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.
Agatha Gregson, née Wooster, later Lady Worplesdon, is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves stories of the British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being best known as Bertie Wooster's Aunt Agatha. Haughty and overbearing, Aunt Agatha wants Bertie to marry a wife she finds suitable, though she never manages to get Bertie married, thanks to Jeeves's interference.
Guy Reginald Bolton was an Anglo-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the US, he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G. Wodehouse and Fred Thompson, with whom he wrote 21 and 14 shows respectively, and the American playwright George Middleton, with whom he wrote ten shows. Among his other collaborators in Britain were George Grossmith Jr., Ian Hay and Weston and Lee. In the US, he worked with George and Ira Gershwin, Kalmar and Ruby and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Sally is a musical comedy with music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Clifford Grey and book by Guy Bolton, with additional lyrics by Buddy De Sylva, Anne Caldwell and P. G. Wodehouse. The plot hinges on a mistaken identity: Sally, a waif, is a dishwasher at the Alley Inn in New York City. She poses as a famous foreign ballerina and rises to fame through joining the Ziegfeld Follies. There is a rags to riches story, a ballet as a centrepiece, and a wedding as a finale. "Look for the Silver Lining" continues to be one of Kern's most familiar songs. The song is lampooned by another song, "Look for a Sky of Blue," in Rick Besoyan's satirical 1959 musical Little Mary Sunshine.
The Gillian Lynne Theatre is a West End theatre located on the corner of Drury Lane and Parker Street in Covent Garden in the London Borough of Camden. The Winter Garden Theatre formerly occupied the site until 1965. On 1 May 2018, the theatre was officially renamed the Gillian Lynne Theatre in honour of choreographer Gillian Lynne. It is the first theatre in the West End of London to be named after a non-royal woman.
Oh, Boy! is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. The story concerns befuddled George, who elopes with Lou Ellen, the daughter of Judge Carter. He must win over her parents and his Quaker aunt. His dapper polo champion friend Jim is in love with madcap actress Jackie, but George must hide her while she extricates herself from a scrape with a bumbling constable whom she punched at a party raid.
The Princess Theatre was a joint venture between the Shubert Brothers, producer Ray Comstock, theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury and actor-director Holbrook Blinn. Built on a narrow slice of land located at 104–106 West 39th Street, just off Sixth Avenue in New York City, and seating just 299 people, it was one of the smallest Broadway theatres when it opened in early 1913. The architect was William A. Swasey, who designed the Winter Garden Theatre two years earlier.
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.
To-Night's the Night is a musical comedy composed by Paul Rubens, with lyrics by Percy Greenbank and Rubens, and a book adapted by Fred Thompson. Two songs were composed by Jerome Kern. The story is based on the farce Les Dominos roses by Alfred Hennequin and Alfred Delacour.
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.
Michael Elder Rourke, who assumed the pen name Herbert Reynolds in 1913, was an Irish-American lyricist. Reynolds wrote the lyrics to Jerome Kern's first big hit, "They Didn't Believe Me", interpolated into the 1914 American version of The Girl from Utah, produced by Charles Frohman. The show had a successful run of 140 performances at the Knickerbocker Theatre, opening on August 14, 1914. Frohman had hired the young Kern to write five new songs for the score together with Reynolds to strengthen what he felt was a weak first act. Julia Sanderson and Donald Brian starred in the production.
The Beauty Prize is a musical comedy in three acts, with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by George Grossmith and P. G. Wodehouse. It was first produced by Grossmith and J A E Malone on 5 September 1923 at the Winter Garden Theatre, Drury Lane, London. It was designed to replace The Cabaret Girl, which the same team had produced with great success the previous year, at the same theatre and with predominantly the same cast, but failed to achieve the same success. The review of the first night performance in The Times described it as:
not ... equal to its select band of predecessors... It has quite an involved plot, which is never very interesting: a vast number of characters, most of whom are never very convincing ... The 'book', by Mr George Grossmith and Mr P G Wodehouse, has many flashes of wit but, on the whole, the narrative is an arid desert in which the music of Mr Jerome Kern makes only an occasional oasis... At the end the piece obtained rather a mixed reception.
Oh, Lady! Lady!! is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse and lyrics by Wodehouse. It was written for the Princess Theatre on Broadway, where it played in 1918 and ran for 219 performances. The story concerns an engaged young man, Bill, whose ex-fiancée arrives unexpectedly on his wedding day. Bill works to convince his old flame that he was not worthy to marry her, but his clumsy efforts do not make him look good to his new fiancée, whose mother already dislikes Bill. A couple of crooks cause further complications.
Kissing Time, and an earlier version titled The Girl Behind the Gun, are musical comedies with music by Ivan Caryll, book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, and additional lyrics by Clifford Grey. The story is based on the 1910 play, Madame et son Filleul by Maurice Hennequin, Pierre Véber and Henry de Gorsse. The story is set in contemporary France, with a glamorous actress at the centre of a farcical plot of imposture, intrigue and mistaken identity.
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.
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.
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.
This is a summary of 1921 in music in the United Kingdom.
Good Morning, Bill is a comedic play by P. G. Wodehouse, adapted from the Hungarian play Doktor Juci Szabo by playwright Ladislaus Fodor. It premiered in London at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1927.
