Deep Dive - Adult (aka Nudie) Musicals 1970's
The musicals in New York, which lasted through much of the decade. The low-budget Stag Movie (1971) ran across the street from Oh! Calcutta! for six months, picking up spillover from sold-out houses and helping launch Adrienne Barbeau’s career.
Hair’s enormous commercial success spawned, on the one hand, tons of rock musicals and, on the other, many musicals with nudity and simulated sex (most of which also featured scores that drew, to some extent, on contemporary popular styles). One of the first, and easily the most commercially successful, was Oh! Calcutta! (1969), devised by the theater critic Kenneth Tynan. Tynan envisioned his revue as a highbrow antidote to the tawdry peepshow or sleazy strip-joint, and spared no expense on it. A theater was renovated expressly for the production; its set design was state-of-the-art; and sketches were contributed anonymously by prominent writers like Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, and John Lennon. The groovy jazz-rock score was written and performed by a trio called the Open Window, which featured Peter Schickele in his pre-PDQ Bach days.
Oh! Calcutta! was panned by critics, most of whom found it too self-conscious to be erotic, or even consistently entertaining. But who cared what the critics thought? Calcutta! ran for three-and-a-half years; the 1976 revival ran for another decade. By the time Calcutta! finally closed in New York in 1986, it had been seen by so many people from so many places that programs had been made available in seven different languages.
Oh! Calcutta! set off a minor craze for nudie musicals in New York, which lasted through much of the decade. The low-budget Stag Movie (1971) ran across the street from Oh! Calcutta! for six months, picking up spillover from sold-out houses and helping launch Adrienne Barbeau’s career.
The revue Let My People Come--a raunchier, more sexually varied response to the rigidly heteronormative Oh! Calcutta!--ran at the Village Gate from 1974 to 1976, closing only after an ill-timed move to Broadway in the waning days of the city’s financial crisis.
The nudie musical trend reached its apex in 1977 with the Broadway premiere of the almost obscenely tame Cy Coleman musical I Love My Wife, which tackled partner-swapping in the most conservative way possible, featured no actual nudity, and had only one scene of (goofy, clownishly inept, eventually thwarted) simulated sex.
As social and political conservatism grew in the lead-up to the Reagan landslide in 1980—and as New York recovered from near-bankruptcy by gradually reinventing itself as a family-friendly tourist mecca—nudie musicals disappeared by the end of the decade (unless you count the premiere, in 1998, of Naked Boys Singing as a very late addition to the trend).
What is most striking about 1970s nudie musicals that ran in New York in the 1970s—aside from the many naked, jiggling bodies, of course—was just how conventional they were. Even the raunchiest of the bunch espoused the same basic messages: Human bodies are beautiful! Sex, regardless of with whom, is natural and fun! The seismic cultural shift that is taking place right outside this theater is not threatening or confusing or scary at all! In marked contrast with XXX theaters, peepshows, and sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat, the sex that nudie musicals featured was simulated—never real—and was almost always packaged in a familiar, age-old format: the musical revue.
Like Hair, which spurred the fad, adult musicals encouraged mainstream theatergoers to take simple, vicarious pleasure in a sociocultural movement that was unprecedented and profound—and thus, for many, enormously confusing. Adult musicals allowed audiences to feel a little dirty, a little liberated—but at a safe viewing distance, in a controlled environment, with a groovy pop-music score and a lot of jazz hands.
While many adult musicals have been forgotten to time—just one more silly fad from a notoriously silly decade—they helped push the boundaries of the American stage musical as it has developed in decades since; there would be no La Cage aux Folles (1983), Falsettos (1992), Rent (1996), or Spring Awakening (2006) without them. Shows like Let My People Come and Oh! Calcutta! might not be as revered (or as regularly revived) as some of the musicals they have influenced, but they ran when they did, for as long as they did, for a reason. They were entertaining, sure, but they also helped educate and ameliorate countless spectators during an especially confusing and tumultuous era in American history.
Elizabeth L. Wollman is an associate professor of music at Baruch College, CUNY. She specializes in the postwar American stage musical, and is the author of the books The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical from Hair to Hedwig (2006) and Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City (2012).
https://www.ethnomusicology.org/blogpost/1002374/184263/Nudie-Musicals-in-1970s-New-York-City
Articles
“Oh Calcutta!’ at 50: Still Naked After All These Years
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/theater/oh-calcutta-at-50.html
A sexual musical,’Now Middle-Aged
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/theater/the-return-of-let-my-people-come-four-decades-later.html
Let My People Come
http://slleiter.blogspot.com/2020/08/306-let-my-people-come-from-my.html
Music From Let My People Come (downloadable mp3’s)
http://www.rockymusic.org/album/letmypeoplecome.php
Youtube Album
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY5d6U1_0DZKhzOD0Wbs018O3z-mb0MzN
Mark Robinson Writes - Remembering I Love My Wife
http://www.markrobinsonwrites.com/the-music-that-makes-me-dance/2019/8/18/remembering-i-love-my-wife
I Love My Wife Soundtrack
https://youtu.be/zx2YF0vWgg8
https://open.spotify.com/album/6GJfyAGfzwWt3ZQy6pFyKG?si=Xb5IMn9cQGCJ3Z-TfPSgnA
Come in My Mouth The Story if the Adult Musicals of the 70’s
https://www.furious.com/perfect/adultmusicals.html
Vintage Annals Archive 1970's and 1980's Porn Musicals Youtube Playlist
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh4zYKaPKme6CThWodXwfuv8H4Bh8UxWu
Books
In Hard Times, musical theater historian Elizabeth L. Wollman takes readers on a fascinating tour of the adult musical scene of New York City's rampant 1970s.
