Houp La!

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Houp La!
Houp-La-Gertie-Millar.jpg
Gertie Millar as Tillie
Music Nat D. Ayer & Howard Talbot
Lyrics Percy Greenbank & Hugh E. Wright
Book Fred Thompson & Hugh E. Wright
Productions1916–1917 St Martin's Theatre, West End

Houp La! is an Edwardian musical comedy extravaganza, with music by Nat D. Ayer and Howard Talbot, lyrics by Percy Greenbank and Hugh E. Wright, and a book by Fred Thompson and Hugh E. Wright. The story combines the comic financial troubles of a circus owner with a love triangle.

Edwardian musical comedy

Edwardian musical comedy was a form of British musical theatre that extended beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both direction, 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.

Nathaniel Davis Ayer, usually billed as Nat D. Ayer, was an American composer, pianist, singer and actor. He made most of his career composing and performing in England in Edwardian musical comedy and revue. He also contributed songs to Broadway shows, including some of the Ziegfeld Follies.

Howard Talbot British composer

Richard Lansdale 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.

Contents

The original production of the show was mounted by Charles B. Cochran at London's new St Martin's Theatre, opening on 23 November 1916 and starring Gertie Millar, George Graves, Nat Ayer and Ida Adams. It was the first production at the St Martin's, [1] [2] which was leased by Cochran. [3] Although the critics found the music innovative, and the cast included stars of the day, the show ran for only three months in London. A Manchester production followed.

Charles B. Cochran English theatre manager

Sir Charles Blake Cochran, generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager and impresario. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noël Coward and his works.

St Martins Theatre theatre in London, England

St Martin's Theatre is a West End theatre which has staged the production of The Mousetrap since March 1974, making it the longest continuous run of any show in the world.

Gertie Millar British actor and singer

Gertrude "Gertie" Ward, Countess of Dudley was an English actress and singer of the early 20th century, known for her performances in Edwardian musical comedies under her maiden name, Gertie Millar.

Plot

Act I

The owner of a struggling circus, Marmaduke Bunn, has severe money troubles. In desperation, he has an accumulator bet on all the horse-races of the day, and when his fancies all romp home he is thrilled by the size of his winnings. A French girl, Liane de Rose, tries to teach Bunn some of the complications of her language. Meanwhile, Tillie Runstead, the star of the circus, is in love with her admirer Peter Carey, a rich young polo player, but is worried because to her dismay her beau's interest appears to be veering towards the circus's dancer Ada Eve. [4]

Circus commonly a travelling company of performers

A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, unicyclists, as well as other object manipulation and stunt-oriented artists. The term circus also describes the performance which has followed various formats through its 250-year modern history. Philip Astley is credited with being the father of the modern circus when he opened the first circus in 1768 in England. A skilled equestrian, Astley demonstrated trick riding, riding in a circle rather than a straight line as his rivals did, and thus chanced on the format which was later named a "circus". In 1770 he hired acrobats, tightrope walkers, jugglers and a clown to fill in the pauses between acts. Performances developed significantly through the next fifty years, with large-scale theatrical battle reenactments becoming a significant feature. The traditional format, whereby a ringmaster introduces a varied selection of acts that mostly perform choreographed acts to traditional music, developed in the latter part of the 19th century and continued almost universally to be the main style of circus up until the 1970s.

Madeleine Choiseuille and George Graves Houp-La-Choiseuille--Graves.jpg
Madeleine Choiseuille and George Graves
Act II

Tillie makes good use of Ada's cloak and thus catches out her wandering lover. Sadly for Marmaduke Bunn, he finds he has made a mistake about the name of the winning horse in the day's last race, so he has won nothing, after all. [4]

Songs

Tillie sings the title song "Houp La!", as well as "Pretty Baby" and "The Fool of the Family", and with Peter she sings the duets "You Can't Love as I Do" and "I've Saved all My Loving for You". [4] Liane de Rose has the comic song "L'Amour est Bon". [4] [5]

"Pretty Baby" is a song written by Tony Jackson during the Ragtime era. The song and lyrics apparently referred to one of Jackson's male lovers. The song was remembered as being prominent in Jackson's repertory before he left New Orleans in 1912, but was not published until 1916.

At least four songs from the show were recorded. "Oh! How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo", an interpolated "Hawaiian" number by Albert von Tilzer, was sung in the 1916–1917 London production by Ida Adams. [6] With a female choir and the St. Martin's Theatre Orchestra conducted by James Sale, Adams recorded the song for the His Master's Voice label at the Gramophone Company's studios at Hayes on 11 January 1917. [7] On the same day, she recorded with Gertie Millar and Nat D. Ayer the trio "Wonderful Girl, Wonderful Boy, Wonderful Time", a song from the show by Paul Rubens, while Millar and Ayer recorded their two duets from the show. [7]

Ida Adams American actress

Ida Adams, sometimes credited as Ida M. Adams, was an American-born actress and singer who worked chiefly in musical theatre.

