The (rest of) the American musical: did you know ...?

This article has been added to, since its creation, as appealing items surface ...  and will probably be added to further ...

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Nice American ephemera to hand this morning.

I've always been a tad irked by the expression 'Broadway musical' as used to describe musical plays produced all round America (not to mention those from other countries, borrowed or butchered and then played in New York -- from Brooklyn to the Bowery). I mean, the first significant original American musical, by my counting, was produced in Boston. Yes, it was subsequently played in New York, as part of its touring life ... for that's what New York was, in the first heyday of the musical theatre: just another tour date, like Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore et al.

Anyway the misnomer has become, with the help of the moving pictures, part of showbiz lingo, and it isn't the likes of Gänzl who is going to change that, any more than that mendacious first-night advertising for a new show as 'the hit musical'.

All that as prelude to this little selection of goodies from a few C19th and early C20th shows that didn't or only briefly, play 'Broadway' or, in some cases, New York at all 

The first I came on was An Easy Mark, produced by C A Burt and Edward Simmons at Lebanon, Pa 31 August 1899

Produced with some tarara, to feature James T Kelly as Zebediah Maloney and Charles A Maloney, the piece seems to have been a semi-remake of author, Henry du Souchet's, My Wife's Husband. Du Souchet had penned rather more successful plays (My Friend from India, The Man from Mexico), but a win in the musical theatre rather eluded him.

Samuel H Speck, named here as composer, was the manager of the Standard Theatre in Philadelphia. He ventured into the field of the sentimental ballads ('I Miss You More Than Words Can Tell') and the odd non-sentimental piece ('Hannah Go Hide Your Bloomers') in the early 20th Century.

Burt and Simmons advertisedly spiced their show with 'numerous strong specialities' as it headed for the Bijou Theatre, Brooklyn accompanied by mendacious puff paragraphs: 'Wherever An Easy Mark has been presented it has scored much success'. Wherever? Less than 3 weeks ago it was at Lebanon.  Annie Ward Tiffany who played the unintended bride, and Kelly as the foolish JP, came out the best, but the play was found old-bones fleshed out with variety acts. At one stage, a boxing match was staged between the acts.

The producers quit, the stars took over, the cast began to disintegrate, and the show 'went to pieces out West'.

Here's another, also from Pennslvania. Yama. What is Yama? Well, it is a bit of Japan, I think. And a suffix. And it rhymes with a lot of things. 

The show was credited for its book to the prolific George Totten Smith, who had butchered a couple of other pieces into touring successes for him. Robert B Smith was debited with the lyrics. The music was the work of Seymour Furth, and the song here shown (not by Smith, but by Edgar Selden) was sung by leading lady Helen Redmond. 

This was a different level of enterprise to An Easy Mark. Aarons had a certain credibility as a producer of easily digestible entertainment and Miss Redmond, as Princess Lola Koo, was a veritable New York leading lady -- notably as Dolores in Florodora -- here returning to the stage after a pause for matrimony. The show opened 4 November 1907 at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre. My notes tell me that it was possibly the first musical to feature a drug addict among its characters. Oddly, none of the three songs listed on this music sheet are mentioned in the reviews. Miss Redmond's big solo was 'My Honeymoon', Jeannette Lowrie gave 'Love in the Zoo', Cain and Mitchell did their vaudeville act and the hit of the evening was the Pony Ballet, culled from the previous Aarons production of His Honor the Mayor and plonked, ubiquitously, into the proceedings. But, this time, it didn't click. After seven weeks in Philadelphia, Aarons announced the show would be taking in a few one-nighters and then heading into New York. I see it at the Broad Street, Pittaton on Christmas day, then Wilkes-Barre, Williamsport, Scranton, Hazelton, Reading (14 January) but New York never came. The costumes and scenery were packed away, and in 1909 Aarons brought the show out for another 7-week season at the Walnut. 

By this time, however, its title was famous. The Three Twins had opened, with Bessie McCoy doing her pierrot-acro-bogeyman routine to a song entitled 'The Yama Yama Man' and taken the town. I have read a charming story which relates that the authors originally called their hit song 'The Pyjama Man' and changed it because ... I wonder. Oh, by the way, 'Yama' rhymes with 'farmer' and not with 'hammer'.

Not all out-of-town musicals were flops. Here's one which ran all tound the country for years and spawned a series of sequels ... a musical comedy version of the wonderful George P McManus cartoon strip Bringing Up Father.

Mr Aarons might have learned a thing or two here. No ponies, no ten tons of scenery ... this one was laughs, laughs, laughs all the way! The 'score' was attributed to one of the actors ...  I'd rather like to have heard 'Husking Time in Iowa'... 

Here's another which didn't make it from the Shubert Theater, Brooklyn

In spite of the names involved this was a first class disaster. 

DAVIS, Owen (b Portland, Maine, 29 January 1874; d New York, 14 October 1956).

 The Harvard-educated Davis made himself a highly lucrative career as the author and sometime producer of sentimental melodramas (Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model, Tony the Bootblack etc) -- rousingly lowbrow back-blocks pieces which often included the occasional musical number, to which Davis was happy to provide such lyrics as were required -- before the market for such shows was killed by the rise of the movies. He moved on to try his talents in the profitable purlieus of Broadway and there made his mark with a number of successful comedies and later with some more serious pieces, one of which (Icebound) won him a Pulitzer Prize (1923). 

 His few purpose-built musicals did not range as widely in value as his plays. In fact, they were flops. His earliest such piece was a little sketch for Laura Joyce Bell The New Prima Donna or Up Goes the Price of Milk which prompted a critic to sneer of the future Pulitzer winner ‘Davis obviously knows more about the price of milk than writing plays’ and the next a showful of vaudeville acts tacked together with a bit of plot for producer Gus Hill. He then turned to compiling the kind of touring musical farce comedies and melodramas with interpolated songs and specialities played on far from the best circuits. One of these, Anita the Singing Girl,‘combining the better features of melodrama and comedy-drama with those of musical comedy’ and put out by J J Spencer and Aborn with the intent of bucking the usual cheap melodrama houses which Davis’s plays had filled so effectively, and playing nothing less than dollar houses, proved to have several seasons of upwardly-striving life in it. But the big city was not in its future.

