, Lola, the Devil's temptress assistant, doesn't appear until way into the first act, and then she is required to dominate the show with just two solos and a couple of duets. Only a star with the guts and stage-holding ability of Gwen Verdon could have managed this in the first place, even though her solos are the estimable "A Little Brains--A Little Talent" and the near-standard "Whatever Lola Wants." Bebe Neuwirth, as Lola, was never able to seize the stage--or the recording--of the 1994 revival, and ultimately that show became about Jerry Lewis as the Devil, for God's sake. Verdon's and Walston's amazing original performances are preserved in the movie version (Tab Hunter took over the ballplayer's role), but this recording is the one to have. The show's breakout hit song, sung by ballplayers and fans, was and is "(You Gotta Have) Heart." Damn Yankees and all its songs have just that. --Robert Windeler