Biography
Thompson was born in London and raised in Newton Abbot, Devon, in the west of England. He attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London and trained as an architect. [1] He was a skilled caricaturist, and in the early years of the 20th century he contributed regular theatrical caricatures to at least three London newspapers. [1] He worked for three years as an actor, giving him an inside view of stagecraft, which he later put to use in his writing. [1]
Early career
Thompson's first stage work was the book of the show The Lady Jockey in 1908. In 1913, he began a partnership with George Grossmith Jr. with the revue Eightpence a Mile, praised by The Times as "the brightest and swiftest, and on the whole the most entertaining of all the revues that have been produced in London". [2] In May 1914, Thompson and Philip Braham collaborated on Violet and Pink, described as "a miniature musical comedy … with plenty of singing and dancing, any amount of jokes, and some catching music." [3] The first big joint success of the Thompson and Grossmith partnership was To-night's the Night in 1914 (Broadway) and 1915 (London), with music by Paul Rubens and lyrics by Harry Greenbank. [4]
After this success, Thompson's services were in demand for new West End shows. In November 1916, the first production at the new St Martin's Theatre was Thompson's Houp La! [5] His best-known shows in this period included the World War I sensations The Bing Boys Are Here (1916, in collaboration with Grossmith) and The Boy (1917, with Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot). Other successes included Pell-Mell (1916), [6] The Bing Boys On Broadway (1918, with Grossmith and H.M. Vernon – a West End show, despite the title), Who's Hooper (1919, based on a Pinero play, composed by Ivor Novello) [7] and The Golden Moth (1921, with P. G. Wodehouse, music by Novello). [8] In 1919, he was the author, or part-author, of six shows running in London. [1] Although most of Thompson's early shows were premiered in the West End, other early Broadway productions included Good Morning, Judge (1919; an adaptation of Pinero's The Magistrate), Afgar (1920), Vogues of 1924 and Marjorie (1924). [9]
In 1924, Thompson had a big success in New York with a show written in collaboration with Guy Bolton, Lady, Be Good! , with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, and starring Fred Astaire and his sister Adele (also playing strongly in London in 1926). This was followed in swift succession by two more Broadway shows with Gershwin songs, Tell Me More and Tip-Toes (both 1925). In 1927 Thompson had three shows running on Broadway simultaneously: Rio Rita (also with Bolton, songs by Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy), the Gershwin show Funny Face (with Paul Gerard Smith), and The Five O'Clock Girl (again with Bolton; it also played in the West End in 1929). [8] In 1928, Thompson co-wrote Here's Howe [10] and wrote another Gershwin musical, Treasure Girl . [11] Thompson's last Broadway success of the inter-war years was Sons O' Guns, in 1929. [12]
Later years
Returning to London, Thompson continued to write musicals, with Bolton and others. None of his 1930s shows were smash hits like the Broadway shows of the late 1920s, but many were solid successes, including Seeing Stars (1935), Going Places (1936), Swing Along (1936) [13] and Magyar Melody (1939). [8] The last of these made history on 27 March 1939 as the first musical to be broadcast directly from a theatre and shown on television. [14] Thompson and Bolton had a final Broadway hit with Follow the Girls , which ran for almost 900 performances in 1944. The cast included Jackie Gleason. [8]
Thompson had a stage and screen hit (1936) with This'll Make You Whistle in collaboration with Eric Maschwitz, and the two were working on a new show in 1949 when Thompson died suddenly. [1] The obituary notice in The Times said of him: "To the [theatrical] profession he was the man to whom all turned for years in the knowledge that from his pen there would come just the right mixture to give each member of the cast the chance to shine in his or her particular way and so ensure the success of a venture which, as with all musical comedy, for all its surface gaiety, is a serious business risk." [1]
Thompson died in London at the age of 65. [1]
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago ". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.
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Lionel John Alexander Monckton was an English composer of musical theatre. He became Britain's most popular composer of Edwardian musical comedy in the early years of the 20th century.