His Masters Voice trademark, record label

His Master's Voice (HMV) is a famous trademark in the recording industry and was the unofficial name of a major British record label. The phrase was coined in the 1890s as the title of a painting of a terrier mix dog named Nipper, listening to a wind-up disc gramophone. In the original painting, the dog was listening to a cylinder phonograph. In the 1970s, the statue of the dog and gramophone, His Master's Voice, were cloaked in bronze and was awarded by the record company (EMI) to artists or music producers or composers as a music award and often only after selling more than 100,000 recordings.

The Gramophone Company Limited , based in the United Kingdom and founded on behalf of Emil Berliner, was one of the early recording companies, the parent organisation for the His Master's Voice (HMV) label, and the European affiliate of the American Victor Talking Machine Company. Although the company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931 to form Electric and Musical Industries Limited (EMI), its name "The Gramophone Company Limited" continued in the UK into the 1970s.

Reception and aftermath

Ida Adams and chorus Houp-La-Ida-Adams.jpg
Ida Adams and chorus

The play was well-received, and shared an issue of The Play Pictorial with Potash & Perlmutter in Society , [4] but it failed to achieve a long run. It had its 100th performance in February 1917 [8] and closed a week later. [9] Cochran later presented it in Manchester. [10] He wrote of Houp La! in The Secrets of a Showman (1925): "I had engaged Gertie Millar, George Graves, Ida Adams, Nat D. Ayer, Hugh E. Wright, a French actress new to London, Madeline Choiseuille – and perhaps the prettiest collection of girls ever seen on any stage in the world." [3] He also noted that Binnie Hale had "got her first chance" in Houp-La, as Ida Adams's understudy, but that she had a "harassing debut" because Adams, having insisted on paying for her own clothes, had also stipulated that no understudy should wear them. [11]

Reviewing the premiere, the critic of The Observer wrote:

There is any amount of promise about it; but not much that looked like achievement. Miss Gertie Millar seemed to wake up to give us a delicious piece of nonsense, the very comic song and dance called "The Fool of the Family". Mr. George Graves, as funny old Bunn, seemed to be feeling his way; Mr. Hugh E. Wright was too unrelieved in melancholy, and Mr. Nat D. Ayer had to sing so many songs about girls, cuddling, kissing and so forth that he must have been as sick of the subject as we were. Next to Miss Millar's "Fool of the Family," the most successful thing was Mlle. Madeleine Choiseuille's song, "L'Amour est Bon", which went splendidly. [12]

Of the provincial production, Neville Cardus wrote in The Manchester Guardian that the music "in its impudent rhythms, adapted from the music hall, and immensely free use of the orchestra, is characteristic of [Nat D. Ayer], who has displayed more instinct for the needs of popular music than any of our native musicians." [10]

Almost sixty years later, in 1975, a critic noted that "Houp La ... did a lot towards elevating the chorus girl to something more than a grinning background to the stars." [13] In 1977, a member of the 1916 cast recalled in The Listener : "There was a wonderful American woman named Ida Adams in the cast. She was spectacular! They used to keep some staff on at the bank every night, so that she could put all her jewellery back after the show." [14]

Original cast, November 1916

The opening cast included: [15]

Related Research Articles

This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1916.

Albert Von Tilzer was an American songwriter, the younger brother of fellow songwriter Harry Von Tilzer. He wrote the music to many hit songs, including, most notably, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".

Collins & Harlan, the team of American singers Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan formed a popular comic duo between 1903 and 1926. They sang ragtime standards as well as what were known as "coon songs" – music sung by white performers in a black dialect. Their material also employed many other stereotypes of the time including Irishmen and farmers. Fellow recording artist Billy Murray nicknamed them "The Half-Ton Duo" as both men were rather overweight. Collins and Harlan produced many number one hits with recordings of minstrel songs such as "My Gal Irene", "I Know Dat I'll be Happy Til I Die", "Who Do You Love?" and "Down Among the Sugarcane". Their song "That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland", recorded November 8, 1916, is among the first recorded uses of the word "jas" which eventually evolved to "jass", and to the current spelling "jazz".

Lionel Monckton British composer

Lionel John Alexander Monckton was an English writer and composer of musical theatre. He became Britain's most popular composer of Edwardian musical comedy in the early years of the 20th century.

<i>The Bing Boys Are Here</i> musical

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.

Binnie Hale English actress and singer

Beatrice "Binnie" Mary Hale-Monro was an English actress, singer and dancer. She was one of the most successful musical theatre stars in London in the 1920s and 1930s, able to sing leading roles in operetta as well as musicals, and she was popular as a principal boy in pantomime. Her best-remembered roles were in the musicals No, No, Nanette (1925) and Mr. Cinders (1929), in which she sang "Spread a Little Happiness".