His first attempts at conventional musical comedy fared poorly. The lowbrow Cupid at Vassar had a short tour and the the Broadway-bound Shubert production of his Page Mr Cupid, with Ernest Truex starred, folded in tryout. However, he had a major musical theatre success, at one step removed, when his play The Nervous Wreck (1922) was used as the source for the hit musical Whoopee (New Amsterdam Theater, 4 December 1928) with Eddie Cantor in its leading rôle. As a result of this hit, the next musical theatre months brought two further Davis adaptations. His Easy Come, Easy Go (1925) was turned into Lady Fingers (Vanderbilt Theater, 31 January 1929) for Eddie Buzzell (132 performances) and he adapted his own Shotgun Wedding as the text for the Rodgers and Hart musical Spring is Here (104 performances). 

 A second collaboration with Rodgers and Hart, and with producers Aarons and Freedley, on a piece called Me for You, folded up after a fortnight's try-out and was transformed by other hands into Heads Up! (1929), whilst a final return to the musical theatre, eight years later, brought another failure with the 60 performance run of Virginia.

1897 The New Prima Donna, or Up Goes the Price of Milk (uncredited) sketch Pleasure Palace 13 June

1899 Over the Fence (various) Derby, Conn 28 September; Milwaukee 3 December (new version)

1901 Circus Day (George E Nichols) Majestic Theater, Utica 17 September; Metropolis Theater 30 September

1905 How Baxter Butted In (various) Lyceum Theater, Elizabeth, NJ 14 August; Murray Hill Theater 13 November

1907 Cupid at Vassar (A Baldwin Sloane/w George Totten Smith) Poli’s Theater, Waterbury, Conn 23 August

1907 Anita, the Singing Girl (Harold Orlob) Auditorium, Baltimore 26 August 

1908 The Battle of Port Arthur (Manuel Klein) 2 scenes Hippodrome 13 January

1909 Back Again (Karl Hoschna/w Otto Hauerbach) Olympic Park, Newark 7 June

1909 Sal, the Circus Girl (various) Brooklyn 7 August

1920 Page Mr Cupid (Jean Schwartz/Blanche Merrill) Crescent Theater, Brooklyn 17 May

1929 Spring is Here (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) Alvin Theater 11 March

1929 Me for You (Rodgers/Hart) Shubert Theater, Detroit 15 September

1937 Virginia (Arthur Schwartz/Albert Stillman/w Laurence Stallings) Center Theater 2 September

Autobiography: I'd Like To Do it Again (Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1931), My First Fifty Years in the Theater (Walter H Baker, Boston, 1950)

SCHWARTZ, Jean (b Budapest, 4 November 1878; d Sherman Oaks, Calif, 30 November 1956). Multi-hit songwriter whose numbers often proved the takeaway tunes of other fellows' shows of the early 20th century.

 Schwartz had his earliest musical education from his sister, a sometime pupil of Liszt, during his youthful days in Hungary. He moved to America with his family at the age of ten and was soon on the work market, holding jobs in a cigar factory and a turkish bath, amongst others, before his earliest musical engagements as a band pianist at Coney Island, a song-plugger at the Siegel-Cooper store on Sixth Avenue and for the music-publishing house of Shapiro-Bernstein, and later as a rehearsal and pit pianist for Broadway shows.

 Schwartz formed a songwriting partnership with lyricist William Jerome and the young team (`a pair who have risen from the obscure variety halls') soon succeeded in getting their songs placed in a number of touring farce comedies (Topsy Turvy, Andy Lewis, In Spotless Town etc) and Broadway shows, notably Weber and Fields's Hoity-Toity (1901, `When Mr Shakespeare Comes to Town'), a show for which young Schwartz was employed as an on-stage pianist and The Billionaire (1902, m’When the Stars are Shining Bright’). Their first big song successes came with `Rip van Winkle Was a Lucky Man' sung on Broadway in J J McNally's Sleeping Beauty and the Beast (1901) and in London's The Cherry Girl (1903), `Mr Dooley', one of several songs interpolated in the Broadway production of A Chinese Honeymoon (USA), and `Bedelia' as sung first by Blanche Ring in the short-lived The Jersey Lily (1903) on Broadway and in London by George Grossmith jr (who had done well with `Mr Dooley' on the halls) in the very much more successful The Orchid.

 The pair provided fresh material for the americanized version of the English musical An English Daisy (1904), they wrote the songs (one of which was `Bedelia') for a vehicle for the Ellmore Sisters, Kate and May, called Mrs Delaney of Newport and, shortly after, the now established songwriters were able to show off their first full Broadway score in Fred C Whitney's production of Piff! Paff! Pouf! (‘Cordelia Malone’) billed as `a musical cocktail', at the Casino Theater. Piff! Paff! Pouf! had a fine run of 264 performances, and its composer and his partner were set up to such an extent that they provided or contributed largely to the scores for no less than five musicals -- principally the vaudeville-style shows or spectaculars that their frankly popular songs suited best -- over the next year. Their biggest song success of that year, however, was again an interpolation: `My Irish Molly O', one of several of their numbers performed by Blanche Ring in Sergeant Brue.

 Over the next 20 years a vast stream of numbers issued from Schwartz's pen -- `Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat', `I Love the Ladies' etc -- but his main and most successful activity was still in the theatre. He wrote a large amount of revue material, including the basic musical scores for such pieces as The Passing Shows of 1913, 1918, 1919, 1921, 1923 and 1924, The Shubert Gaieties of 1919, the Shuberts' The Midnight Rounders and its 1921 edition, The Whirl of the Town, The Mimic World of 1921, Make it Snappy (1922), Artists and Models (1923), Topics of 1923 and A Night in Spain (1927) as well as providing odd numbers for shows such as the Ziegfeld Follies of 1907 (`Handle Me With Care' w William Jerome) and 1908 (`When the Girl you Love is Loving'). 

 Over the same period he also supplied scores both for regular musicals and for shows which ran a fine line between revue and musical comedy for Blanche Ring (When Claudia Smiles), Eddie Foy (Up and Down Broadway in which `Chinatown, My Chinatown' was first heard, and three songs in Over the River), Eddie Cantor (Make it Snappy), Julian Eltinge (The Fascinating Widow) and Mistinguett (the 1924 revue Innocent Eyes), and in collaboration with J J McNally, author of the successful Rogers Brothers series of variety musicals, he also wrote the songs for vehicles for the popular blackface duo McIntyre and Heath (The Ham Tree, In Hayti) and for Lulu Glaser (Lola From Berlin). However, he found the most effective successor to Blanche Ring as champion purveyor of his songs when Al Jolson introduced his `Rum Tum Tiddle' (ly: Edward Madden) in Vera Violetta (1911). Schwartz subsequently wrote the basic score of the `spectacular farce with music' The Honeymoon Express for Jolson but, more notably, he supplied him with four songs for the hit-filled Sinbad (1918), including the durable `Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody' and `Hello Central, Give Me No-Mans Land' (ly: Joe Young, Sam Lewis).

