“In a Class Beyond

Compare”Kendrick, Chapter 7

American Ascendance (1914-1919)

World War IHarrigan and Hart,George M. Cohan and Victor Herbert laid the groundwork, but the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 which led to World War I “opened the way for the international ascendance of American musical comedy.” (134)

Strong anti-German feeling led to a fallout in the popularity of German and Viennese operettas

Anti-German feelings in England

In 1917 with anti-German sentiment running high, King George V changed the family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (popularly known as Brunswick or Hanover) to Windsor, and he relinquished all German titles and family connections.

Sarajevo, June 1914

Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and Sophie by a Serbian nationalist. Ferdinand was a political ally of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm. Alliances in Europe brought the entire continent into war. US entered the war late afterfailed attempts to remain neutral.

Chin Chin (1914, 295 performances)

As an escape from thenews of the war, Americantheatregoers flocked to thetheatre. One of the early hitsof the period was CHIN CHIN.

The score was by Belgian Ivan Caryll, the story wasabout two magical servantsservants of Aladdin’s lamp and starred the popular team of Charles Montgomery and Fred Stone.

3 deaths affected the theatre of the era

Producer CharlesFrohman died on the Lusitania in 1915.

Producer George Edwardes also died in 1915

Vaudevillian David Montgomery, one of the stars of CHIN CHIN died in

1917 leaving his partner Fred Stone to carry on solo.

NY Times, April 29, 1917

Montgomery and Stone

As the Scarecrow and Tin Manin The Wizard of Oz (1903)

Jerome Kern(1885-1945)

Like others, Kern got his start as a Tin Pan Alley song plugger and thenas a rehearsal pianist.

The Girl from Utah (1914)

The American musical found a new creative direction thanks to a native New Yorker who got his start amending the scores of imported British musicals. Since British high society rarely arrived at a theatre before intermission, London musicals of the early 1900s often saved their best material for the second act and filled the first half of the evening with fluff. These shows had to be revised for New York audiences, who tended to arrive for the first curtain and leave at intermission if the first act was not up to snuff.

When Charles Frohman brought over the British hit The Girl From Utah (1914), the plot (an American girl flees to London rather than become a rich Mormon's latest wife) proved amusing, but the score needed work. So Frohman hired composer Jerome Kern and veteran lyricist Herbert Reynolds to write five new numbers…

Kern and Reynolds had added uncredited songs to previous imports. This time they demanded and got full program credit.

Their ballad "They Didn't Believe Me" marked a turning point in the development of popular music. When Julia Sanderson and Donald Brian introduced the song, they became one of the most popular stage duo's of their time.

The Princess Theatre musicals

From 1914 to 1919, KERN composed 19 complete Broadway scores. Of these, 7 were produced for the 299-seat Princess Theatre, most with lyricist Guy Bolton.

Originally built for a serious repertory of drama, the Princess began to produce small musicals after 1915…

In 1915, Kern was booked on the Lusitania but overslept

Very Good Eddie (1915) involved two honeymooning couples who get involved in some misunderstandings while taking a cruise on a Hudson River steamboat.

Because of the Princess Theatre's size, the production aimed for a naturalistic and seemingly informal style.

It became a trend-setter

From Gerald Bordman’s AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE: A CHRONICLE…

“Very Good Eddie formed the mold out of which poured a half century of American Musical Comedy.”

Cecil Smith, Musical Comedy in America (New York: Theatre Arts

Books, 1950)“With little or no space separating the players from the audience, Very Good Eddie depended upon the ease and credibility of the acting and characterization. Scarcely any previous musical comedy had been favored with a plot and dialogue so coherent, so nearly related to those of well-written non-musical plays.” (p. 212)

(Goodspeed Opera House revivalPlaybill.com Aug 2003)

P.G. Wodehouse Guy Bolton(1881-1975) (1884-1979)

Have a Heart (1917) The story of a second honeymoon that nearly wrecks a marriage only lasted two months.

Oh Boy! (1917) - While his wife is away, a well-intentioned newlywed lets a college girl avoid arrest by hiding out in his house. Then his wife comes home – crisis! With a score that included "Till the Clouds Roll By," this became the longest running Princess Theatre musical, one of the first American hits of its time to enjoy a successful run in London.

Leave It To Jane (1917) - With Oh Boy! still running at the Princess, the team opened this show at the larger Longacre Theatre. A college president's daughter woos a rival school's star quarterback and loses her heart to him in the process.

Oh, Lady! Lady! (1918) - A young man tries to convince an ex-girlfriend he was unworthy of her, and only succeeds in looking ridiculous to his new fiancé.

Oh, My Dear! (1918) - A group of eccentric New Yorkers leave town to check into a health farm. With Kern otherwise occupied, the music was provided by Louis Hirsch. Despite a respectable run, everyone realized there was little point in continuing the series without Kern.