"If You Were the Only Girl " is a popular song written by Nat D. Ayer with lyrics by Clifford Grey. It was written for the musical revue The Bing Boys Are Here, which premièred on 19 April 1916 at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square, London. The song was originally performed as a duet between Lucius Bing, played by George Robey, and his love interest Emma, originated by Violet Loraine.

Sári Petráss Hungarian actor and singer

Sári Petráss was a Hungarian operetta actress and singer. In the 1910s and 1920s, she played leading soprano parts in Budapest, Vienna, London and on Broadway. According to Richard Traubner, Sári Petráss and Sári Fedák remain "the two best-remembered Hungarian female operetta stars of all time."

Billie Carleton British actor and singer

Billie Carleton was an English musical comedy actress during the First World War. She began her professional stage career at age 15 and was playing roles in the West End by age 18. She appeared in the hit musical The Boy (1917), which led to a starring role in The Freedom of the Seas in 1918. At the age of 22, she was found dead, apparently of a drug overdose.

George Graves (actor) English comic actor

George Windsor Graves was an English comic actor. Although he could neither sing nor dance, he became a leading comedian in musical comedies, adapting the French and Viennese opéra-bouffe style of light comic relief into a broader comedy popular with English audiences of the period. His comic portrayals did much to ensure the West End success of Véronique (1904) The Little Michus, and The Merry Widow (1907).

Daisy Burrell British actress

Daisy Burrell, real name Daisy Isobel Eaglesfield Ratton, was an English stage actress and Edwardian musical comedy performer who also appeared as a leading lady in silent films and in pantomime.

Alice Delysia singer and theatre actress

Alice Henriette Lapize, better known by her stage name, Alice Delysia and sometimes Elise Delisia, was a French actress and singer who made her career in English musical theatre. After performing in the chorus at the Moulin Rouge and other theatres in Paris from the age of 14, she became a chorus girl in Edwardian musical comedies, briefly on Broadway in 1905, then in London for several years and back in Paris in 1912.

George W. Byng English composer and conductor

George Wilford Buckley Byng was an English conductor, composer, music arranger and musical director of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is known for composing music for ballet productions staged at the Alhambra Theatre in London during the Edwardian era, for his theatre compositions and as a conductor for HMV from World War I up to about 1930.

Ida Barr was an English music hall singer.

References

  1. ↑ "A Cosy New Theatre", in The Times, 24 November 1916, p. 11
  2. ↑ Wearing, J. P., The London stage, 1910–1919: a calendar of plays and players, vol. 1 (Scarecrow Press, 1982)
  3. 1 2 Cochran, Charles Blake. The Secrets of a Showman (1925) p. 224
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Findon, B. W. The Play-Pictorial, issue no. 177 (vol. 29, 1917), p. 82
  5. ↑ Theatre collections record view: Houp La! at kent.ac.uk (University of Kent)
  6. ↑ The Sketch , vol. 96 (1916), p. 232: "Miss Ida Adams as Ada Eve, a Dancer, sings... "Wonderful Boy, Wonderful Time," and she also sings a song with the curious title of "Oh! how she could Hacki, Yacki, Wicki, Wacki, Woo."
  7. 1 2 Gänzl, Kurt. British Musical Theatre vol. 2 (Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 1153: "'I've Saved all My Loving for You' (Gertie Millar, Nat D. Ayer) HMV 04191 (1917)... 'You Can't Love as I Do' (Gertie Millar, Nat D. Ayer) HMV 04192 (1917)... 'Wonderful Girl, wonderful Boy, wonderful Time' (Gertie Millar, Ida Adams, Nat D. Ayer) HMV 04193 (1917)... 'Oh! How she could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo' (Ida Adams w. chorus) HMV 03542 (1917)"
  8. ↑ "Theatres", The Times, 17 February 1917, p. 8
  9. ↑ "Theatres", The Times, 24 February 1917, p. 8
  10. 1 2 Cardus, Neville. "Theatre Royal", The Manchester Guardian, 28 May 1918, p. 6
  11. ↑ Cochran (1925), p. 226
  12. ↑ "St. Martins", The Observer, 26 November 1916, p. 7
  13. ↑ The Listener , vol. 93 (British Broadcasting Corporation, 1975), p. 176
  14. ↑ The Listener, vol. 97 (British Broadcasting Corporation, 1977), p. 268
  15. ↑ The Stage Year Book (1917), p. 125
  16. ↑ Millar left the cast on 16 February 1917 and was succeeded by Billie Carleton; see "Theatres", The Times , 15 February 1917, p. 8 and 17 February 1917, p. 8
  17. ↑ "Vera Neville, then Mrs. Tommy Graves and now Mrs. Hill" (from C. B. Cochran's Secrets of a Showman (1925), p. 224)
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