Editorial Reviews

The 1964 Broadway musical Fade Out - Fade In seemed to have an unbeatable creative and performing team, including veteran songwriters Jule Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green along with emerging star Carol Burnett. Burnett -- who had debuted on Broadway in Once Upon a Mattress five years earlier and since made a name for herself on television as a co-star of The Garry Moore Show (but was not yet a TV legend in her own right) -- was given a star vehicle in the show, set in 1930s Hollywood, and a strong supporting cast that featured stage veteran Jack Cassidy, comic actor Lou Jacobi, and soon-to-be TV star Tina Louise. The show sold tickets when Burnett was in it, but she wasn't in it for long, and accounts differ as to why. Burnett claimed to have suffered whiplash in a taxicab, but a court that later forced her to fulfill her commitment to the show (after she had signed a lucrative, long-term TV contract) didn't buy that explanation. What is clear is that she began to miss performances, and the show thereafter disappeared, never to be revived, with a cast album that went out of print and was only reissued on CD close to 40 years later. On the cast album for Fade Out - Fade In, Comden and Green turn in the occasionally witty lyric in their often sarcastic style, and Styne (who was writing Funny Girl at the same time) seems to have done adequate work. It's Burnett and, to an extent, Cassidy who make the album worth hearing. William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

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