 He also, throughout, continued to supply individual numbers and special material for use as interpolations in musicals both imported and native, amongst which were The Prince of Pilsen (1903, `In Cincinnati), The Little Cherub (1906, `My Irish Rose'), The Rich Mr Hoggenheimer (1906, `Any Old Time at All'), The Silver Star (1909), The Echo (1909, ‘The Newport Glide’), Modest Susanne (1910, ‘Peaches’, ‘Tangoland Tap’), A Winsome Widow (1912), The Wall Street Girl (1912, `Whistle It' for Blanche Ring), The Sun Dodgers (1913), Hands Up (1915), Pom-Pom (1916), Betty (1916), Oh, My Dear! (1918), Tangerine (1921) and The Rose of Stambul (1922, ‘Why Do They Die at the End of a Classical Dance?). In the 1920s, although he continued to turn out happy songs for the Shuberts and other producers, Schwartz generally fared less well, and in 1923 all three musicals for which he provided the score closed during their out of town tryout. His last Broadway score was written in 1928 for the musical Sunny Days, in which some of it was favoured by the fresh voice of the young Jeanette MacDonald.

 Schwartz also paired with Jerome in ‘a singing and talking act’ on the vaudeville stage (Hammerstein’s, December 1908) and again as a music publisher, and, for a period, with the Hungarian variety artist Jenny Dolly (née Janszieka Deutsch) of the Dolly Sisters as a husband.

1903 Mrs Delaney of Newport (William Jerome) Collingwood Opera House, Poughkeepsie, NY 15 September; Grand Opera House 3 November

1904 Piff! Paff! Pouf! (Jerome/Stanislaus Stange) Casino Theater 2 April

1905 The Athletic Girl (George V Hobart) 1 act Colonial Music Hall 15 February

1905 A Yankee Circus on Mars (w Manuel Klein/Jerome/George V Hobart) New York Hippodrome 12 April

1905 Lifting the Lid (Jerome/J J McNally) Aerial Gardens, New Amsterdam Theater 5 June

1905 The Ham Tree (Jerome/Hobart) Lyceum Theater, Rochester 17 August; New York Theater 28 August

1905 Fritz in Tammany Hall (Jerome/McNally) Herald Square Theater 16 October

1905 The White Cat (w Ludwig Englander/Harry B Smith, Jerome/ad H B Smith) New Amsterdam Theater 2 November

1907 Lola from Berlin (Jerome/McNally) Liberty Theater 16 September

1908 Morning, Noon and Night (Jerome/Joseph Herbert) Opera House, Hartford, Conn 31 August; Yorkville Theater 5 October

1909 In Hayti (Jerome/McNally) Circle Theater 30 August

1910 Up and Down Broadway (Jerome/Edgar Smith) Casino Theater 18 July

1912 Over the River (w John Golden/Hobart, H A Du Souchet) Globe Theater 8 January

1912 The Fascinating Widow (w F A Mills/Otto Harbach) Chestnut Street Opera House, Philadelphia 3 April

1913 The Honeymoon Express (Harold Atteridge) Winter Garden Theater 6 February

1913 When Claudia Smiles (Jerome/Leo Ditrichstein) Illinois Theater, Chicago 13 April

1914 When Claudia Smiles (revised version by Anne Caldwell) 39th Street Theater 2 February

1918 See You Later (Loute) new score w William F Peters/ad Guy Bolton, P G Wodehouse Academy of Music, Baltimore 15 April

1919 Monte Cristo jr (w Sigmund Romberg/Atteridge) Winter Garden Theater 12 February

1919 Hello, Alexander (revised The Ham Tree) (Alfred Bryan/Edgar Smith, Emily Young) 44th Street Theater 7 October

1920 Page Mr Cupid (Blanche Merrill/Owen Davis) Shubert Crescent Theater, Brooklyn 17 May

1923 The Bal Tabarin (w Fred J Coots/McElbert Moore/ Moore, Edward Delaney Dunn) Apollo Theater, Atlantic City 30 April

1923 The Courtesan (w Romberg/Atteridge/Harry Wagstaffe Gribble, Atteridge) Parsons' Theater, Hartford, Conn 17 October

1923 That Casey Girl (Jerome/Hobart, Willard Mack) Lyceum, Paterson, NJ 22 October

1926 Nancy (William H Clifford) Mission, Long Beach 16 May

1928 Headin' South (A Bryan et al/Edgar Smith) Keith's Theater, Philadelphia 1 October

1928 Sunny Days (w Eleanor Dunsmuir/Clifford Grey/William Cary Duncan) Imperial Theater 8 February

1942 Full Speed Ahead (Irving Actman, H Leopold Spitalny/Rowland Leigh) Forrest Theater, Philadelphia 25 December

The show opened on 17 May 1920 to poor reviews: 'the music is better than the comedy' 'Page Mr Cupid has not yet been quite whipped into shape' which largely contented themselves with detailing the paltry plot and listing the players. Scheduled for New York, it was announced instead to go on the road for a bit. As far as I can see, it didn't.

This one didn't either. Said to have been a version of the 1926 film The Whole Town's Talking (the authors are the same, the plot seems different), and premiered in Oakland it 'proved a dud'. Arthur Freed's songs were junked in favour of some by Byron Gay, the cast was altered and Clarence Kolb and Arthur Dill relaunched their vehicle at Chicago's Studebaker. About as far to the 'effete east' as a 'Western show' was deemed palatable. It limped as far as Los Angeles and died.

Here's another Byron Gay effort

The barometer has hit 35 degrees. I can no more. And there are so many more ... When I was trying to persuade Gerry Bordman to expand his American Musical Theatre to include cities other than New York, I made him (very, very pre-Internet!) a list of non-New-Yorkish shows ... it has survived multiple computer disasters and I still have it. It runs to 56 pages ...

Oh, lawks! They come from every side ...

This piece played New York. For a fortnight at the minor Majestic Theatre (8-20 May 1911). It was a production of leading man S H Dudley and his 'Southern Enchantement' Company, named for the 1902 (10 November) Ernest Hogan musical which had brought an all-black company to  the New York fringe shortly before In Dahomey got on trhe road in Stamford, Conn. Aida Overton Walker, already a star in her stratosphere, seems to have been pasted into proceedings to deliver this number.

