Some while ago, I wrote an article about "The (rest of the) American Musical Theatre" featuring a bundle of musical shows of yesteryear that didn't play New York.
https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-rest-of-american-musical-did-you.html
I said, at the time, that I would add to it, from time to time, as further pieces turned up. But I can't. There are too many of them of which music sheets or other ephemera turn up regularly. So I'm going to bundle some of them in here and then, bit by bit, try to find out what and when they were.
NOBODY'S GIRL
A few well-known names on there. Ilse MARVENGA [MERLING, Adele Mary Ilse] (b Bremen 26 February 1896; d 30 September 1997) had been the original Käthe in The Student Prince. Busby Berkeley needs no explanation. John E Young, Gus Kahn .. but William Ortmann? Friedrich Wilhelm Ortmann or Raumann (b 24 April 1887; New York ) was a Detroit man, son of German immigrants, who had returned to Germany to study music. Quite where and when he encountered Miss Marvenga, I know not. I mean, he was a married man. She was brought to America to star in his flop Naughty Diana (1923). But they worked and travelled together as soprano and pianist for a considerable period. Anyway, 'Willi-Ortmann' didn't have much success as a musical-theatre composer, Frühling im Herbst (1920), produced in Berlin being his big moment. This one got coverage (three local boys!) at its Detroit production, but doesn't seem to have moved on from there. And who the blazes were 'Adaart'?
WITHIN THE LOOP
produced at the Teck Theater in Buffalo (22 November 1915) in preparation for a run at the American Music Hall in Chicago clearly underwent some heavy rewriting in rehearsals. Originally billed as the work of the multi-talented comedian Joseph Herbert, it dissolved into being credited to lyricist Ballard MacDonald and comedian Dave Lewis. Which seems to indicate that the comic star rewrote his material .... The Messrs Shubert advertised it at first as a 'musical comedy', then as 'a revue in 7 scenes', then 8 scenes. The bookwriting credit didn't make it to the sheet music. There were 125 chorines, 34 songs by Harry Carroll and MacDonald (mostly?) endless costumes ... and the whole darn thing -- which actress Anna Wheaton tells us the cast called 'Within the Soup' -- fizzled out in a week of one nighters. After which the scenery went up in flames during the get out. I suppose Mr Shubert lit the match.
PRINCE OF TATTERS
Produced at Oshkosh 24 April 1902, by Charles H Yale and Sidney R Ellis, as a vehicle for Dutch dialect actor/singer Al H Wilson, who had toured for them the previous season in something titled Watch on the Rhine.
Wilson played Prince Hugo de Reppert, the title said it all, and the piece -- in which his 'golden voice' was lavishly displayed in a score including a couple of yodel songs -- proved good for a considerable life in mostly minor touring dates. Sounds like John Hansen, no?
LISTEN TO ME
Another one of those meaningless titles of 100 years ago. But this show actually had a life.
Who were these folk? Well, they were actually busy professionals in the 'country' theatre of the early 1900s to 1920s.
Fred E Le COMTE (20 September 1868-25 May 1929) had been an advance agent, would be later manager of the Orpheum in Sioux City and [Benjamin] Frank[lin] FLESHER (5 October 1869- 23 June 1931) was a sometime band-leader. The two came together at the end of the century, running the Morey Stock Company, and moved into touring musicals -- Joe Howard's The Flower of the Ranch, The Prince of Tonight, A Modern Eve, September Morn and, in 1917, an original piece written by a young Mr Charles GEORGE [McGINNISS, Charles George] (b 8 May 1893; d 3 October 1960) from Hagerstown, Maryland. The prolific Mr George (Fifty-Fifty, Oh Dickey, My Once in a While, Go Easy Mabel, A China Doll &c) supplied book, lyrics and music and played the lead role in the cast of 36. The producers must have been pleased, for they followed up with more of Mr George's pieces .. and the team was still together in 1921 when Listen to Me was put out.
