Captain Henry St. James seems to be a very upstanding seafarer, except for the fact that he keeps a family in both Paris and London. This bigamist behaviour puts the good Captain in peril when his London wife, Maud, decides to visit Paris and meets the other wife, Bobo...

Oh, Captain! was based on a film (The Captain's Paradise (1953)), although the setting was moved from Gibraltar and Algiers, to London and Paris, music and lyrics were by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. The show stared Tony Randall as Henry St. James, with Abbe Lane, Susan Johnson, Jacquelyn McKeever, Edward Platt, Paul Valentine, and Stanley Carlson. Presumably, with Tony Randall the producers must have thought they had a hit on their hands; he was, at the time, a very successful movie actor.

The show only ran for six months, at the Alvin Theatre, NY, USA, and garnered mostly negative reviews for its workman like approach to the subject matter, a criticism which is hard to refute. If you take ‘You Don’t Know Him’ and compare it to ‘I Know Him So Well’, although their subject matter remains similar the emotional impact of the latter song makes ‘You Don’t Know Him’ seem average, at best. Lyrically there is, once again, a lack of understanding of other cultures. I'd like to point out that, like the majority of Britain, I do not, nor ever have, worn a bowler hat.

The recording is, as ever, faultless. One of the downsides of recording of this type of media is that whilst the music and lyrics may have failed to inspire, the dance sequence between the Captain and a ballerina was considered to be one of the best in the post war period, but we can’t see that, I’m afraid.

That said I didn’t think the show was that bad, true with its cultural stereotypes, it is very much a product of its time. The songs are easy on the ears and while there are no show stopping numbers, neither is the show filled with real stinkers. Overall, the songs are jolly and would now be considered easy listening, you might not find yourself humming many of the tracks, but then your unlikely to be rushing to turn it off either.

The track listing is as follows:-

01 - 'Overture / A Very Proper Town'
02 - 'Life Does a Man a Favor (When It Gives Him Simple Joys)'
03 - 'Life Does a Man a Favor (When It Leads Him Down to the Sea)'
04 - 'Captain Henry St. James'
05 - 'Three Paradises'
06 - 'Surprise'
07 - 'Life Does a Man a Favor (When It Puts Him in Paree) / Hey Madame!'
08 - 'Femininity'
09 - 'It’s Never Quite the Same'
10 - 'We’re Not Children'
11 - 'Give It All You Got / Love Is Hell'
12 - 'Keep It Simple'
13 - 'The Morning Music of Montmartre'
14 - 'You Don’t Know Him'
15 - 'I’ve Been There and I’m Back'
16 - 'Double Standard'
17 - 'You’re So Right for Me'
18 - 'All the Time'
19 - 'Finale'

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Charles Packer