This piece was produced at the Ziegfeld Theatre, Chicago 25 June 1910. The names attached to it at that stage were Harold Atteridge, Phil Schwarz and Helen Bagg. The artists Willie Donlay, Leo Moran and Frances Warren. It ran for three months in Chicago, during which time this number was advertised on the bills. Its subsequent career seems to have been blighted by mismanagement, and, after scandal caused by an ambitious chorine in Pottstown, it seemingly ground to a halt in Tonopah. A featured song 'The difference of a drink or two' was plugged .. but ...

Mr Edward L Swikard, 6215 Greenwood Ave, Chicago, made the scandal columns more often than the literary ones, and Mr Durand was the writer of the songs for the 'from the German' (!)' musical Toyland (1907), a publisher's rep ('western manager for Jerome Schwartz'), the writer of vaudeville sketches and a general 'songwriter and booster' in the 1900s and 1910s.

Another interpolated number. The Isle of Spice was a Chicago musical, and anything but a failure. Produced in 1903 at the La Salle Theater, it visited New York in 1904, and toured and toured .. at some stage Miss Loretta Convey took over the soubrette role of Trinket, and at some other stage this song was inserted to supplement her highly successful 'Peggy Brady'. I see Miss Convey (Mrs Raymond Morse Austin) in the role through 1907-8, so I guess that is when the song happened. In 1907, Louis Lovell Comstock (b Cornish City 15 October 1881; d Springfield 6 July 1971) was the show's conductor. 

This one was produced in 1912. I don't suppose it was intended for the more sophisticated dates, and it is clearly an Adolph Philipp ripoff. But it did the one nights stands around America for a couple of seasons. I see it in Topeka in January 1913 with Knox Wilson ('a funny little German comedian with a saxophone and concertina') topbilled, Vera Allen as her, and, good heavens, Templar Saxe in the cast. 'Eighteen catchy numbers'. Been running two years in Paris. Really? 'The Musical success of all Europe'. Really? Well, the title was a ripoff from an Alla Nazimova play ... the play? Mons Janvier? And who might he have been? I think he has to go in quotes. Yes, Adolph Philipp time, I reckon! Ten numbers from the score were published, and postcards produced ... Mr Arthur Grant Delamater ('the producer of clean plays') sure tried!

I see that Friedlander collaborated with producer Delemater (sic) on something entitled Freckles, produced at Syracuse 15 April 1912, and announced for five touring companies. 

 Delemater later collaborated on other musical pieces.

Here's one which made it to New York, but briefly and un-lovedly. How a good initial thought can be plowed into a flop by incapable people. The chief villain seems to have been the nominal producer, one Anton Scaglia (there were a series, as came out when the show ended up in court). Having secured the rights to William Gillette's ageing hit comedy, All the Comforts of Home, he and his team of performers William Len(n)ox and Vera or Margaret Michael, adapted it as a musical. As it appears, pretty poorly. Small-time songwriter Leon de Costa (Have you seen Stella?) did the songs. It was produced in Washington 31 August 1919, with Herbert Corthell and Gertrude Vanderbilt featured, with New York announced, and greyly received. But, after 4 weeks, they stomped on to New York's Century Theatre. The reception and the lawsuits were both predictable. Leon de Costa, whose score (all but this number) had been replaced, rejoiced in his $4000 cheque from Remick's but sued for royalties. Fat chance! The producers were already in trouble for not paying the cast ...  In spite of efforts to rewrite and re-musick, and of large announcements, the piece died, seemingly, in Syracuse. 

Note. The expression 'fifty-fifty' had become current a few years earlier. Charles Dickson had announced a musical under that title a few years earlier, and a number of vaudeville skits titled themselves thus.

Here's one from Los Angeles. Let's Get Married. Brain child of leading man Walter Lawrence, rewritten by Miles Overhalt, re-rewritten by William H Clifford, songs by William Loraine and LA society girl Josephine Ihmsen. Tried at the Spreckles Theatre, San Diego (19 September 1914), then 21 September at the Los Angeles Morosco for five weeks. A splendid hometown welcome for Jess Dandy, Frances Cameron and Mr Lawrence, and for the libretto. The musical part filled in the gaps. The piece moved to the Gaiety, San Francisco for two weeks ... by which stage this already-popular vaudeville number had obviously been inserted

But that was not quite the end of Let's Get Married. Re-re-rewritten, retitled What's Going On?, it opened at Boston's Cort Theater 25 January, with Lawrence and Miss Cameron still in place, for 'an indefinite run'. I hear nothing more, so I fear that run was limited.

Byron Gay (d Los Angeles December 1945) was a local writer who had his first song success with this ditty. He also contributed 'Gasoline Gus and his Jitney Bus' and later 'Avalon' and 'Horses' to the music shelves.

Another West Coast Show which didn't make it had a much better pedigree. Produced by Oliver Morosco, written by him with Elmer B Harris and Earl Carroll, songs by Harry Tierney and Alf Bryan, starring Blanche Ring and Charles Winninger ... What's Next was produced at the San Diego Strand and the Los Angeles Majestic. Morosco announced it for New York, with exaggerated publicity and denials of closure, but the piece did not follow So Long, Letty and Canary Cottage to success, and folded in Chicago in December.

The best-liked song was a number called 'Cleopatra', which the Shuberts snapped up for Al Jolson and forbade Miss Ring to sing in vaudeville. She was stranded with her interpolated (in the dying weeks) Irish song which, in spite of being advertised as the equal of 'Bedelia', it appears no one wanted.

Another from the west coast. A 1926 'review' with no book credit, and filmland song credits: Earl(e) Foxe 'the Beau Brummell of the movies', was a certified 'film star' who had appeared in the screenic A Trip to Chinatown. Lynn Cowan (male) acted and composed for the screen. The comic duo of Olsen and Johnson were genuine vaudeville top-billers. I suspect the 'book' which Monkey Business didn't have was probably the work of Los Angeles theatre treasurer/manager Michael Corper who had already ventured as a musical comedy writer (Up in the Air). The piece was produced at LA's Majestic Theatre, and appears to have been a series of O&J sketches ...

Earle Fox would not have been pleased that after adding an 'e' to his christian name, the publishers dropped it off. And yes, the now hideously hackneyed cliché 'Dream House' was bursting into fashion.

I had to ask for help on this one! It survived a very short time. Thanks James Harris, Dwight Casey, Bryan Kesselman, Stephen Cole ..

And Stephen Susskind.

Perhaps they should have waited a little before publishing the songs? But the songs survived. Thank you, Nat 'King' Cole. 1956 was the age of the recorded rather than the printed show tune ...

