Oh, For . . . , Candide, Not Even The Book But The Friggin' Musical, Is The Weapon Used Against Me?

First, I took about twenty minutes to review the history of "Candide" and was surprised to find out that I got the chronology of its, um, creation wrong.  I'd always gotten the feeling that Bernstein had the idea and got Hellman to write the book.  Apparently it was Lillian Hellman's idea to adapt Voltaire's novel into a stage work with merely incidental music for which the old liar was fool enough to involve the young, energetic Leonard Bernstein, the current reigning NYC press scribbler crowned "genius" of music in it.  My guess is the old gorgon fast discovered that she couldn't control him - I'll give this to Lenny, he was the tool of no one else - and he made the music the most important element, which is probably the only reason any of it remains today.  As a number have pointed out, the music is Bernstein's typical clever pastiche, which works well enough on Broadway, second rate as it is as music.  

By all accounts, Hellman's book for the thing was largely the reason it was a disastrous, expensive flop, reportedly bringing her Broadway-Hollywood style Socialist Realist iron curtain down on a bit of 18th century French frippery.  Which is the reason that the successful productions of "Candide" have used a book that the far more theater savvy Harold Prince commissioned when Hellman refused to let them use hers for a revival.  Prince's necessity is probably what saved the show.  From what I read further revisions, some of them actually getting closer to Voltaire's original, have been made.  If that's a good thing, I don't really care enough to find out. 

I enjoyed watching the one with Kristin Chenoweth they had on TV quite a while back but only because I didn't have anything better to do. It had the great Patti LuPone in it, too.  The novel is overrated and the musical is a lot less than that.  It's got one number that carries the rest of the show,  and the overture, the part of it that gets the most play.  I'd rather watch anything by Sondheim any day.  

To mistake "Candide" the musical for Voltaire is typical of those who watched the movie and so figure they've read the book.  A common enough stupidity among jr. high students with an assigned book and, pathetically, among the college credentialed of post-WWII English speaking peoples.   

I strongly suspect that old liar and Stalinist,  Hellman may have read the novel as well as some of his other greatest hits - if Dorothy Parker considered her a woman of letters, she must have done at least that much.  I'm sure she was familiar with some of his famous quotes, including the asinine claim that he'd defend the right to speak of those who disagreed with him to the death.   I wonder how many of the people who proclaimed that while puffed up like a hot air balloon ever put themselves in danger of carrying through on it.    No doubt if Hellman ever used it she was trying to encourage other people to defend HER to the death.  She certainly made it obvious that any such claim by her was just another of her many lies in her lawsuit against Mary McCarthy when McCarthy told the truth about her being a  flagrant liar.   She had the same devotion to the truth as her hero of her adulthood,  Stalin did.  He killed lots of writers for telling the truth or even being suspected of maybe having an inclination to tell it.  Which didn't trouble her much.  Or those intellectuals and show folk who held her up as a figure for admiration.