Produced at Waukesha 25 August, it was a happy piece of light entertainment of little pretension. The plot, such as it was, had Mr J Lucifer Devil sending the six temptations into the world for the undoing of man and 'opens in hell, jumps to the polar regions, switches to a mythical Candy Land, and winds up on the stage of a New York Theatre' providing thus many a popular scene for comedians Billy Moore and Billy Murphy, soprano Maude Baxter, dancer Barbara Bronell and Ross Robertson as Mr Devil. The show was still on the road in 1923
by which time Miss Bronell has become the main attraction, leading her to have the firm's next and most successful show A China Doll built round her.
THE TWO JANES
If Listen to Me survived through two years, The Two Janes seemingly lasted two weeks.
'
The comments of the Philly press say it all ..
THE MELTING OF MOLLY
Irene Franklin was a very popular and successful performer, but she did get involved with a few odd shows. Within the Loop (see above) was one. This one seems hard to find ...
The title is well-known. It was that of a 1912 novel by Kentucky authoress Maria Thompson Daviess, which became one of the most popular bits of light reading of its time ..
We know that the novel was made into a musical. It was played in New York in 1918 for a dozen weeks under the Shubert management, with a book by Edgar Smith and music by Sigmund Romberg. Isabelle Lowe was Molly, and Charles Purcell was leading man. But this piece of music is dated 1916. and the authorship is credited to Miss Franklin and her pianist husband,
Burt Green. And yes ... 'a new American comedy with intderpolated songs' book by Mrs Daviess and Miss Franklin .. four new songs .. 'orchestra de luxe' of six string players (harp included) .. produced by Frederic McKay, of The Yankee Girl and The Wall Street Girl, seemingly in Detroit around the beginning of November. The company closed down in December saying that they would re-open in New York in the new year. They didn't.
DICK WHITTINGTON
was a Shubert import from London's Drury Lane. It seems to have begun at the Boston Majestic, and made it to Philadelphia, but not New York in its some four months of life ...
OUT ON BROADWAY
was in reality hardly a 'musical comedy', more a vaudeville act.
It seems to have seen the light of stage in this form at Proctors Fifth Avenue, in December 1913: 'Will J Ward and his matinee girls 'a miniature musical comedy, brimful of comedy, mimic and excellent piano playing. Mr Ward sang several songs in his usual fine singing voice and captured a big hit. Miss [Irene] Martin ... did herself great credit' 'a capable offering'. Ward (b Providence RI 1884; d Brooklyn September 1949) was a headliner on the Keith circuit for 25 years, and later in New York nightclubs.
PRETTY BABY
was, I think, another Keith's offering. This one seemingly from 1919.
This one -- a product of the Russky-Japsky war of 1904 -- was produced at the New Orpheum in Harlem in September of the year. Six principals 40 chorines, and a swatch of speciality acts, action (centred on a couple of Russian Jewish gents ) set in the Japanese Embassy in Korea ...
It progressed thence to the Columbia Music Hall in Boston, then to Canada, Brooklyn ... became billed as a comic opera .. holding its own with the Weber and Fields burlesque productions .. for several months
And to end this little handsful ... a Shubertian mystery
Jean Schwartz. I mean, that's a big name. Jack Scholl and Max Rich? They were associated on a short-lived revue at the Forrest Theatere in 1934. Producing Associates? Well, one of them was J J Shubert. And possibly Lee. Producing liaisons were a bit mucky hereabouts. They had been touring operetta (Blossom Time, The Student Prince, The Land of Smiles) around this time. The cover looks rather Austro-alpine ... Ah! The back of the cover tells us that it is based on Ein Tag in Paradies (sic). Music by Rumshinsky. Joseph Rumshinsky of the Yiddish Folk Theater? Produced at the Grand Theater, Chicago 4 March 1933 ... book by Harry Clark and Kay Kenney ...