Less ambitious, but much much more successful was the Philadelphia show Coming thro' the Rye produced by George Lederer at the Casino Theater, 25 May 1905. It had a respectable musical part by Baldwin Sloane and John S Hillier, and a libretto of strength by George V Hobart. It proved a clear success in Philly, and set out on the road playing part-weeks to enthusiastic audiences. Will J Block took over the management some time soon, and the cast was boosted with his favourite players including leading lady Amelia Stone and handsome vocalist John Parks who had both been playing for him in another musical The Geezer of Geek. The show passed through New York in January 1906 (Herald Square Theatre, 9 January 34 perfs), but Norton relates that by the time it was next seen in the city, on a one-week date, almost the whole score had been changed. Several of the new numbers had words by one Jeff T Branen, a striving (not for very long) Chicago music publisher. So I am guessing that our song was interpolated some time in 1906.

Herbert Ingraham 'of the Palm Garden, Toledo' turned out a number of songs including 'Because I'm Married Now', 'Someone ought to tell her husband', 'Billy Boy' et al.

This is one of which I can find no trace of existence. Douglas Fairbanks starred in a play titled All for a Girl. Percy Wenrich and Raymond Peck announced they were writing a musical thus named. But this one seems to have emanated from Chicago, the 'all my own work' of Mr Ernest Burnett.  Ernie Burnett remains remembered these days for one song: he wrote the tune to 'Come to me my melancholy baby'. The tune, not the words, which were the poetry of George A Norton. Nevertheless, I have just read Ernie's 1945 interview about how 'his' melancholy baby lyric came about. Ah, showbiz!

I know next-to-nothing about E M Burnett, Pearl Leonard or Ted Browne ..

The 'hit' of WHICH season? Where? Ah, showbiz!

This is a sad one. And another not to the credit if Chicago and its playgoers ...

Patrons at the La Salle Theatre were dismayed at a musical with a coherent storyline in a show dubbed 'plotty and almost devoid of chorus [girls]' and even the performance of Miss Arbarbanell, fresh from The Merry Widow, and music from the quill of Louis Hirsch, could not stop it from being 'a dismal failure'. The La Salle turned back to froth, frivolity and legs, and Molly and I sank.

The title, in an era of meaningless catch-word titles, was taken from the popular song 'Molly and I and the baby'.

Another, earlier, La Salle musical was The Girl at the Gate (1 September 1912). Seems they didn't want to pay for artwork. 

JEROME, Ben[jamin M] (b New York, 6 April 1882; d Huntingdon Station (Brightwater), NY, 27 March 1938). The conductor at Chicago's La Salle Theater for some years, Ben Jerome was also one of the chief purveyors of music to the Chicago theatre during its heyday as a home of original musicals in the early years of the 20th century. 

 Jerome first came to the fore as a songwriter when he and lyricist Matt Woodward had the song ‘Blooming Lize’ interpolated into the Broadway musical The Chaperons (1902). Since the score of The Chaperons was written by publisher Isidore Witmark, and he had ensured that his contract with the producer specifically forbade interpolations, the song had to be withdrawn, and the furious Jerome took vast advertisements in the trade press damning the ‘jealous’ publisher and his work, and boosting and promoting himself and his work. ‘Blooming Lize’ turned up in the touring version of Mam’selle ‘Awkins (1902) instead. Thoroughly noticed, as a result of the brouhaha and his subsequent bannered boast of an $1,100 advance for the song ‘Let Us Swear by the Pale Moonlight’, Jerome went on to interpolate songs into The Wizard of Oz (1902, ‘For I’m the Wizard of Oz’), The Rogers Brothers in Harvard (1902, ‘Ain’t it Tough to be so Absent-Minded’), Weary Willie Walker (1902, ‘A Soldier in the Ranks, That’s All’), Huckleberry Finn (‘When Little Tommy Sawyer Saw the Circus’), When Reuben Comes to Town (‘At the Ball Tonight’), The Girl from Dixie (1903,‘Love in an Orchard’, ‘Emelie Lou’) and into several of Gus Hill’s fifty-cent circuit shows, including no less than eight numbers amongst those used in the cartoon musical Alphonse and Gaston (1902). Three additional songs for a revised revesion of the musical comedy The Defender (1903) got him a co-composer credit. He also wrote some material for the vaudeville programmes at New York’s Crystal Gardens, but a burlesque, The Queen of Ballyhoo Bey, written for the Cherry Blossom Grove got cancelled at the last minute when Jerome got into a barney with the management.

 His first full-scale musical, written after his engagement in Chicago, was The Isle of Spice. It had a fine run of 143 performances in its little theatre, another good season in Boston and took in 80 performances on Broadway as part of a considerable touring life and, although others of his Chicago pieces did less well on the east coast, they also had extraordinarily extended lives on the touring circuits. The Royal Chef played no less than 38 weeks in its initial Chicago run, followed by nine in St Louis before going on to the first of its many tours, whilst The Yankee Regent (‘entire production under the direction of...’) notched up 20 weeks at home base before taking a similar route. In November 1905, however, after another set-to with more-powerful-than-he, Jerome ‘severed his connection’ with the La Salle and headed east to make his headquarters in New York.

 From 1908 Jerome provided music for several shows at New York's Casino Theater, including the 1908 revue The Mimic World, Mr Hamlet of Broadway (54 performances) and the successful Sam Bernard piece He Came from Milwaukee (117 performances), but he returned west, and to the La Salle, in 1911. Of one of his latter day pieces there, Louisiana Lou, featuring the young Sophie Tucker, an east coast journal remarked, in what was clearly intended as a compliment, that it `comes closer to Broadway standards of glitter and girls than anything that has worn the trademark of Chicago in recent memory'. But it did not have the kind of life that The Isle of Spice and The Royal Chef had had.

 Jerome subsequently provided individual songs to the scores of several new and several made-over shows, including the German A Modern Eve (`A Quiet Evening at Home') and the local Queen High (`My Lady'), but he returned only once more to Broadway in a more substantial way when he collaborated on the music for H H Frazee's production of Yes, Yes, Yvette.

 Jerome's most popular individual songs included `By the Pale Moonlight', `Melancholy Mose', `Take Me Back to Chicago', `The Gumshoe Man' and `Lamb, Lamb, Lamb'.

