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Thrift Shop Find No. 7
Found at Thrift Village, Belmont, California
Price: 25 cents (no record in jacket)

Carnival! Broadway original soundtrack

Pasta-sauce spokesperson Anna Maria Alberghetti snogs a phosphorescent green walrus. In 1961, Alberghetti was who you'd invite to a party if Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron were both busy that weekend. In this soulful clinch with a yarn sea mammal, Alberghetti is performing in the musical Carnival!, as a character named Lili, who is torn between a magician and a nice but perhaps-not-as-interesting puppeteer. If this plot point sounds familiar, it's because Carnival! is derived on the well-known 1953 Leslie Caron movie, Lili, although the credits on the sleeve fudge the matter ("based on material by Helen Deutsch"; Deutsch was the screenwriter for Lili.) Alberghetti sings "Love Makes the World Go Round," and duets with Horrible Henry the Walrus (left) on "Yum, Ticky, Ticky, Ticky, Tum, Tum." About the time that Alberghetti went on to a minor comeback selling spaghetti sauce on TV, the fiends at the mid-1970s National Lampoon cruelly referred to the actress as "an ancient Roman ruin."

By Richard Von Busack