Register, whose editor sniffed, “Irving Berlin has no place in society.” Berlin’s wife’s eighteen-year-old sister lived with a Nazi diplomat and undiplomatically showed off her charm bracelet with a diamond swastika to her brother-in-law.
Berlin, who wound up agnostic, composed America’s most widely played secular yuletide song, “White Christmas,” and the most popular Easter song, “Easter Parade.” He also created “God Bless America,” whose royalties go to the officially homophobic Boy Scouts of America (the British-founded group’s UK branch is not anti-gay).
Q : Who made the most money from a play in the shortest time?
A : Noel Coward claimed to have dashed off
Private Lives
(1930) in a few days. Anne Nichols wrote
Abie’s Irish Rose
(1922) in three days (in hertwenties). The “sentimental comedy” supporting religious tolerance (a Jewish-Irish couple) broke Broadway’s record for longest-running play and held it for fourteen years, though for three years producers had declined it. Nichols eventually used her own house for collateral to help finance her play. Though she’s barely remembered today, the
New York Times
recorded in 1962 that
Abie’s Irish Rose
“brought its author spectacular fame and fortune, earning her more money than any single play has ever earned a writer.”
Q : When did music become more than mere entertainment on Broadway?
A : One of the benchmarks was December 27, 1927, in
Show Boat
, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, when the first-night Manhattan audience got a shock that made several gasp: the curtain rose on a chorus of sweating black stevedores loading cotton while singing, “Niggers all work on the Mississippi. Niggers all work while the white folks play.…” The two Jewish artists confronted theatergoers with an aspect of American life that they’d preferred not to think about, let alone paid to learn more about. The musical, which dealt with interracial love and became an instant, often-revived classic, was based on the novel by best-seller Edna Ferber (
So Big, Giant
).
Q : On a lighter note, what about musicals and swimming pools?
A : Though
Miss Saigon
boasted an actual helicopter, it wasn’t until 1952, in
Wish You Were Here
, that a swimming pool was put onstage in a musical. Alas, most critics found it shallow. Conversely, the first musical to take place
in
a swimming pool—at Yale—was the Burt Shevelove—Stephen Sondheim adaptation of
The Frogs
, an ancient Greek classic which most critics found too deep.
P.S. The first musical to feature electric light was
Evangeline
, in 1888, with personal supervision by Thomas Edison.
Q : Who was the unluckiest American stage performer ever?
A : It had to be Laura Keene, a renowned actress with her own company. Her biggest hit was
Our American Cousin
, of which a benefit for her one-thousandth performance as Florence Trenchard would take place on April 14, 1865, in Washington, D.C. The event would include the farewell performance of “clown consummate” Harry Hawkes as Asa Trenchard. Since the recently ended Civil War, theaters had reopened, and this gala occasion would find President Lincoln and his wife, Mary, in attendance.
The comedy was heartily and gratefully received. Laughter erupted after Asa bawled, “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man trap!” At that moment, the door behind the presidential theater box opened while the guard assigned to the Chief Executive was in the bar drinking whiskies. Disgruntled actor and Southern fanatic JohnWilkes Booth aimed a .44 derringer at Abraham Lincoln’s head and fired once at point-blank range. Booth then jumped down to the stage, shocking the actors into petrification while much of the audience wondered if this were a planned entertainment. Despite a leg injured in the dramatic leap, Booth got away—for the time being.
Lincoln’s assassination ruined the career of Laura Keene, one of the
Berlin, who wound up agnostic, composed America’s most widely played secular yuletide song, “White Christmas,” and the most popular Easter song, “Easter Parade.” He also created “God Bless America,” whose royalties go to the officially homophobic Boy Scouts of America (the British-founded group’s UK branch is not anti-gay).
Q : Who made the most money from a play in the shortest time?
A : Noel Coward claimed to have dashed off
Private Lives
(1930) in a few days. Anne Nichols wrote
Abie’s Irish Rose
(1922) in three days (in hertwenties). The “sentimental comedy” supporting religious tolerance (a Jewish-Irish couple) broke Broadway’s record for longest-running play and held it for fourteen years, though for three years producers had declined it. Nichols eventually used her own house for collateral to help finance her play. Though she’s barely remembered today, the
New York Times
recorded in 1962 that
Abie’s Irish Rose
“brought its author spectacular fame and fortune, earning her more money than any single play has ever earned a writer.”
Q : When did music become more than mere entertainment on Broadway?
A : One of the benchmarks was December 27, 1927, in
Show Boat
, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, when the first-night Manhattan audience got a shock that made several gasp: the curtain rose on a chorus of sweating black stevedores loading cotton while singing, “Niggers all work on the Mississippi. Niggers all work while the white folks play.…” The two Jewish artists confronted theatergoers with an aspect of American life that they’d preferred not to think about, let alone paid to learn more about. The musical, which dealt with interracial love and became an instant, often-revived classic, was based on the novel by best-seller Edna Ferber (
So Big, Giant
).
Q : On a lighter note, what about musicals and swimming pools?
A : Though
Miss Saigon
boasted an actual helicopter, it wasn’t until 1952, in
Wish You Were Here
, that a swimming pool was put onstage in a musical. Alas, most critics found it shallow. Conversely, the first musical to take place
in
a swimming pool—at Yale—was the Burt Shevelove—Stephen Sondheim adaptation of
The Frogs
, an ancient Greek classic which most critics found too deep.
P.S. The first musical to feature electric light was
Evangeline
, in 1888, with personal supervision by Thomas Edison.
Q : Who was the unluckiest American stage performer ever?
A : It had to be Laura Keene, a renowned actress with her own company. Her biggest hit was
Our American Cousin
, of which a benefit for her one-thousandth performance as Florence Trenchard would take place on April 14, 1865, in Washington, D.C. The event would include the farewell performance of “clown consummate” Harry Hawkes as Asa Trenchard. Since the recently ended Civil War, theaters had reopened, and this gala occasion would find President Lincoln and his wife, Mary, in attendance.
The comedy was heartily and gratefully received. Laughter erupted after Asa bawled, “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man trap!” At that moment, the door behind the presidential theater box opened while the guard assigned to the Chief Executive was in the bar drinking whiskies. Disgruntled actor and Southern fanatic JohnWilkes Booth aimed a .44 derringer at Abraham Lincoln’s head and fired once at point-blank range. Booth then jumped down to the stage, shocking the actors into petrification while much of the audience wondered if this were a planned entertainment. Despite a leg injured in the dramatic leap, Booth got away—for the time being.
Lincoln’s assassination ruined the career of Laura Keene, one of the
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