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In the 1920s, two European-born composers created lush, melodic operettas that ranked among the most popular Broadway musicals of the decade. Some sources dismiss their work as "corny," but it is impossible to appreciate the popular culture of this period without considering these once-beloved shows. 

Friml: "When I'm Calling You"
Sheet music for "Song of the Vagabonds" from Rudolph Friml's long running operetta The Vagabond King (1925).

Beginning in 1912, Czech native Rudolph Friml composed twenty Broadway operettas. His best scores were fresh and inventive enough to make the wildest romantic plots believable. Baritone Dennis King became a top matinee idol starring in three of Friml's biggest 1920s hits –

• Rose Marie (1924 - 557) was the story of a girl who must get the Canadian Mounties to clear the name of the man she loves. The score features "The Mounties" and "Indian Love Call" ("When I'm calling you-oo-oo-oo...), which was introduced by King and co-star Mary Ellis.

• The Vagabond King (1925 - 511) featured King as Francois Villon, a poetic thief who leads the street people of Paris in the rousing "Song of the Vagabonds," proclaiming allegiance to the besieged Louis XV "and to hell with Burgundy!" King also introduced the hit ballad "Only a Rose" with co-star Carolyn Thompson.

• The Three Musketeers (1928 - 319) brought the classic Dumas novel to musical life with flashing swords and ringing high notes in a lavish Ziegfeld production. King starred as D'Artagnan, singing the "March of the Musketeers."

Friml continued composing into the 1940s, when many dismissed his work as out of date. But his best songs are still enjoyed by anyone who has a weakness for melody and romance.

Romberg: "Deep In My Heart"
A publicity postcard for the original production of Romberg's The Desert Song.

Hungarian-born Sigmund Romberg contributed to more than fifty Broadway scores as staff composer for the Shubert Brothers, including numerous revues and several Al Jolson vehicles. However, Romberg knew his talents deserved a more ambitious showcase, and on several occasions he argued his way into creating the most successful operettas the Shuberts ever produced –

• The Blue Paradise (1915 - 356) was set in a Viennese cafe, where a man learns it is impossible to recapture a long lost love. The sentimental waltz "Auf Wiedersehen" became Romberg's first hit, and made a star of 18 year old soprano Vivienne Segal.

• Maytime (1917 - 492) told of two frustrated lovers who's grandchildren wind up falling for each other. With Peggy Wood and Charles Purcell singing "Will You Remember" ("Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart"), it became America's top World War I stage hit. At one point, the Shuberts had two companies of Maytime running simultaneously on Broadway to meet the demand for tickets.

• Blossom Time (1921 - 592) was a fictitious love story involving the great composer Franz Schubert. Romberg's score used variations on Schubert's classic melodies. For example, the popular hit "Song of Love" was taken from the first movement of Shubert's Unfinished Symphony.

• The Student Prince in Heidelberg (1924 - 608) tells of Prince Karl Franz, who must choose between royal duty and his collegiate love for a tavern waitress. Dorothy Donnelly provided the sophisticated book and lyrics. "Golden Days," "Deep In My Heart Dear," and "Serenade" became hits, and the rousing "Drinking Song" became a particular favorite with Prohibition-era audiences.

• The Desert Song (1926 - 432) centered on a masked freedom fighter called "The Red Shadow," played by Scottish baritone Richard Halliday. He battles the French Foreign Legion while having a Rudolf Valentino-style desert romance with a French beauty played by Vivienne Segal. The score, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, featured "One Alone" and the popular title song. ("Blue heaven, and you and I, and sand kissing a moonlit sky . . .")

• The New Moon (1928 - 509) was the semi-fictional story of Robert Mission (portrayed by Richard Halliday), a French nobleman with pro-revolutionary sentiments in colonial New Orleans. With book and lyrics by Hammerstein, it featured swordfights, a costume ball, tropical moonlight, and the hit songs "Wanting You," "Lover Come Back to Me" and "Stouthearted Men."

Romberg's lush scores exemplify Broadway operetta at its grandest. Although dripping with sentimental romance, these shows provided solid entertainment. While Romberg was sometimes guilty of borrowing a melodic idea (the opening notes of New Moon's "One Kiss" are identical to Vincent Youmans' title tune for "No, No Nanette"), he made improbable plots acceptable because of the sheer beauty of his music. Romberg continued composing for stage and screen. His final hit was Up in Central Park (1945 - 504), a musical comedy about young lovers fighting 1800s corruption in Boss Tweed's New York. Romberg continued writing and conducting popular concerts of his music until his death in 1951.

Britain in the 1920s: Coward & Co.
Bea Lillie, Jack Buchanan and Gertrude Lawrence appear on a brochure for the Broadway run of The Charlot Revue of 1926.

Most homegrown Broadway revues of the 1920s were a continuation of the lavish, underdressed "girlie shows" that thrived in the 1910s -- including Flo Ziegfeld's Follies, George White's Scandals, the Shuberts' Passing Shows and Artists and Models, and Earl Carroll's scandalous Vanities. (All these are discussed in a previous chapter.) The possibilities of a more intimate revue were not understood until an acclaimed London production made its way to New York in 1923.

Frenchman Andre Charlot produced a revolutionary series of intimate London revues, achieving such success that he was referred to as "The British Ziegfeld" -- a title he loathed. Charlot's productions relied on visual elegance, sophisticated wit and top-quality scores. One of his greatest discoveries later explained it this way --

Charlot's revues were characterized by an exquisite economy, a camaraderie between all the players and the audience such as had not been known in America up to this time. It was not a rough-and-ready intimacy, and never a jocular ad-libbing, but a mental closeness hard to define, and immediate in its appeal.
- Gertrude Lawrence, A Star Danced (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1945), p. 129.