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.
South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances. The plot is based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener's work that would be financially successful and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism.
High Button Shoes is a 1947 musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by George Abbott and Stephen Longstreet. It was based on the semi-autobiographical 1946 novel The Sisters Liked Them Handsome by Stephen Longstreet. The story concerns the comic entanglements of the Longstreet family with two con men in Atlantic City.
Beatrice Gladys Lillie, Lady Peel, known as Bea Lillie, was a Canadian-born British actress, singer and comedic performer.
Mary Boland was an American stage and film actress.
Sir Edward Seymour Hicks, better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and producing Edwardian musical comedy, often together with his famous wife, Ellaline Terriss. His most famous acting role was that of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
Peter Glenville was an English theatre and film director, and actor. He was a prominent director of stage plays on the West End and Broadway in the 1950's, where he was nominated for four Tony Awards, who later transitioned into films in the following decade. His first film, The Prisoner (1955), was nominated for Best Film and Best British Film at the 9th British Academy Film Awards.
Leave It to Me! is a 1938 musical produced by Vinton Freedley with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The book was a collaborative effort by Samuel and Bella Spewack, who also directed the Broadway production. The musical was based on the play Clear All Wires by the Spewacks, which was performed on Broadway for 93 performances in 1932, and which was filmed in 1933, starring Lee Tracy, Benita Hume, Una Merkel and James Gleason.
George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.
The Passing Show was a musical revue in three acts, billed as a "topical extravaganza", with a book and lyrics by Sydney Rosenfeld and music by Ludwig Engländer and various other composers. It featured spoofs of theatrical productions of the past season. The show was presented in 1894 by George Lederer at the Casino Theatre. It was one of the first musical revues on Broadway and led the fashion for such productions. The Casino Theatre produced a revue each summer thereafter for several seasons.
Helen Ford was an American actress.
Little Nellie Kelly was a two-act musical comedy of the Jazz Age, written, produced and directed by George M. Cohan. After opening in Boston in July 1922, it had long runs on Broadway in 1922–1923, in the West End of London in 1923–1924, and on tours.
The English comic singer, monologist and actor Stanley Holloway (1890–1982), started his performing career in 1910. He starred in English seaside towns such as Clacton-on-Sea and Walton-on-the-Naze, primarily in concert party and variety shows. The first of these, The White Coons Show, was soon followed by the more prestigious Nicely, Thanks! in 1913. From here, he went on to co-star in The Co-Optimists, a variety show which brought him to wider audience attention. After the First World War, he returned to London and found success in the West End musicals at the Winter Garden Theatre, including Kissing Time (1919), followed in 1920 by A Night Out. The Co-Optimists continued until 1927, and he then appeared in Hit the Deck, a comic musical which appeared both in London and on Broadway. Reporting for The Manchester Guardian, the theatre critic Ivor Brown praised Holloway for a singing style "which coaxes the ear rather than clubbing the head."
Archibald Selwyn was a Canadian-American play broker, theater owner and stage producer who had many Broadway successes. He and his brother Edgar Selwyn were partners. They were among the founders of Goldwyn Pictures, later to be merged into MGM.
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.
Little Lord Fauntleroy is a 1914 British silent drama film directed by Floyd Martin Thornton and starring H. Agar Lyons, Gerald Royston in the title role, and Jane Wells. It was based on the 1886 novel Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The film was produced by the Natural Color Kinematograph Company. It was distributed in the UK by Kineto Ltd. and released in the US by Shubert Feature Film in April of that year. It was one of the first feature-length films to be made in colour, using the Kinemacolor two-colour additive colour process.
Artists and Models was a series of five theatrical revues staged by brothers Lee and J. J. Shubert at the Shubert Theatre and other theaters operated by The Shubert Organization in New York City between 1923 and 1930.
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.
Under the Counter is a musical comedy composed by Manning Sherwin from a book by Arthur Macrae with lyrics by Harold Purcell. The plot is centred around shortages and black market activity during wartime rationing.