 

1902 Alphonse and Gaston (w others/Matt Woodward et al) Bridgeton, NJ 14 October; Metropolis Theater 27 December

1903 The Darling of the Gallery Gods (Matt C Woodward, John Gilroy/George Hobart) 1 act Crystal Gardens 22 June

1903 Dress Parade (Woodward, Gilroy/Hobart) 1 act Crystal Gardens 22 June

1903 Lifting the Cup (Woodward, Nicholas H Biddle/Hobart) 1 act Crystal Gardens 27 July

1903 The Isle of Spice, or His Majesty of Nicobar (w Paul Schindler/Allen Lowe, George E Stoddard) La Salle Theater, Chicago, 12 September; Majestic Theater, New York 23 August 1904

1903 The Belle of Newport (revised The Defenders) (w Charles F Dennee/Allen Lowe) La Salle Theater, Chicago 21 December

1904 The Royal Chef (Stoddard, Charles S Taylor) La Salle Theater, Chicago 28 March

1905 The Yankee Regent (Charles S Adelman, Irving Lee Blumenstock) La Salle Theater, Chicago 19 August

1906 Thebe (George Siler, Blumenstock) 1 act Forest Park Highlands, St Louis; Majestic Theater, Chicago July, Proctors 23rd Street, New York 3 September

1908 Mr Hamlet of Broadway (Edward Madden/Edgar Smith) Casino Theater 23 December

1910 He Came from Milwaukee (w Louis Hirsch/Madden/Mark Swan [Edgar Smith]) Casino Theater 21 September

1911 Louisiana Lou (Addison Burkhardt, Frederick Donaghey) La Salle Theater, Chicago 3 September

1912 The Girl at the Gate (Will Hough, Donaghey) La Salle Theater, Chicago 1 September

1913 A Trip to Washington (Henry Blossom) La Salle Theater, Chicago 24 August

1927 Yes, Yes, Yvette (w Phil Charig/Irving Caesar/James Montgomery) Harris Theater 3 October

 

This wasn't really meant to be graveyard blog for shows which were intended for New York, but died on the road. Rather to showcase some non-New Yorkish musicals ... but I've encountered ephemera from so many dreadfully lifeless shows ... that, well, take this one, for example: J J Shubert and Lee Shubert's Oh, Uncle! Book and lyrics by the voluminous Edgar Smith. Achingly old plot about nephew in love with a dancer, and rich and reverend Uncle tricked into a liaison with another chorine etc etc. Score .... well ... originally (or just this number?) L Wolfe Gilbert, Alex Sullivan and Nat Vincent. But, it seems, largely or wholly replaced after a few weeks by tunes by Jacques Presburg and Charles Jules. The show had, it seems, and on-again-off-again premiere in Washington (24 March 1919), was pulled, re-cast, re-written and opened at the Shubert, Philadelphia 19 May. It was still mooted for New York, and then for the Casino when that theatre's 'negro problem play' failed to materialise. It also failed to materialise, but it did not go away and die. It had further re-writes as The Wrong Number and then as Oh! What a girl and arrived at Shubert Theater 28 July ... to be met by the Actors' Strike. It survived 68 performances at the Shubert, then the Central. This song survived throughout and probably into the shrunken version of the show which the Shuberts later staged in vaudeville. 

The only slightly notable thing about Oh Uncle (no comma, no exclamation point) was that the original brief casting included the great London Gaiety Theatre comedienne, Connie Ediss.

PS I said Edgar Smith was prolific ...

SMITH, Edgar [McPhail] (b Brooklyn, NY, 9 December 1857; d Bayside, NY, 8 March 1938). Actor turned all-purpose penman through a long career in the musical theatre.

 Educated at Pennsylvania Military Academy, Edgar Smith began his association with the theatre as an actor at the age of 21, and had his first experience as a dramatist when he wrote a comedy-drama, Love and Duty to be played by a touring company called Dickson’s Sketch Club of which he was a member. His first musical piece was a burlesque, Little Lohengrin, adapted from an English original for Alice Harrison and the Chicago Casino, but -- after a first taste of Broadway honours with the song “Once in a Thousand Years” interpolated into the short-lived Boston show The Pyramid (1887) -- he was quickly plunged into the very centre of America's musical theatre activity when he was engaged as resident dramaturg and sometime supporting actor at the Casino Theater. He held this position for more than six years, assisting German-born house director Max Freeman and others in the adaptation of the French opéras-comiques and Austrian Operetten which were the theatre's main fare, and intermittently appearing in them  as well (Dimoklos in Apollo, Grog in La Grande-Duchesse, Clampas in The Drum Major, Notary in The Marquis, The Talisman, Nowalksy in Der arme Jonathan etc). 

 After leaving the Casino, Smith appeared with Thomas Q Seabrooke in Tabasco (1894), as a result of which he authored a sequel to that successful vehicle for its star under the title The Grand Vizier. It was not successful. He also provided the text for the Casino Theater's successor to its revusical Passing Show, a part-revue part-burlesque called The Merry World, and for an extravaganza, Miss Philadelphia, staged with great success in Philadelphia, before taking on a new position -- far from the refinements of Continental comic opera -- as house writer to the Weber and Fields organization. 

 Over the next six and a half years, Smith turned out outlines, sketches and scenes for the part-revue, part-burlesque entertainments which were the characteristic productions of Weber and Fields. The basic entertainment was one which allowed for movable parts and regularly, during the run of a piece, an entire one-act or two-scene burlesque of a currently popular play would be inserted. These, too, Smith was more often than not called upon to write, in collaboration with composer John Stromberg (Onions on Carrots, Sapolio on Sappho, Waffles on Raffles, Trilby, Arizona etc). Amongst the songs which emerged from the collaboration there was one that lasted: `Ma Blushin' Rosie'. 

 At the same time Smith continued to work for other producers, adapting -- or rather americanizing -- Ivan Caryll's The Gay Parisienne as The Girl from Paris (including the lyrics to new songs by Nat D Mann), the enormously successful English musical The French Maid and Harry Greenbank's Monte Carlo for the voluminously importing E E Rice, and doing what seems to have been a major rewrite on the French vaudeville-opérette L'Auberge du Tohu-bohu for American consumption. He also worked on two original musical plays, The Little Host and Sweet Anne Page, which, in spite of starring Della Fox and Lulu Glaser respectively, failed to catch on, and on the ‘hypnotic musical farce comedy’ Bimbo of Bombay which although judged ‘above the average of the musical farce comedies..’ didn’t go far.

 In 1903, at the break-up of the association of Weber and Fields, Smith went with Weber, and for two seasons performed his old job for Weber's Music Hall, a job which included a collaboration with Victor Herbert on The Dream City and, 20 years after the first time, a second Lohengrin burlesque, The Magic Knight. However, he did not give up the connection with Fields for whom he re-manufactured one of his finest rôles, Henry Pecksniff in the americanized version of the British musical The Girl Behind the Counter(1907). In 1910 he turned out what would remain his most famous lyric: the words to Baldwin Sloane's `Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl' as performed by Marie Dressler in Fields’s production of Tillie's Nightmare. 

