Panama Hattie Revival

Closing out the 2019 Fall Mufti series is the 1940's hit musical Panama Hattie, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and book by Herbert Fields and B.G. DeSylva. Cole Porter and Ethel Merman teamed up for their fourth hit with 1940's Panama Hattie, in which a brassy nightclub owner must bid for the approval of her fiancé's family-a task only made more complicated when she discovers a plan to blow up the Panama Canal. With a raucous book about sailors and singers in the Panama Canal Zone and a snappy Porter score that includes "Let's Be Buddies," "I've Still Got My Health," and "Make It Another Old-Fashioned, Please," Panama Hattie was a smash in its day; Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times stated, "if the Navy ever hears about Panama Hattie, it will be hard to keep the fleet in the Pacific. As far as that goes, it is going to be hard to keep New Yorkers at home in the evenings this winter."