https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Times-Adult-Musical-1970s/dp/0199747482
Hair’s enormous commercial success spawned, on the one hand, tons of rock musicals and, on the other, many musicals with nudity and simulated sex (most of which also featured scores that drew, to some extent, on contemporary popular styles). One of the first, and easily the most commercially successful, was Oh! Calcutta! (1969), devised by the theater critic Kenneth Tynan. Tynan envisioned his revue as a highbrow antidote to the tawdry peepshow or sleazy strip-joint, and spared no expense on it. A theater was renovated expressly for the production; its set design was state-of-the-art; and sketches were contributed anonymously by prominent writers like Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, and John Lennon. The groovy jazz-rock score was written and performed by a trio called the Open Window, which featured Peter Schickele in his pre-PDQ Bach days.
Oh! Calcutta! was panned by critics, most of whom found it too self-conscious to be erotic, or even consistently entertaining. But who cared what the critics thought? Calcutta! ran for three-and-a-half years; the 1976 revival ran for another decade. By the time Calcutta! finally closed in New York in 1986, it had been seen by so many people from so many places that programs had been made available in seven different languages.
Oh! Calcutta! set off a minor craze for nudie musicals in New York, which lasted through much of the decade. The low-budget Stag Movie (1971) ran across the street from Oh! Calcutta! for six months, picking up spillover from sold-out houses and helping launch Adrienne Barbeau’s career.
The revue Let My People Come--a raunchier, more sexually varied response to the rigidly heteronormative Oh! Calcutta!--ran at the Village Gate from 1974 to 1976, closing only after an ill-timed move to Broadway in the waning days of the city’s financial crisis.
The nudie musical trend reached its apex in 1977 with the Broadway premiere of the almost obscenely tame Cy Coleman musical I Love My Wife, which tackled partner-swapping in the most conservative way possible, featured no actual nudity, and had only one scene of (goofy, clownishly inept, eventually thwarted) simulated sex.
As social and political conservatism grew in the lead-up to the Reagan landslide in 1980—and as New York recovered from near-bankruptcy by gradually reinventing itself as a family-friendly tourist mecca—nudie musicals disappeared by the end of the decade (unless you count the premiere, in 1998, of Naked Boys Singing as a very late addition to the trend).
What is most striking about 1970s nudie musicals that ran in New York in the 1970s—aside from the many naked, jiggling bodies, of course—was just how conventional they were. Even the raunchiest of the bunch espoused the same basic messages: Human bodies are beautiful! Sex, regardless of with whom, is natural and fun! The seismic cultural shift that is taking place right outside this theater is not threatening or confusing or scary at all! In marked contrast with XXX theaters, peepshows, and sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat, the sex that nudie musicals featured was simulated—never real—and was almost always packaged in a familiar, age-old format: the musical revue.
Like Hair, which spurred the fad, adult musicals encouraged mainstream theatergoers to take simple, vicarious pleasure in a sociocultural movement that was unprecedented and profound—and thus, for many, enormously confusing. Adult musicals allowed audiences to feel a little dirty, a little liberated—but at a safe viewing distance, in a controlled environment, with a groovy pop-music score and a lot of jazz hands.
While many adult musicals have been forgotten to time—just one more silly fad from a notoriously silly decade—they helped push the boundaries of the American stage musical as it has developed in decades since; there would be no La Cage aux Folles (1983), Falsettos (1992), Rent (1996), or Spring Awakening (2006) without them. Shows like Let My People Come and Oh! Calcutta! might not be as revered (or as regularly revived) as some of the musicals they have influenced, but they ran when they did, for as long as they did, for a reason. They were entertaining, sure, but they also helped educate and ameliorate countless spectators during an especially confusing and tumultuous era in American history.
Elizabeth L. Wollman is an associate professor of music at Baruch College, CUNY. She specializes in the postwar American stage musical, and is the author of the books The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical from Hair to Hedwig (2006) and Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City (2012).
https://www.ethnomusicology.org/blogpost/1002374/184263/Nudie-Musicals-in-1970s-New-York-City
Articles
“Oh Calcutta!’ at 50: Still Naked After All These Years
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/theater/oh-calcutta-at-50.html
A sexual musical,’Now Middle-Aged
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/theater/the-return-of-let-my-people-come-four-decades-later.html
Let My People Come
http://slleiter.blogspot.com/2020/08/306-let-my-people-come-from-my.html
Music From Let My People Come (downloadable mp3’s)
http://www.rockymusic.org/album/letmypeoplecome.php
Youtube Album
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY5d6U1_0DZKhzOD0Wbs018O3z-mb0MzN
Mark Robinson Writes - Remembering I Love My Wife
http://www.markrobinsonwrites.com/the-music-that-makes-me-dance/2019/8/18/remembering-i-love-my-wife
I Love My Wife Soundtrack
https://youtu.be/zx2YF0vWgg8
https://open.spotify.com/album/6GJfyAGfzwWt3ZQy6pFyKG?si=Xb5IMn9cQGCJ3Z-TfPSgnA
Come in My Mouth The Story if the Adult Musicals of the 70’s
https://www.furious.com/perfect/adultmusicals.html
Vintage Annals Archive 1970's and 1980's Porn Musicals Youtube Playlist
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh4zYKaPKme6CThWodXwfuv8H4Bh8UxWu
Books
In Hard Times, musical theater historian Elizabeth L. Wollman takes readers on a fascinating tour of the adult musical scene of New York City's rampant 1970s.
https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Times-Adult-Musical-1970s/dp/0199747482