"Put on a Happy Face"

Charles Strouse

Sometimes a Song seems older than it really is, older as from a different era altogether. This week’s song I’ve known all of my life, it seems, and harkens back to the kind of songs I associate with the determinedly cheerful tunes that were popular during the Great Depression, when most Americans were living in hard times indeed. Think of songs we’ve done here from that period: “Side by Side,” “Get Happy” (speaking of our word of the week), and “Side by Side,” to mention only a few. I haven’t yet written about three such songs which I used to sing for my children when they were small: “Pennies from Heaven,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” and Charlie Chaplin’s wonderful composition, “Smile.” All of those would work for this week, and all are from the olden days.

But the one that popped immediately into my head for our “happy” week at Word & Song was a song in the same vein of determined happiness that marked a lot of folks of my father’s age, born during the depression into families who had to scrape to get along. My father learned to work hard, but he was a constitutional optimist who lived through a great deal of hardship and always kept his good cheer, no matter what. Today’s song was written by two men almost exactly his age, and premiered by another constitutionally happy person, Dick Van Dyke. Van Dyke premiered “Put on a Happy Face” while playing the lead in a rather silly musical called “Bye Bye, Birdie,” in 1961. “Birdie” was a hit show, though it ran for under two years. After the first year, Dick Van Dyke left to pursue the career as a comic actor that most of us know him for, primarily, as Rob Petrie on the excellent sit-com, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and in a wonderful part for a man of his talents, Bert, in the film musical, “Mary Poppins.”

But why is it, exactly, that “Put on a Happy Face” so reminds me of those older depression-era songs? I really expected to find, when I looked into the song for this week, that it WAS one such older song, revived for the 1960’s musical. I was wrong about that. But about the influence of that era on the songwriters, I was not wrong. The music for “Bye Bye, Birdie” was the first Broadway collaboration by a songwriting team who had worked together before on individual songs and reviews, but never on a full play. Those composers were Charles Strouse (music) and Lee Adams (lyrics).

I want to note here, once again, that great songs, like great art, most often do not just happen. Even in popular art forms, there are background forces at play, without which greatness in whatever field of endeavor simply can’t be produced. Charles Strouse began piano lessons at age 10, and went on to the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under Aaron Copland, among others. Strouse had hoped to make a career in classical music, but when he studied briefly with famed teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger, she helped him to take seriously the gift of writing good “light” music that could “make someone forget [about] illness and suffering.” This advice resonated with Strouse, who had grown up in a family troubled by physical and mental health issues, and whose happiest childhood memories were of singing around the piano while his mother played. After completing his studies at the Eastman School, Strouse returned to his native New York City and, needing to support himself, entertained as a jazz pianist wherever he could get work.

At about that time same Lee Adams had arrived in New York to take a Master’s degree at Columbia University. During college and afterward, Adams supported himself as a journalist for newspapers and magazines. Strouse met Adams in 1949, and the two were soon composing together for a series of summer-time revues. Eventually, they were asked to work on the quirky musical, “Bye Bye, Birdie,” about a rock idol (think Elvis Presley) who is drafted and whose teen-aged fans fall to pieces over his send-off celebration.

Strouse and Adams won Tony Awards in 1961 for Bye Bye Birdie, and in 1970 for “Applause.” While the two wrote a couple more Broadway plays and off-Broadway revues together, they also had separate careers and stayed active in musical theater and film for their lifetimes. Adams continued to write lyrics for a few Broadway plays each decade until his last in the early 1990’s. Strouse wrote the music for 14 Broadway musicals in all (20 if you add in Broadway revivals of his older work), and overall toted up 30 musicals in his career. Strouse’s score for the feature film Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1969. But the biggest success of his career by far was the 1977 musical, Annie, which Strouse scored with lyricist Martin Charnin. As with “Put on a Happy Face,” the music that Strouse created for “Annie” — while contemporary in style — created the right tone for the depression-era story. “Annie” was a hit that kept on giving, and is still widely performed to our present day.

You might like to know that Charles Strouse didn’t give up classical music altogether, to write for musical theater. His early work includes several sonatas and a number of jazz-influenced “American” piano pieces. After the turn of the current century, Strouse composed his Concerto America in commemoration of the 9/11 tragedy (2002). His composition, Spirit of New York City, was premiered by The Boston Pops (2004). Strouse counted Stravinsky, Bernstein, and Poulenc — and jazz music — as his greatest creative influences.

It seems fitting here to note that for their last collaboration, the team of Strouse and Adams composed one other song that I am sure just about all of our Word & Song readers know. It’s the theme for “All in the Family,” the deliberately nostalgic, if a bit more wistful than happy, “Those Were the Days.”

I like the original cast recording, but I absolutely love Tony Bennett’s 1962 recording. It makes me HAPPY! See if you have the same reaction to it.

Here is the original cast recording of “Put on a Happy Face,” with Dick Van Dyke.

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well as a Friday podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a subscriber and please do share our posts.