 When Weber and Fields came back together again, Smith resumed his old position and supplied them with Hokey-Pokey, Hanky-Panky and Roly Poly, but the bulk of the work of his latter days was for the Shuberts for whom he ended his career as he had begun it, adapting Continental musical shows for the American stage with the same kind of hand with which he had written for Weber and Fields. The last work to which his name was attached, 45 years after his first show, was an American version of Das Land des Lächelns which closed out of town.

1886 Little Lohengrin American version of the burlesque by Frederick Bowyer with new music by Fred Solomon Casino Theater, Chicago 13 September

1887 The Pyramid additional material (Star Theater)

1887 Madelon (La Petite Mademoiselle) American version (Casino Theater)

1888 Nadjy (Les Noces improvisées) American version of English version (Casino Theater)

1889 La Tosca’s Reception or a Moonlight Dip (w Richard F Carroll) (Rentz-Santley Co) London Theater September

1889 Les Brigands American version w Max Freeman (Casino Theater)

1889 The Drum Major (La Fille du tambour-major) American version w Freeman (Casino Theater)

1890 Poor Jonathan (Der arme Jonathan) American version (Casino Theater)

1890 The Brazilian (Francis Chassaigne ad Gustave Kerker) American version of William Lestoq and Max Pemberton’s English version, adapted from a text by H B Farnie (Casino Theater)

1890 Apollo (Das Orakel) American version w Helen F Tretbar (Casino Theater)

1890 The Grand-Duchess (La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein) American adaptation of C H Kenney's English version (Casino Theater)

1890 La Fille de Madame Angot American adapatation of English version (Casino Theater)

1890 You and I (later U & I) (w Richard Carroll) New Worcester Theater, Worcester, Mass 22 August; Globe Theater, Boston 25 August, Standard Theater 2 May 1891

1891 Fleurette (Emma Steiner/w Mrs C Doremus) Standard Theater 24 August

1895 The Grand Vizier (Frederick Gagel) Grand Opera House, Decatur, Ill 9 January, Harlem Opera House 4 March

1895 Nancy Lee revised version of Fred Miller’s libretto (People’s Theater, Cincinnati)

1896 Miss Philadelphia (Herman Perlet, [Gagel]) Park Theater, Philadelphia 27 April, Star Theatre 27 December 1897

1896 The Girl from Paris (The Gay Parisienne) American version (Herald Square Theater)

1897 Under the Red Globe (John Stromberg) 1 act Weber and Fields Music Hall 18 February

1897 Bimbo of Bombay (pasticcio) Star Theater, Elizabeth, NJ 11 September

1897 Pousse-Café (Stromberg/w Louis de Lange) 1 act Weber and Fields Music Hall 2 December

1897 The Worst Born (Stromberg/w Louis de Lange) 1 act Weber and Fields Music Hall 2 December

1897 The Wee Minister (Stromberg) burlesque in Pousse-Café Weber and Fields Music Hall 2 December

1897 The Way-High-Man (Stromberg) burlesque in Pousse-Café Weber and Fields Music Hall  20 December

1897 The French Maid American version (Herald Square Theater)

1898 The Con-Curers (Stromberg/w de Lange) burlesque in Pousse-Café Weber and Fields Music Hall 17 March

1898 Monte Carlo American version (Herald Square Theater)

1898 Hurly Burly (Stromberg/w H B Smith) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 8 September

1898 Hotel Topsy Turvy (L'Auberge du Tohu-bohu) American adaptation of Arthur Sturgess's English version (Herald Square Theater)

1898 Cyranose de Bric-a-Brac (Stromberg) burlesque in Hurly Burly Weber and Fields Music Hall 3 November

1898 The Heathen (Stromberg) burlesque in Hurly Burly Weber and Fields’ Music Hall 3 November

1898 The Little Host (W T Francis, Thomas Chilvers/w de Lange) Herald Square Theater 26 December

1899 Catherine (Stromberg/w H B Smith) burlesque in Hurly Burly Weber and Fields' Music Hall 19 January

1899 Helter Skelter (Stromberg/H B Smith) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 6 April

1899 Mother Goose (ex-Bo-Peep) (Gagel, Fred Eustis/George Bowles ad w de Lange) 14th Street Theater 1 May

1899 Zaza (Stromberg) burlesque in Helter Skelter Weber and Fields' Music Hall

1899 Whirl-I-Gig (Stromberg/H B Smith) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 21 September

1899 The Girl from Martin’s (Stromberg/H B Smith) burlesque in Whirl-I-Gig Weber and Fields Music Hall 21 September

1899 The Other Way (Stromberg/H B Smith) burlesque in Whirl-I-Gig Weber and Fields Music Hall 26 October

1899 Barbara Fidgety (Stromberg/H B Smith) burlesque in Whirl-I-Gig Weber and Fields' Music Hall 7 December

1900 Sapolio (Stromberg/H B Smith) burlesque in Whirl-I-Gig Weber and Fields' Music Hall 8 March

1900 Fiddle Dee Dee (Stromberg) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 6 September

1900 Quo Vass Is! (Stromberg) burlesque in Fiddle Dee Dee Weber and Fields' Music Hall 6 September

1899 In Gay Paree revised version Casino Theater 6 November

1900 Arizona (burlesque) (Stromberg) burlesque in Fiddle Dee Dee Weber and Fields' Music Hall 18 October

1900 Sweet Anne Page (W H Neidlinger/w de Lange) Manhattan Theater 3 December

1900 Exhibit II (comprising The Royal Family and The Gay Lord Quex burlesques)(Stromberg) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 20 December

1901 Captain Jinks (burlesque) (Stromberg) burlesque in Fiddle Dee Dee Weber and Fields’ Music Hall 4 April

1901 Hoity Toity (Stromberg) including burlesques on Madame Butterfly and Diplomacy Weber and Fields' Music Hall 5 September

1901 De Pleurisy (Stromberg) burlesque in Hoity Toity Weber and Fields' Music Hall 5 September

1901 Home, Sweet Home (various) Academy of Music, Jersey City 30 September

1901 A Man From Mars (Stromberg) burlesque in Hoity Toity Weber and Fields’ Music Hall 14 November

1902 The Curl and the Judge (Stromberg) burlesque in Hoity Toity Weber and Fields' Music Hall 9 January

1902 Du Hurry (Stromberg) burlesque in Hoity Toity Weber and Fields' Music Hall 20 March

1902 Twirly Whirly (Stromberg, Francis) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 11 September

1902 I, Mary McPain (Stromberg) burlesque in Twirly Whirly 11 September

1902 [Humming Birds and] Onions (W T Francis) burlesque in Twirly Whirly Weber and Fields' Music Hall 6 November

