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British Imports: Florodora
Broadway's Florodora sextet and their male co-stars. Their rendition of "Tell Me Pretty Maiden" made this musical comedy a sensation.

At the start of the 20th Century, America was in the full glory of cultural adolescence, bursting with energy and optimism. London was still the theatrical capital of the world, but New York was gaining fast in clout, sophistication and size. As of 1900, there were thirty-three legitimate Broadway theatres, and many more would be built within the next decade to meet growing audience demand.

New York's exploding population was also enjoying increased mobility. In 1904, the city opened its first underground commuter railroad lines. Thanks to these "subways," tens of thousands living far from the theatre district could catch a Broadway show and still sleep in their own beds. Add in the ever-increasing numbers of tourists who came into the city by rail and steamship, and it was easy to see why Broadway could now support more productions and longer runs than ever before. So its not surprising that the Broadway musicals of the early 1900s embodied a new sense of artistic and commercial value.

The first theatrical sensation of the new century was the British musical comedy Florodora (1900 - NY 553), the story of a young woman seeking romance and the restoration of a stolen inheritance. After it opened to raves in London a year earlier, various producers in New York rejected the show as "too British" -- but a team of newcomers took a chance, earning millions of dollars. When Florodora's sextet of attractive chorines (each standing five foot four and weighing a uniform 130 pounds) joined their well-dressed male counterparts to sing (with bogus Mayfair accents) the flirtatious "Tell Me Pretty Maiden" audiences were entranced –

MEN
Oh tell me, pretty maiden,
Are there any more at home like you?

GIRLS
There are a few, kind sir,
But simple girls, and proper too.

MEN
Then tell me pretty maiden
What these very simple girlies do.

GIRLS
Kind sir, their manners are perfection
And the opposite of mine.

The original Florodora sextet – Daisy Green, Marjorie Relyea, Vaughn Texsmith, Margaret Walker, Agnes Wayburn, and Marie Wilson – inspired all sorts of publicity. Some theatre historians have perpetuated the claim that all six married millionaires, but this sounds like press agent ballyhoo. It is true that the public was fascinated by these chorines. When chorus boys from a neighboring theatre took to peeking into the sextet's dressing rooms, the girls retorted with cascades of seltzer. Florodora was revived on Broadway several times, including a 1920 production that updated the material and turned the sextet into flappers.

Other British musicals of the early 1900s enjoyed record setting success on both sides of the Atlantic. West End lyricist George Dance and American-born composer Howard Talbot designed A Chinese Honeymoon (1901 - 1,074 London) to please provincial English audiences, but Londoners were so taken by this tale of British couples who honeymoon in China and inadvertently break (shades of The Mikado!) the kissing laws that it became the first West End show ever to run over a thousand performances. The show managed a profitable 376 performance run on Broadway the following year.

The Wizard of Oz
Broadway boasted plenty of native hits in the early 1900s. Frank L. Baum provided the book and lyrics for the musical version of his classic children's novel The Wizard of Oz (1903 - 293). The story of Dorothy and her pet cow Imogene (Toto was considered too small to be appreciated from the balcony) being blown to the magical land of Oz became a spectacular production, with a stereopticon cyclone and lavish fantasy sets. Vaudevillians David Montgomery (as the Tin Woodman) and Fred Stone (as The Scarecrow) acrobatically clowned their way to Broadway stardom, and the show inspired a slew of musicals based on children's fairy tales. It should be noted that nothing from this stage version of The Wizard of Oz was used in MGM's classic 1939 film.

After its successful Broadway run, The Wizard of Oz enjoyed a long national tour, with Montgomery & Stone repeating their acclaimed performances. Thanks to ongoing improvements in America's railroads, taking a full scale Broadway production on tour was easier and potentially more profitable than ever. By 1900, there were over 3,000 professional theaters across the United States. Some were far better than others, but at least 1,000 were equipped to house Broadway-level productions. By 1904, it is estimated that over 400 touring companies were trouping plays and musicals across the country. With millions of dollars at stake, there was fierce competition to control this blossoming business.

No Business Like Show Business
Lee and Jacob Shubert succeeded in their efforts to wipe out Abe Erlanger's once invincible theatrical syndicate. By the 1920s, the Shuberts would control 75% of the professional theatres in America. More ruthless than Erlanger, Lee and "J.J." became infamous for suing actors, writers, producers, and even each other. The Shuberts treated all their employees as expendable commodities. The ever-practical Fanny Brice described what it was like to be on a Shubert tour by saying, "It took the Shuberts to invent a new way to kill the Jews." (Herb Goldman's Fanny Brice, Oxford, NY 1992, p. 161.)

Everyone working in the American theatre of the early 20th Century, from producers on down to the ushers, saw theatre as a business, not an art form. Productions had to be commercially successful to attract audiences, breed imitators and form the basis for future trends. This meant that all shows, musicals included, had to appeal to the growing middle and working classes. The resulting musicals of the early 1900s were mostly upbeat  celebrations of American know-how and decency. And no one was more expert at providing such entertainments than a little guy named Cohan.

