| Robinson Crusoe, Jr. | |
|---|---|
 Sheet music cover (cropped) | |
| Music | Sigmund Romberg and James Hanley |
| Lyrics | Harold Atteridge |
| Book | Edgar Smith |
| Productions | 1916 Broadway |
Robinson Crusoe, Jr. is a musical with a book by Edgar Smith, lyrics by Harold Atteridge, and music by Sigmund Romberg and James Hanley.
Robinson Crusoe, Jr. was an extravaganza that opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on 17 February 1916. [1] The original Broadway production was produced by Lee Shubert and Jacob J. Shubert, directed by J. C. Huffman and choreographed by Helen Tamiris.[ citation needed ] Music was by Sigmund Romberg and the book and lyrics were by Harold R. Atteridge. [2] The show was the last major musical that Jacob J. Shubert staged during World War I, and he instructed Romberg to avoid any of his Austro-Hungarian musical idioms. [3]
The cast included Al Jolson, Kitty Doner, Claude Flemming, and Isabelle Rodrigues. [4] The show was built around Jolson, and was a vehicle for Jolson. [5] [lower-alpha 1] A company of two hundred supported Al Jolson in ten major scenes. [2] The show included songs from a number of sources, including some written by Jolson. He often added or removed songs from one show to another. Atteridge created a simple framing story that unified the acts. [1] The show ran on Broadway for 139 performances. [7] It then went on the road in the fall. Jolson sometimes performed twice or three times in one day in one city before moving on. [2]
Setting: Long Island, New York and Robinson Crusoe's Island
Hiram Westbury, a millionaire, is exhausted by some film makers who want to use his estate as a film location. He falls asleep. In his dream, he imagines he is Robinson Crusoe, Jr. His chauffeur, played by Al Jolson, is his Good Friday. [1] Jolson played the chauffeur in blackface. [2] The dreams make up most of the show. [8] After the opening scene the pair travel to Crusoe's island, which is given a haunted forest, and to a pirate ship crewed by chorus girls. [9] The "glittering galaxies of gorgeous, glorious, gladsome girlies mirthfully monopolized the mad, merry hours and the ten tremendous tumultuous scenes of Robinson Crusoe, Jr." [10] At one point in the story trees woke up and began to sway to the music. Jolson has comic interactions with a goat and a crocodile. [11] The shorter second act was set back in the millionaire's home. [10]
There were 27 musical numbers in the show, including five specialty dances. Many of the huge cast danced in Minstrel Days. Jolson himself did not play a major role in the musical numbers, and was always alone on the stage when he sang. [10] According to Jolson's biographer Michael Freedland, Robinson Crusoe, Jr. was "the nearest Jolson had yet come to a show with a real plot ... although from opening night on, it was quite plain that the story was not going to interfere with his domination on stage." [11]
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".
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech. Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and features six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same title by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story "The Day of Atonement".
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer. He is best known for his musicals and operettas, particularly The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928).
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The Shubert family was responsible for the establishment of the Broadway district, in New York City, as the hub of the theatre industry in the United States. They dominated the legitimate theater and vaudeville in the first half of the 20th century, promoting entertainment attuned to popular taste.
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Al Jolson was a Lithuanian-American singer, actor, and vaudevillian. He was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, and was self-billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer." Jolson was known for his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach" towards performing, as well as for popularizing many of the songs he sang. Jolson has been referred to by modern critics as "the king of blackface performers."
Edward Ray Goetz was an American composer, lyricist, playwright, theatre director, and theatrical producer. A Tin Pan Alley songwriter, he published more than 500 songs during his career; many of them originally written for the New York stage. His songs were recorded by several artists, including Judy Garland, Al Jolson, and Blossom Seeley. He was active as both a lyricist and composer for Broadway musicals from 1906 through 1930; collaborating with artists like George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Sigmund Romberg, and A. Baldwin Sloane to create material for the theatre. Beginning with the musical Hitchy-Koo of 1917, he also produced several of the musicals and plays he was creatively involved in up until the 1930-1931 Broadway season when he produced his final stage work, Porter's The New Yorkers, for which he also created the story and served as director. He authored the play The Lady of the Orchids which he produced on Broadway in 1928. He also produced and served as production supervisor of Herbert Fields and Porter's 1929 musical Fifty Million Frenchmen which was adapted by Warner Brothers into a 1930 film of the same name. His work as a songwriter was featured in the films For Me and My Gal (1942), Somebody Loves Me (1952), and The Greatest Show On Earth (1952); the latter of which resulted from his work as the lyricist for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus during the final three years of his life. Having never stopped working, he died in 1954.
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Harold Richard Atteridge, was an American composer, librettist and lyricist primarily for musicals and revues. He wrote the book and lyrics for over 20 musicals and revues for the Shubert family, including several iterations of The Passing Show.
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Jesse C. Huffman (1869–1935) was an American theatrical director. Between 1906 and 1932 he directed or staged over 200 shows, mostly for the Shubert Brothers. Many of them were musical revues, musicals or operettas. He is known for The Passing Show series of revues that he staged from 1914 to 1924 at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, daring alternatives to the Ziegfeld Follies.
La Belle Paree was a musical revue that launched the legitimate theatre career of Al Jolson. The book was by Edgar Smith, music by Jerome Kern and Frank Tours and lyrics by Edward Madden. Billee Taylor provided additional music and lyrics, and M. E. Rourke and Frederick Day provided additional lyrics. It premiered on Broadway in 1911. The musical is set in Paris, France.
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