| Little Jessie James | |
|---|---|
 Cover of sheet music for the songs from the show | |
| Written by | Harlan Thompson (lyrics, book) Harry Archer (music) |
| Date premiered | 12 August 1923 |
| Place premiered | Longacre Theatre, Broadway, Manhattan, New York, USA |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Musical farce |
| Setting | Living Room of Paul's Apartment, Central Park West, New York City. |
Little Jessie James was a musical farce that was the biggest hit of the 1923-24 Broadway season.
Little Jessie James was written by Harlan Thompson, the author of the book and the lyrics. The music was by Harry Archer. It was staged by Walter Brooks and produced by L. Lawrence Weber. [1] Scenery was designed by P. Dodd Ackerman and costumes by Mabel E. Johnston. [2]
Nan Halperin played Jessie Jamieson, in pursuit of Jay Velie as Paul Revere. Supporting roles were played by Miriam Hopkins and Allen Kearns. [3] This was Halperin's best known role outside of vaudeville. [4] The show was low-cost, with a single set and only eight chorus girls. [3] The James Boys, who were billed as the "Paul Whiteman Orchestra", played a specialty during the entr'acte. [5] The musical director Ernest Cutting had eleven men in the pit at the Longacre. including strings, brass, piano and percussion. [6] Halperin and Jay Velie introduced the song I Love You by Thompson and Archer. [7]
The musical played at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway from August 15, 1923 to January 27, 1924, then moved to the Little Theatre where it played until July 19, 1924. The show played for a total of 385 performances. [2] After New York, L. Lawrence Weber took the show on the road with four touring companies in the USA. [8] It played for one night in Schenectady, New York, on March 18, 1925. [9] The show played in Australia for eight months, and under the name Lucky Break played in London for 198 performances in 1934–35. [8]
Little Jessie James is a musical farce in two acts. [2] Despite its name, it was not a western but was set in an apartment looking over Central Park. Jessie Jamieson (Halperin) is out to get Paul Revere (Velie) and will not let the usual bedroom farce complications distract her from winning her man. [3]
The New York critics did not pan the show, but did not give it much attention. It only received passing mention from Burns Mantle in his review of the year's shows. However, Little Jessie James was the biggest hit of the season. [3] I Love You contributed to the show's success. [10] The song was the biggest hit of all the songs from that season's musicals. [3]
The full cast was: [1]
Stars
Others
As themselves
Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of nearly 50 musical comedies and operettas. Harbach collaborated as lyricist or librettist with many of the leading Broadway composers of the early 20th century, including Jerome Kern, Louis Hirsch, Herbert Stothart, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, and Sigmund Romberg. Harbach believed that music, lyrics, and story should be closely connected, and, as Oscar Hammerstein II's mentor, he encouraged Hammerstein to write musicals in this manner. Harbach is considered one of the first great Broadway lyricists, and he helped raise the status of the lyricist in an age more concerned with music, spectacle, and stars. Some of his more famous lyrics are "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Indian Love Call" and "Cuddle up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine".
Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director and performer. Her notable theater productions include The Producers, Crazy for You, Contact, and The Scottsboro Boys. She is a five-time Tony Award winner, four for Best Choreography and one as Best Director of a Musical for The Producers. In addition, she is a recipient of two Laurence Olivier Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. She is a 2014 inductee in the American Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.
Shuffle Along is a musical composed by Eubie Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle and a book written by the comedy duo Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. One of the most notable all-Black hit Broadway shows, it was a landmark in African-American musical theater, credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s.
The Longacre Theatre is a Broadway theater at 220 West 48th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Opened in 1913, it was designed by Henry B. Herts and was named for Longacre Square, now known as Times Square. The Longacre has 1,077 seats and is operated by The Shubert Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium's interior are New York City designated landmarks.
Willie Edouin was an English comedian, actor, dancer, singer, writer, director and theatre manager.
Frederic Chapin was an American screenwriter and composer. His name was also written as Frederick Chapin. He wrote the scores for several Broadway musicals. In addition he worked writing screenplays during the silent and early sound eras.
Leave It to Jane is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the 1904 play The College Widow, by George Ade. The story concerns the football rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College, and satirizes college life in a Midwestern U.S. town. A star halfback, Billy, forsakes his father's alma mater, Bingham, to play at Atwater, to be near the seductive Jane, the daughter of Atwater's president.
Harlan Thompson was an American theatre director, screenwriter, lyricist, film director, and film and television producer. He wrote the Broadway hit Little Jessie James (1923–24), and several other Broadway musicals. He moved to Hollywood, where he was in turn a writer, director and producer.
F. Ray Comstock was an American theatrical producer and theater operator. He pioneered the intimate musical comedy, staging several successful comedies at his Princess Theatre in Manhattan. He also produced spectacular musicals, variety shows and serious plays by authors such as Henrik Ibsen and Maxim Gorky.
John Lionel Golden was an American actor, songwriter, author, and theatrical producer. As a songwriter, he is best-known as lyricist for "Poor Butterfly" (1916). He produced many Broadway shows and four films.
L. Lawrence Weber was an American sports promoter, stage show producer and theater manager. He was active in arranging vaudeville shows, legitimate theater and films. He once tried to bypass laws against importing a boxing film to the USA by projecting it on a screen just across the border in Canada and filming the screening from the USA side.
William Barr Friedlander was an American songwriter and theater producer who staged many Broadway shows in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of them were musical comedies. Early successes included Moonlight (1924) and Mercenary Mary (1925). Later productions received mixed reception. His longest-running production was the comedy Separate Rooms, which ran from March 1940 to September 1941.
Nan Halperin was a Russian immigrant to the USA who became a well-known singing comedian. She played in vaudeville at an early age, and later starred in musical comedies on Broadway such as Little Jessie James (1923).
Jay Velie was an American actor and singer; he appeared in many Broadway shows during a career that spanned more than fifty years. He also appeared in a few film shorts.
Make It Snappy was a musical revue that ran for 96 performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in the 1922–23 Broadway season. It ran from 13 April to 1 July 1922. It starred Eddie Cantor, who introduced the hit songs "Yes! We Have No Bananas" and "The Sheik of Araby".
Charles Cyprian Strong Cushing was an American playwright who wrote under the name Tom Cushing.
The Crinoline Girl is a 1914 musical comedy written by Julian Eltinge, Otto Hauerbach, and Percy Wenrich. Producer Al Woods staged it on Broadway.
Tangerine is a musical with music by Monte Carlo and Alma M. Sanders, lyrics by Howard Johnston, about three men jailed for not paying alimony, written by Philip Bartholomae and Guy Bolton.
Harry Archer was an American composer and orchestra leader. He is best remembered for six Broadway shows from the 2nd and 3rd decades of the 20th-century, but also made several popular recordings in the 1920s for Brunswick Records.
Francis Henry Westerton was a British stage and silent film actor of the 19th and early 20th centuries who carved a successful career on Broadway from 1905 to 1922.
Citations
Sources