1902 The Stickiness of Gelatine (Francis) burlesque in Twirly Whirly Weber and Fields’ Music Hall 18 December

1903 The Big Little Princess (Francis) burlesque in Twirly Whirly Weber and Fields' Music Hall 26 February

1903 Whoop-Dee-Doo (Francis) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 24 September

1903 Looney Park (Francis) burlesque in Whoop-de-Doo Weber and Fields' Music Hall 24 September

1903 Waffles (Francis) burlesque in Whoop-de-doo Weber and Fields' Music Hall 10 December

1904 An English Daisy American version (Casino Theater)

1904 Higgledy Piggledy (Maurice Levi) Weber's Music Hall 20 October

1905 The College Widower (Levi)burlesque in Higgledy Piggledy Weber's Music Hall 5 January

1906 Twiddle Twaddle (Levi) Weber's Music Hall 1 January

1906 The Squaw Man's Girl of the Golden West (Levi) burlesque in Twiddle TwaddleWeber's Music Hall 26 February

1906 The Little Cherub American adaptation of English text (Criterion Theater)

1906 The Dream City (Victor Herbert) 1 act Weber's Music Hall 25 December

1906 The Magic Knight (Herbert) 1 act Weber's Music Hall 25 December

1907 The Girl Behind the Counter American version (Herald Square Theater)

1907 Hip! Hip! Hooray! (Gus Edwards) Weber's Music Hall 10 October

1908 The Merry-Go-Round (G Edwards/Paul West) Circle Theater 25 April

1908 The Mimic World (Ben Jerome, Seymour Furth) Casino Theater 9 July

1908 Mr Hamlet of Broadway (Jerome/Edward Madden) Casino Theater 23 December

1909 Philpoena (part of Higgledly Piggledy) (Levi) 1 act Aldwych Theatre, London 27 February

1909 Les Collegettes (Levi) revised The College Widower Aldwych Theatre, London 27 February

1909 Old Dutch (Victor Herbert/w George V Hobart) Herald Square Theater 22 November

1910 Tillie's Nightmare (A Baldwin Sloane) Great Northern Theater, Chicago 10 January, Herald Square Theater 5 May

1910 Up and Down Broadway (Jean Schwartz/William Jerome) Casino Theater 18 July

1910 He Came From Milwaukee (Ben Jerome, Louis Hirsch, Melville Ellis/Edward Madden/Mark Swan) revised version Casino Theater 21 September

1911 La Belle Paree (Jerome Kern, Frank Tours) Winter Garden 20 March

1911 A Certain Party (Robert Hood Bowers) Wallack's Theater 24 April

1911 The Kiss Waltz (Liebeswalzer) American libretto (Casino Theater)

1912 Hokey-Pokey (Sloane, Francis) Broadway Theater 8 February

1912 Bunty Bulls and Strings (Sloane/E Ray Goetz) 2 scenes Broadway Theater 8 February

1912 Hanky-Panky (Sloane/Goetz) Broadway Theater 5 August

1912 Roly Poly (Sloane/Goetz) Weber and Fields' Music Hall 21 November

1912 Without the Law (Sloane/Goetz) burlesque in Roly Poly Weber and Fields' Music Hall 21 November

1912 The Sun Dodgers (Sloane/Goetz) Broadway Theater 30 November

1913 Lieber Augustin (aka Miss Caprice) (Der liebe Augustin) American version (Casino Theater)

1913 The Pleasure Seekers (Goetz/Goetz) Winter Garden Theater 3 November

1915 The Peasant Girl (Polenblut) American version w Herbert Reynolds, Harold Atteridge (44th St Theater)

1915 Hands Up (Cole Porter, William Daly et al/Goetz) Shubert Theater, New Haven, 7 June revised version (w Sigmund Romberg/Goetz, William Jerome/Goetz) 44th Street Theater 22 July

1915 The Blue Paradise (Ein Tag im Paradies) American version w add music by Sigmund Romberg (Casino Theater)

1915 Alone at Last (Endlich allein) American version w Joseph W Herbert, Matthew Woodward (Shubert Theater)

1916 Robinson Crusoe Jr (Romberg, James Hanley/Atteridge) Winter Garden Theater 17 February

1916 Step This Way revised The Girl Behind the Counter w Goetz, Bert Grant (Shubert Theater)

1916 The Girl from Brazil (Die schöne Schwedin) American version w Matthew Woodward, Sigmund Romberg (44th Street Theater)

1916 Lieutenant Gus (Wenn zwei sich lieben) American version w Woodward (44th Street Theater)

1917 My Lady's Glove (ex-The Beautiful Unknown) (Die schöne Unbekannte) American version w Edward Paulton, Romberg (Lyric Theater)

1917 The Golden Goose (Silvio Hein/Herbert Reynolds, Schuyler Greene) Apollo Theater, Atlantic City 29 November

1918 Fancy Free (Augustus Barratt/w Dorothy Donnelly) Astor Theater 11 April

1918 The Melting of Molly (Romberg/w Cyrus Wood) Broadhurst Theater 30 December

1919 Oh! What a Girl (ex-Oh! Uncle, ex-The Wrong Number) (Charles Jules, Jacques Presburg/w Edward Clark) Shubert Theater 28 July

1919 Hello, Alexander revised The Ham Tree (Jean Schwartz/Alfred Bryan) 44th Street Theater 7 October

1921 The Whirl of New York revised The Belle of New York w Sidney Mitchell, Al Goodman, Lew Pollock, Leo Edwardes (Winter Garden Theater)

1922 Red Pepper (Albert Gumble, Owen Murphy/Howard Rogers, Murphy/w Emily Young) Shubert Theater 29 May

1928 Headin' South (J Schwartz/A Bryan et al) Keith's Theater, Philadelphia 1 October

1929 The Street Singer (Niclas Kempner, Sam Timberg/Graham John) Shubert Theater 17 September

1930 Hello Paris (aka So This is Paris) (Charles D Locke, Frank Bannister/Russell M Tarbox, Michael Cleary) Shubert Theater 15 November

1930 Prince Chu Chang (Das Land des Lächelns) American adaptation w Henry Clarke (Shubert Theater, Newark)