"Call Me Mister"-- Act Two
The second act opened with a Park Avenue clan reuniting for a postwar Christmas. They pause to give thanks to the source of their holiday blessings in "Yuletide, Park Avenue.” It was a madrigal in praise of the posh Fifth Avenue department stores of the day, identified by name.
"Once Over Lightly" was a slapstick blackout skit with Harry Clark as a barber, who had learned his trade in the Army, dealing with two ex-GIs who come in for a haircut. In "A Home of Our Own," a skit about the housing shortage, a veteran is told he could be put on a waiting list for a cave; Betty Garrett played a frazzled volunteer at the home-finding bureau.
Lawrence Winters sang "The Face on the Dime," a tribute the late FDR in the tradition of Harold Rome's previous hit "Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones." Winters was also the featured singer in "The Red Ball Express" in which a group of men waiting in a hiring hall sing of their exploits as transport drivers in Normandy during the war. At the end of the song all the men, except Winters, the only African American among them, are hired, one of the few overt political commentaries of the show.
The show's romantic young couple, Danny Scholl and Paula Bane, is reunited to sing "His Old Man," as the returning vet gets his first look at their infant son.
In a departure from the show's theme, Clark, George Hall and Jules Munshin portray three reactionary senators from the Deep South delighted to learn that they are only slightly less popular than athlete’s foot. They sing the "Senators Song."
The show-stopper was "South America, Take It Away," in which Betty Garrett complains about the craze for Latin American dances. She had a similar number, "Stop That Dancing," in "Laffing Room Only" two years earlier. Harold Rome actually had written "South America, Take It Away" several years earlier when the Latin dance craze was at its height. It was added to the show to give Garrett a featured upbeat number. It became one of Rome's most successful songs and made Garrett a sensation.