The Bing Boys Are Here, styled "A Picture of London Life, in a Prologue and Six Panels," is the first of a series of revues which played at the Alhambra Theatre, London during the last two years of World War I. The series included The Bing Boys on Broadway and The Bing Girls Are There. The music for them was written by Nat D. Ayer with lyrics by Clifford Grey, who also contributed to Yes, Uncle!, and the text was by George Grossmith, Jr. and Fred Thompson based on Rip and Bousquet's Le Fils Touffe. Other material was contributed by Eustace Ponsonby, Philip Braham and Ivor Novello.
The Boy is a musical comedy with a book by Fred Thompson and Percy Greenbank, music by Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot and lyrics by Greenbank and Adrian Ross. The original production opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1917 and ran for 801 performances – one of the longest runs of any musical theatre piece up to that time. It had successful foreign productions and tours.
Howard Munkittrick, better known as Howard Talbot, was an American-born, English-raised conductor and composer of Irish descent. He was best known for writing the music to several hit Edwardian musical comedies, including A Chinese Honeymoon, The Arcadians and The Boy, as well as a number of other successful British musicals during the first two decades of the 20th century.
George Grossmith Jr. was an English actor, theatre producer and manager, director, playwright and songwriter, best remembered for his work in and with Edwardian musical comedies. Grossmith was also an important innovator in bringing "cabaret" and "revues" to the London stage. Born in London, he took his first role on the musical stage at the age of 18 in Haste to the Wedding (1892), a West End collaboration between his famous songwriter and actor father and W. S. Gilbert.
Theodore & Co is an English musical comedy in two acts with a book by H. M. Harwood and George Grossmith Jr. based on the French comedy Théodore et Cie by Paul Armont and Nicolas Nancey, with music by Ivor Novello and Jerome Kern and lyrics by Adrian Ross and Clifford Grey. It was produced by Grossmith and Edward Laurillard and directed by Austen Hurgon, opening at the Gaiety Theatre on 19 September 1916 and running for 503 performances. It starred Grossmith, Fred Leslie and Leslie Henson.
Edwardian musical comedy was a form of British musical theatre that extended beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both directions, beginning in the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following the First World War.
Edward Laurillard was a cinema and theatre producer in London and New York City during the first third of the 20th century. He is best remembered for promoting the cinema early in the 20th century and for Edwardian musical comedies produced in partnership with George Grossmith, Jr., including Tonight's the Night (1914), Theodore & Co (1916) and Yes, Uncle! (1917).
Primrose is a musical in three acts with a book by Guy Bolton and George Grossmith Jr., lyrics by Desmond Carter and Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. It centres on a writer whose story-within-a-story forms the basis of the plot. It was written expressly for the London stage, where it ran for 255 performances in 1924 and 1925. The musical played in Australia, but it was not performed in the United States until more than half a century after it was written.
Clifford Grey was an English songwriter, librettist, actor and screenwriter. His birth name was Percival Davis, and he was also known as Clifford Gray.
The Cabaret Girl is a musical comedy in three acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by George Grossmith, Jr. and P. G. Wodehouse. It was produced by Grossmith and J. A. E. Malone at the Winter Garden Theatre in London's West End in September 1922 and featured Dorothy Dickson, Grossmith, Geoffrey Gwyther, and Norman Griffin in the leading roles.
Lawrence Randall Grossmith was an English actor, the son of the Gilbert and Sullivan performer George Grossmith and the brother of the actor-manager George Grossmith Jr.
Miss 1917 is a musical revue with a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, music by Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern and others, and lyrics by Harry B. Smith, Otto Harbach, Henry Blossom and others. Made up of a string of vignettes, the show features songs from such musicals as The Wizard of Oz, Three Twins, Babes in Toyland, Ziegfeld Follies and The Belle of New York.
This is a summary of 1924 in music in the United Kingdom.
Austen Hurgon was an actor, singer, theatre director and librettist for several successful Edwardian musical comedies of the 1900s and 1910s.
