Lynn Root wrote the libretto and brought it to George Balanchine, "who was anxious to do it as his first assignment as director of an entire Broadway production." Balanchine took the script to Vernon Duke to compose the music. "On reading the script, my first impulse was to turn it down because as much as I admired the Negro race and its musical gifts, I didn't think myself sufficiently attuned to Negro folklore." However, Duke ended up taking up the project but insisted on "a lyricist with some direct contact with Southern Negroes." Duke talked to Ira Gershwin and E.Y. Harburg but they both turned it down. Duke ended up picking John Latouche as his lyricist and the two began work inVirginia Beach. The two wanted to absorb aspects of the local Black culture but "decided to stay away from pedantic authenticity and write our own kind of 'colored' songs." The rehearsals for the show were rather interesting between the Russian trio and the all-black cast. In his book Passport to Paris, Duke quotes George Ross' description from the Telegram: "Pit a threesome of turbulent Russians against a tempestuous cast of Negro players from Harlem and what have you got? Well, in this instance the result is a lingual ruckus approaching bedlam. At least half a dozen times at the rehearsal of Cabin in the Sky, Ethel Waters, Todd Duncan, Rex Ingram, J. Rosamond Johnson, Katherine Dunham and her dancers have paused in puzzlement while the argumentative trio of Muscovites disputed a difference of opinion in their native tongue. The Russian vowels and consonants fly as thick as borsht. After ten minutes of such alien harangue and retort, Miss Waters asks what it is all about. ‘George,’ Duke generally interprets, ‘just said the answer is yes!' and then rehearsals are resumed under the flag of truce until the next vocal flare-up." Three days before the opening, Duke decided to replace the song "We'll Live All Over Again" after Waters expressed dissatisfaction with it. It was replaced with the showstopper "Taking a Chance on Love." The song was originally "Foolin' Around with Love" which he wrote with Ted Fetter. Latouche retitled it and wrote the reprises. J. Rosamond Johnson, besides taking a small role, trained the singing chorus. Katherine Dunham led her dancers through their slithering paces, assisted in the choreography by George Balanchine.
Productions
The musical premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on October 25, 1940 and closed on March 8, 1941 after 156 performances. The musical is based on the story Little Joe by Lynn Root. Musicals Tonight! presented a staged concert of the musical at the 14th Street YMHA, New York City in October 2003. The musical was presented in a staged concert by Encores! in February 2016, starring Chuck Cooper, Norm Lewis, and LaChanze.
The musical was very well received. Gerald Bordman wrote "Wisely, everyone involved in the show rejected the easy excesses and crassness so many musicals resorted to. Certainly they avoided turning the evening into a black minstrel show. Throughout the production a tasteful restraint, a sense of what as appropriate to the story, was maintained. This rare display of integrity made Cabin in the Sky an attractive enough evening to keep ticket buyers coming for 20 weeks." Thomas S. Hischak wrote, "With enthusiastic reviews, an outstanding score, and a powerhouse cast of some of the finest African Americans in the business, it was surprising the musical did not run longer than twenty weeks." However, not everyone liked the show. Critic Richard Watts, Jr. wrote in his review that the show was "merely a white man's self-conscious attempt to write a pseudo-folk fable of another race." Cabin in the Sky proved to be the last major success of Duke's career. The show was made into the 1943 filmCabin in the Sky, but as Denny Flinn stated in his book, "It is noble that Hollywood made a black musical at all, but there are too many interpolations to the John Latouche-Vernon Duke score."
