The Great Magoo was an unsuccessful 1932 Broadway play written by Ben Hecht and Gene Fowler. [1] [2]
A womanizing songwriter, Nicky, has fallen hard for Julie, a dancer and ambitious entertainer. Both lovers are Olympic-caliber boozers who swan dive into the gutter at the least hint of a romantic reversal. [3]
The Coney Island dancehall girl becomes, briefly, a celebrity as a singer on the radio with her boyfriend's song, "It's Only a Paper Moon". The song is frequently reprised by the voice of the leading lady. [1] The song's music is by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Yip Harburg and Billy Rose. [4] [1]
The play debuted at the Selwyn Theatre on Broadway on December 2, 1932, produced by Billy Rose and directed by George Abbott, starring Claire Carleton and Paul Kelly but was not well received by critics and closed after 11 performances. [1] [5] [6] Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times praised the director and the performers but called it "rather stale and malodorous." [6]
The play was filmed as Shoot the Works in 1934 directed by Wesley Ruggles starring Jack Oakie, Ben Bernie and Dorothy Dell. [7]
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A successful journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films.
Brigadoon is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, and music by Frederick Loewe. The song "Almost Like Being in Love", from the musical, has become a standard. It features two American tourists who stumble upon Brigadoon, a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every 100 years. Tommy, one of the tourists, falls in love with Fiona, a young woman from Brigadoon.
Charles Gordon MacArthur was an American playwright, screenwriter and 1935 winner of the Academy Award for Best Story.
Twentieth Century is a 1934 American pre-Code screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard. Much of the film is set on the 20th Century Limited train as it travels from Chicago to New York City. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur adapted their 1932 Broadway play of the same name – itself based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles Bruce Millholland – with uncredited contributions from Gene Fowler and Preston Sturges.
Billy Rose was an American impresario, theatrical showman, and lyricist. For years both before and after World War II, Billy Rose was a major force in entertainment, with shows such as Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt (1931), Jumbo (1935), Billy Rose's Aquacade (1937), and Carmen Jones (1943). As a lyricist, he is credited with many songs, notably "Don't Bring Lulu" (1925), "Tonight You Belong To Me" (1926), "Me and My Shadow" (1927), "More Than You Know" (1929), "Without a Song" (1929), "It Happened in Monterrey" (1930), and "It's Only a Paper Moon" (1933).
Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London. Billy Crocker is a stowaway in love with heiress Hope Harcourt, who is engaged to Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. Nightclub singer Reno Sweeney and Public Enemy Number 13, "Moonface" Martin, aid Billy in his quest to win Hope. The musical introduced such songs as "Anything Goes", "You're the Top", and "I Get a Kick Out of You."
Sidney Coe Howard was an American playwright, dramatist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for Gone with the Wind.
Machinal is a 1928 play by American playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell, inspired by the real-life case of convicted and executed murderer Ruth Snyder. Its Broadway premiere, directed by Arthur Hopkins, is considered one of the highpoints of Expressionist theatre on the American stage.
Justin Brooks Atkinson was an American theatre critic. He worked for The New York Times from 1922 to 1960. In his obituary, the Times called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of his time." Atkinson became a Times theater critic in the 1920s and his reviews became very influential. He insisted on leaving the drama desk during World War II to report on the war; he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his work as the Moscow correspondent for the Times. He returned to the theater beat in the late 1940s, until his retirement in 1960.
The Lena Horne Theatre is a Broadway theater at 256 West 47th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1926, it was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in a Spanish Revival style and was constructed for Irwin Chanin. It has 1,069 seats across two levels and is operated by the Nederlander Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
Gene Fowler was an American journalist, author, and dramatist.
"It's Only a Paper Moon" is a popular song published in 1933 with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Yip Harburg and Billy Rose.
Twentieth Century is a 1932 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles B. Millholland, inspired by his experience working for the eccentric Broadway impresario David Belasco.
Paradise Lost is a drama by Clifford Odets that takes place in 1932, during the Depression. The play was originally produced on Broadway by the Group Theatre in 1935. It was also filmed for television broadcast in 1971.
Aren't We All? is a comic play by Frederick Lonsdale.
Some Like It Hot, reissued for television as Rhythm Romance, is a 1939 comedy film starring Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, and Gene Krupa. Directed by George Archainbaud, its screenplay was written by Wilkie C. Mahoney and Lewis R. Foster, based on the play The Great Magoo by Ben Hecht and Gene Fowler, which performed briefly on Broadway in 1932. The film was released the year before Road to Singapore converted theatre and radio star Hope into a huge movie box office draw. Legendary cinematographer Karl Struss filmed the movie.
The 38th Annual Tony Awards were held on June 3, 1984, at the Gershwin Theatre and broadcast by CBS television. Hosts were Julie Andrews and Robert Preston.
Look Homeward, Angel is a 1957 stage play by the playwright Ketti Frings. The play is based on Thomas Wolfe's 1929 largely autobiographical novel of the same title.
The Trip to Bountiful is a play by American playwright Horton Foote. The play premiered March 1, 1953 on NBC-TV, before being produced on the Broadway stage from November 3, 1953 to December 5, 1953.
Shoot the Works is a 1934 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Wesley Ruggles and written by Claude Binyon, Gene Fowler, Howard J. Green and Ben Hecht. It is based on the Gene Fowler and Harold Hecht 1932 play The Great Magoo. The film stars Jack Oakie, Ben Bernie, Dorothy Dell, Alison Skipworth, Roscoe Karns, Arline Judge and William Frawley. The film was released on June 29, 1934, by Paramount Pictures, preceding by two days the beginning of the most rigorously enforced version of the Hollywood Production Code, which came into effect on July 1, 1934.