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"Do the Varsity Drag"
The program title page for the original Broadway production of
Good News.
Good News (1927 - 557) was
not the first musical about college life, but it was such a hit that it established
its own set of theatrical clichés. The plot about a football hero who has to pass an
exam so he can play in the big game and win the girl he loves inspired a slew
of imitations on stage and screen, but none could match the infectious score composed
by Ray Henderson with lyrics by
Buddy DeSylva and
Lew Brown. Their dance-happy songs included
"The Best Things in Life are Free" and "The Varsity Drag," a
Charleston-style dance number that became an international craze.
The libretto was a loose affair, allowing members of the cast to offer
audience pleasing vaudeville-style specialties. Produced for approximately $75,000
(typical for a Broadway musical at that time), Good News remained popular for
decades, with a film version in 1932, and a hit Technicolor remake in 1947. A stage
revival toured with Alice Faye in the 1970s.
Depicting the "roaring 20s" as people would like to remember it, this
show remains one of the definitive theatrical events of 1920s.
Al Jolson: "The World's Greatest
Entertainer"
Al Jolson and his black-face alter
ego "Gus."
America's top musical star of the 1920s was born in a Russian schtetle in
the 1880s. After his family emigrated to the United States in 1894, young Asa Yoelson soon
decided to become an entertainer and changed his name to
Al Jolson. After winning fame in minstrel shows
and vaudeville, Jolson made his Broadway debut at The Winter Garden Theatre in
the Shubert Brothers production, La Belle
Paree (1911). The show was a little more than a variety acts held together by a
thread of plot, but the scene stealing Jolson became the toast of New York.
Audiences packed The Winter Garden, responding with enthusiasm
to Jolson's charismatic singing. The Shuberts tailored a series of stage
musicals for Jolson's outsized talents, and built a runway into the Winter Garden
audience so Jolson could move right into the midst of his fans.
His shows toured the country for years at a time, making him a star from coast to coast.
At his best, Jolson's charismatic blend of comedy and pathos had an almost sexual effect
on audiences. His booming voice could fill any theater, a major asset before electrical
amplification. No one argued when the Shuberts billed Jolson as "the
world's greatest entertainer."
Three of Jolson's biggest hits were built around "Gus," a
likeable blackface character Jolson had been using since his years in minstrelsy
Sinbad (1920 - 164) had Gus as a porter
who lands in a wild variety of historic settings. Jolson interpolated
"Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,"
"Swanee" and "My Mammy" into the otherwise disposable
score.
Bombo (1921 - 219)
turned Gus into a deckhand for Christopher Columbus. Jolson kept
audiences cheering by adding "Toot, Toot Tootsie,"
"April Showers" and "California Here I Come" to the show.
Big Boy
(1924 - 180) had Gus as a jockey, featuring live horses racing
on treadmills. Jolson interpolated "Keep Smiling at Trouble"
and reprised the best of his past hits. With occasional interruptions,
Jolson traveled in Big Boy for more than three years.
The only thing bigger than Jolson's talent was his ego. When
audiences were enthusiastic, he would dismiss the supporting cast
mid-performance and sing solo for an hour or more. However, if Jolson felt an
audience was sluggish, he gave a half-hearted performance and skipped verses to
get the curtain down early.
Jolson is best remembered today for his use of
blackface makeup. As offensive as blackface seems today, it was an accepted theatrical
device used by many white and black performers in the early 20th Century. Behind a mask
of burnt cork, one theoretically became an "everyman" triumphing over trials
and heartaches. Jolson was not a racist. Sensitive to discrimination of all kinds,
he championed the rights of black performers on several occasions. He claimed that
blackface makeup gave him the emotional distance he needed to unleash himself as a
performer. Since his most effective filmed moments involve him singing in blackface,
it is impossible to dismiss the role this makeup played in his success.
Al Jolson's fame has dimmed
with time, but no review of the popular culture of the 20th Century can afford to
overlook his presence. Who else could claim a career that spanned stardom in
minstrelsy, vaudeville, Broadway, Hollywood and radio? Jolson was one of the greatest
stars show biz will ever know, and he would have been the first to insist that
history should remember him. (For more, see our special feature,
Al Jolson 101.)
Show Boat: The Musical as Epic
A caricature of Show Boat's
original stars, taken from the title page of the program.
One of the most powerful and popular musicals ever written,
Show Boat (1927 - 572) was the collaborative effort of
three theatrical giants -- producer Florenz Ziegfeld,
composer Jerome Kern and
lyricist-librettist Oscar Hammerstein II.
Telling the epic tale of the inhabitants of a Mississippi show boat from the 1880's
to the 1920s, it deals with racism and marital heartbreak subjects that had been
considered taboo in musicals.
The ground-breaking libretto was matched by an innovative,
character-driven score with such hits as "Make Believe," "Old Man
River" and "You Are Love." Singer
Helen Morgan had the greatest success of her
career with "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" and "Bill," introducing
the latter while sitting atop an upright piano. Although many identify "Old Man
River" with Paul Robeson, the song was
introduced on Broadway by Jules Bledsoe Robeson later performed the
song in the 1928 London production and the 1936 film version.
Show Boat was a tremendous gamble. Nothing like it had ever been
tried on Broadway before, and Ziegfeld was wracked with doubts about the show's
commercial prospects. Even so, he spared no expense, giving this sweeping saga the visual
grandeur it needed to achieve optimal impact. After the opening night performance at the
Ziegfeld Theater, a stunned audience filed out in near silence. Ziegfeld thought his
worst fears had been confirmed. He was shocked when the next morning brought ecstatic
reviews and long lines at the box office. Show Boat was an unqualified triumph,
the most lasting accomplishment of Ziegfeld's now-legendary career.
Show Boat could be appreciated at various levels. To most, it
was an epic tale of undying love, but on a deeper level it showed how human sufferings
and triumphs fade away as time "just keeps rolling along." This
innovative masterpiece spawned no trends, but it showed what musical theater could
aspire to -- aspirations that Hammerstein would re-ignite sixteen year later when he
and Richard Rodgers gave birth to Oklahoma!. With one silent and two sound film
versions, as well as four acclaimed Broadway revivals, Show Boat's appeal has
survived the test of time. With each generation emphasizing different aspects
of the story, no two productions have been exactly the same.
By 1929, some things were not "rollin' along" as they had
before. The disastrous
stock market crash in October of that year ended "The Roaring 20s"
and plunged the world into the worst economic depression ever known.
Despite the hard times (and, in part, because of them), musical theatre managed
to grow and develop. People needed the emotional satisfaction of good entertainment
more than ever. And how did the musical theater oblige?
Next: Stage 1930s |