George M. Cohan
A publicity photo of George M. Cohan taken in the 1920s.

George M. Cohan was an Irish-American graduate of variety and vaudeville who wrote, directed, produced and starred in jingoistic musical comedies that celebrated the triumph of American know-how and New York-style "street smarts." After limited runs on Broadway, where most critics frowned on Cohan's shameless, sentimental jingoism, these musicals toured the U.S., drawing packed houses for a year or more. Cohan's most memorable hits included –

– Little Johnny Jones (1904 - 56) featured Cohan as an American jockey who loses the English Derby, clears himself of false charges that he threw the race, and simultaneously wins the girl he loves. Cohan's first wife Ethel Levy played his beloved, and his parents played major comedy roles. After a cool reception in New York, the show toured for two seasons and returned to Broadway twice, racking up profits all along the way. "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Give My Regards to Broadway" made Cohan's name a nationwide household word.

– Forty-five Minutes From Broadway (1906 - 90) featured musical comedy favorite Fay Templeton as a small-town girl who would rather give up an inherited fortune than lose the poor street-smart New Yorker she loves (played by newcomer Victor Moore). The title song and "Mary's a Grand Old Name" became lasting hits, and Cohan took over Moore's role when the show was revived a few years later.

– George Washington Jr. (1906 - 81) opened a few weeks after Forty-five Minutes, with Cohan playing a senator's son who (in the name of patriotism) refuses to marry a British nobleman's daughter. The showstopper was "You're a Grand Old Rag," a tuneful tribute to the Stars and Stripes. The word "Rag" was switched to "Flag" after one of Cohan's critics instigated a journalistic outcry. The song remains a patriotic favorite.

George M. Cohan and first wife Ethel Levy kick up their heels in Little Johnny Jones (1904).

Cohan became one of the most powerful producers in show business, forming a longtime partnership with Sam Harris. In fact, Cohan excelled in more capacities than anyone else in American theatrical history. Friend and fellow performer William Collier put it this way –

"George is not the best actor or author or composer or dancer or playwright. But he can dance better than any author, compose better than any manager, and manage better than any playwright. And that makes him a very great man."
- As quoted in John McCabe's George M. Cohan: The Man Who Owned Broadway (New York: Doubleday& Co., 1973), pp. xi-xii.

It would take a bitter actors' strike and a change in popular taste to put the brakes on Cohan's popularity. He remained "The Man Who Owned Broadway" until the 1920s. Cohan's shows had little appeal outside the United States and are too simplistic to be revived in their original versions, but the best of his songs are still familiar, including the wartime hit "Over There." Cohan always ended his curtain calls with a signature speech that had become part of his legend –

"My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I assure you, I thank you."

(Note: You can find more about Cohan in our special section, Cohan 101.)

The AABA Song Form
As George M. Cohan rose to fame in the early 1900s, one song format became the accepted standard in all forms of popular music, including Broadway showtunes – the AABA form, a structure ingrained in American ears by countless Christian hymns.

Here's how it works. Most showtunes have two parts –

• The verse sets up the premise of a song. For example, the verse of one popular Cohan hit begins "Did you ever see two Yankees part upon a foreign shore?," going on to explain that the one remaining behind will ask his friend one parting favor. The verse can be most any length.
• The chorus (or "refrain") states the main point of the lyric – "Give my regards to Broadway, remember me to Herald Square." Since the early 1900s, the choruses of most American popular songs have been thirty-two bars long.

Those thirty two bars are usually divided into four sections of approximately eight bars each. Musicologists describe this as the AABA form –

• A is the main melody, usually repeated three times – in part, so that it can be easily remembered.

• B is the release or bridge, which should contrast as much as possible with melody A.

The uniform use of this predictable format falls easily on the public's ears, making songs easy to listen to. It also forces composers and lyricists to make their points efficiently, acting more as a discipline than a limitation. From George M. Cohan to Jonathan Larson and beyond, all modern Broadway songwriters have written most of their songs in the thirty-two bar AABA format. In fact, it remained the standard for all popular music until the hard rock revolution of the 1960s.

Of course there are many exceptions. Showtunes that do not use the thirty-two bar AABA format tend to use a variation, such as –

• ABAB form (examples: Cohan's "Mary," The Gershwins's "Embraceable You")

• AABA with double the number of bars (four sections of sixteen apiece)

• Multiple AABA segments in one extended number (example: Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Soliloquy")

• Skip a section (example: ABA)

Even radical departures from the form usually retain some vestige of it. The chorus of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" is a whopping 104 bars long, and follows an AAB structure, but the B section ends by echoing the opening bar of A – providing satisfaction to ears accustomed to AABA melodies.

Broadway's most respected composer at the start of the 20th Century was Victor Herbert, a classically trained musician who turned out musicals that were considered to be more sophisticated than Cohan's -- yet were equally popular. For more, continue on to . . .

Next: Stage 1900-1910: Part II