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(More customer reviews)Back in 1954 there appeared a short but charming long-playing record on the Columbia label entitled "archy and mehitabel," which put to music some of the stories and sketches originally created by New York journalist Don Marquis. The twenty-five minute mini-production on side a was absolutely charming, and it was complemented on side b by an eighteen-minute additional series of songs and musings called "echoes of archy." The lp featured the voices of Carol Channing and Eddie Bracken, and was a veritable masterpiece featuring witty lyrics, catchy tunes, and outstanding performances all around.
Unfortunately, the old Columbia catalogue of musical shows has not been treated kindly by new owner Sony Music, and so "archy and mehitabel" has never been re-released on cd. The original production was, however, expanded in 1957 into a short-running Broadway show entitled "Shinbone Alley," which featured Eartha Kitt as Mehitabel. This show included the music from the original "archy and mehitabel," plus some additional tunes, most of them fairly undistinguished. "Shinbone Alley" was released on cd in 1993, but has gone out of print since.
Consequently, the only version of the original "archy and mehitabel" music and story currently available is this oddly produced 1971 animated production. The good news is that the cartoon features once again the voices of Carol Channing (the quintessential Mehitabel, in my humble opinion) and Eddie Bracken. It also faithfully includes most of the music from the original 1954 lp release, and features some charming moments in which the animation and music blend together splendidly.
The bad news however, is that overall, this production seems disjointed and at times, choppy. For whatever reasons, the vocal performances of both Bracken and Channing pale beside their 1954 originals; by 1971, apparently Channing's vocal range had contracted to the point where she had to change keys to sing some of the songs, with sometimes disquieting results. More inexplicable is that the animated presentation omits one of the most memorable numbers from the original lp production, the defiantly romantic duet between Mehitabel and her love-of-the-moment, the tomcat Bill. Finally, whereas some of the animation is imaginative in its creation of a modernistic and somewhat abstracted urban alley-cat setting, all too often the approach used during the songs themselves is to fall back upon what appear now to be highly dated Peter Max-esque psychedelic doodlings ranging from the mildly interesting to the just plain silly.
For those of us who continue to treasure the original recorded production of "archy and mehitabel," our aging copies of the 1954 vinyl lp will remain preferable to this cartoon production. For anyone else interested in this still-charming urban fable, however, the animated version of "Shinbone Alley" currently remains the only game in town.
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Join the fun and laugh along with the "misadventures" of Archy the cockroach, a poet in his former life now having to jump on his typewriter keys to peck out his poems. Archie adores the huge-eyed, blonde, hip-swaying Mehitabel the Cat, and along with a colorful cast of characters, they embark on an animated, musical treat the whole family will love! Written by Mel Brooks and Joe Darion.
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