'A Fellow Needs a Girl' to Number 24 in 1947. Another song from the musical, 'So Far', was the B-Side of the 78 rpm record. Critical reception The musical received mixed reviews following its opening night. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson opined that Rodgers and Hammerstein had "just missed the final splendor of a perfect work of art". Robert Coleman of the New York Daily Mirror stated that "Allegro is perfection", and added that it was "a stunning blending of beauty, integrity, intelligence, imagination, taste and skill ... it lends new stature to the American musical stage". Ward Morehouse of The Sun wrote that Allegro was "distinguished and tumultuous. It takes its place alongside of Oklahoma! and Carousel as a theatrical piece of taste, imagination, and showmanship." However, Wolcott Gibbs of The New Yorker called the musical "a shocking disappointment". Robert Garland, in the New York Journal American suggested that Rodgers and Hammerstein "had confused allegro [which means at a fast pace] with, say, lento, which means 'slow', 'unhurried', and even downright 'serious'". Critic George Jean Nathan, in a special piece in the Journal American, decried "such hokum mush as the familiar wedding scene and the ghost of a mother who returns at intervals to keep her son from error, but a cocktail party chatterbox number paraphrased from an old Noël Coward movie, a college number dittoed from an earlier George Abbott one, and various other elements hardly rivaling the daisy in freshness". In Theatre Arts, Cecil Smith called Allegro "acceptable only as an exercise in stagecraft, not as a work of art ... Allegro fails where Our Town succeeded ... Joseph Taylor, Jr.'s life has little or nothing to tell us about our own lives." Louis Kronenberger of New York P.M. called the show "an out-and-out failure." De Mille's direction and choreography were reviewed generally positively; Cecil Smith applauded her for the "ease and flawless design with which Miss de Mille brings mobility to these non-dancing [singing and speaking choruses] ... no previous musical has approached Allegro in consistency of movement, expertness of timing and shapeliness of visual patterns. Times dance critic John Martin stated, "Allegro has definitely made history" for de Mille's giving "form and substance to material with little of either". Dance Magazine praised her for creating "the illusion of space and depth far beyond the confines of the proscenium". As the disagreement continued past