The series died after Kern left the team

As Kern once told an interviewer, "I'm trying to apply modern art to light music as Debussy and those men have done to more serious work."

Kern would continue to enrich the musical stage

and screen for decades.

Irving Berlin (1888-1989)

“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”

Introduced in a vaudeville act in 1911, this song became the fastest-selling sheet music in the United States.

Berlin was hailed as “the King of ragtime,” a form that had been “invented” in the late 1800s.

Watch Your Step (1914)Charles Dillinghamhired Berlin to writethe complete scoreof a new musical forVern and Irene Castle.

“I Love a Piano”

Written for Stop! Look! Listen!, Dillingham and Berlin’s follow-up (1915)

Scandals, Vanities and such…

Ziegfeld added designer Joseph Urban (1872-1933) to his production team in 1915.He stayed withThe Follies thru1931.

Berlin wrote “A Pretty Girl” which became the Follies anthem in 1919.

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964)

One of the biggest stars of THE FOLLIES during the Prohibition years.

Shuberts continued to produce revues in competition with Ziegfeld.

La Belle Paree (1911) at the Winter Garden

The show introduced Al Jolson to Broadway.

Success of La Belle Paree inspired “The Passing Show” which ran most years from 1912-1924 at the Winter Garden whenever a Jolson production wasnot playing there.

Earl Carroll (1893-1948)

Vanities and Sketchbooks were produced annually from 1923-1940 and included naked chorus girls.

Vanities stars included…

Milton Berle

Sophie Tucker

George White’s Scandals

George White (1890-1939) was a former Ziegfeld dancer who left over artistic differences.

His Scandals featured “better music and choreography” (147)

For several seasons, the Scandals outran the Follies. (148)

Early editions featured songs byGeorge Gershwin.

Henderson, DeSylva and Brown

Ann Pennington W.C. Fields

Two performers “lured away” from Ziegfeld by George White.“Talent is what the public wants.” (148)

The Greenwich Village Follies (1919-27)

U.S. entered the war in 1917

Entertainers joined the war effort…

…OVER THERE by George M. Cohan was written to raise money for war bonds.

…Al Jolson sung SISTER SUSIE’S SEWING SHIRTSFOR SOLDIERS.

Shubert’s Passing Show (1917) introduced a new song during the run.

Irving Berlin was drafted

He composed and produced the all-soldier revue Yip Yip Yaphank (1917) to raise funds for the Army Emergency Relief Fund during World War I, and did the same with This Is The Army (1942), which raised over nine million dollars during World War II.

The Armistice was signed in 1918 and Berlin never reached the European front.

Because of England’s greater (and earlier) involvement in the war, English theatre during the war years was strongly American. Still,a British musical Chu Chin Chow (1916) would become the first musical to run forsix years. The American production ran 208 performances. A 1934 film starred Anna May Wong.

Chu Chin Chow

The Maid of the Mountains (1917)

Starring soprano Jose Collins, the show ran four years in London but just over a month in New York.

After the war, a flu pandemic reached the U.S.

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

Actors Strike of 1919Actor's Equity Association demanded better working conditions for its members. This union had formed years earlier in response to abusive treatment by the Shuberts and other producers. It was common practice for producers to make actors pay for their own costumes, to rehearse them for weeks without pay, and to fire them without notice. Equity waited until after the war to press its demands. When producers ended months of half-hearted negotiations by refusing to recognize the union, Equity president Francis Wilson called the first-ever strike in the history of the American theatre in August 1919.

Actors on 45th Street - 1919

Actor-producer George M. Cohan had always treated performers well. Taking the strike as a personal insult, he led a spirited effort to quash Equity. Most actors felt Cohan had forgotten what it was like to be a struggling performer, and his vehemence cost him many admirers. Tempers ran high, and the contention was sometimes violent. Producers tried to put together non-union casts to keep shows running. Then the stagehands union agreed to honor the strike, shutting down almost every professional production in the US.

Coming barely a year after the flu epidemic, the strike hit producers like a one-two punch. Faced with crippling losses, producers were forced to recognize Actors Equity and accept its demands. An embittered Cohan never accepted Equity's existence…

America’s moodAmerica wasn’t interested in bad feelings. Repelled by the horrors of war, the US refused to take part in the new League of Nations. Politicians pursued isolationist policies, vowing that America would never again let its sons die in “foreign wars.”

A new mood in AmericaA new mood pervadedevery aspect of Americanlife, embodied in a newnative-born music called“jazz.” After some reluctance, Broadwaysongwriters soon embraced the sound and created “THE golden age of musical theatre.”

Enter the “World’s Greatest Entertain

er”