Modern American Musicals

The great American musical

The first American musical, The Black Crook, opened in 1866 at Niblo’s Garden on Broadway. It was an extravaganza with lots of scene changes and big musical numbers including The March of the Amazons. It was a great success on Broadway and in London–the chorus girls scandalously revealing lots of leg may have helped.

In 1898 The Belle of New York became one of the first all-American musical smash hits to reach London. However it was the Gershwin musicals of the 1920s that heralded a new era of the American popular musical in the UK and made stars of Fred and Adele Astaire. Over the next two decades, American composers such as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter contributed to many British revues and musicals.

Gershwin musicals

Brothers Ira and George Gershwin were born in New York in 1896 and 1898. They became the great musical team of the Jazz age - George writing the music and Ira the lyrics. Hits included Lady be Good, Of Thee I Sing, Funny Face, Porgy and Bess and Oh Kay! starring Gertrude Lawrence. Their work became hugely popular through recordings and film.

Fred and Adele Astaire

Lady be Good in 1924, starring Fred and Adele Astaire, was the Gershwins’ first full-scale collaboration as composer and lyricist. The score included standards such as the title song and Fascinatin’ Rhythm. It came to London in 1926. The Astaires brought to British musical theatre energy, fluency, dexterity and a casual slickness that contrasted with the laid-back style of British musical stars such as Jack Buchanan.

Adele gave up the stage in 1932 when she married Charles Cavendish, youngest son of the Duke of Devonshire. Fred went on to partner British performer Claire Luce in Cole Porter’s The Gay Divorcee. This was his first romantic lead and his last stage show before taking up a Hollywood contract. His first major starring role was a film version of The Gay Divorcee with Ginger Rogers. Gershwin wrote several films for Astaire, including Shall We Dance and Damsel in Distress which featured the song A Foggy Day in London Town.

Hart, Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein

The 1920s and 1930s were the era of the great American song-writing teams: George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. In their shows, songs began to be integrated rather than just inserted into the plot, and were used to help develop storyline and character.

Musicals were growing up. First of the great book musicals to be seen in London was Show Boat, composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, which opened at Drury Lane in 1928. 'Show Boat' was the story of the Cotton Blossom, a floating theatre travelling up and down the Mississippi. With a sub-plot about racial discrimination, the musical heralded a more realistic plot line in musicals and contrasted with the sentimentality of British musicals of the period. The hit song ‘Old Man River’, sung in London by Paul Robeson, became an anthem of black oppression.

Musicals began to explore more serious issues - Joey in Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey was no conventional musical hero but a heartless nightclub performer who walks out on his girlfriend for an older woman who has the money to set him up in his own club. The original 1940 Broadway production made a star of an unknown called Gene Kelly. The last London revival in 1980 starred Denis Lawson.

Oklahoma!

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! revolutionised musical theatre. Oklahoma! was the first musical that integrated songs, lyrics and dance with the dramatic action of the play. Both song and dance were used to reveal a character’s emotions or to move the plot forward.

Although Rodgers and Hammerstein were big Broadway names with their partners Lorenz Hart and Jerome Kern, they had never worked together before. They had real trouble selling the show – the backers could see no interest in a show, with no star names, that tells the simple tale of a young girl’s attraction to two men, and where the burning question was who would take her to the local social. Nor did its original title 'Away We Go' inspire confidence. A critic at the out-of-town previews summed it up No jokes, no girls, no hope.

Renamed Oklahoma! (the exclamation mark was a last-minute thought and the poor press department was up all night inserting 4000 exclamation marks into 1000 press releases before they could announce the show) it opened on Broadway in 1943 and was an immediate smash hit.

Choreographer Agnes de Mille created a dream ballet at the end of the first act which reveals the heroine’s state of confusion in her attraction to both the honest, simple Curly and the dangerous, unstable Jud Fry. Like the songs, the dance now created an emotional subtext to the story and was completely integrated into the plot.

Oklahoma! opened in London in 1947, again with a cast of unknowns. Curly was played by Harold Keel, who, as Howard Keel, was to star in some of the most famous MGM musicals of the 1950s, including Kiss Me Kate, Calamity Jane and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The show was an immediate hit. To grey, post-war London it brought energy, youth and a feeling of boundless optimism. It smashed Chu Chin Chow's 20-year long-run record.

American musicals post-1950

After Oklahoma! American musicals dominated musical theatre in Britain for 30 years. Rodgers and Hammerstein followed Oklahoma! with Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music.

This was the era of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, Lerner and Lowe’s phenomenally successful My Fair Lady and Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls.

Lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s revolutionary West Side Story were written by Stephen Sondheim – who was to write music and lyrics for some of the most important musicals of the late 20th century, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (which was the basis for Frankie Howerd’s hit TV show Up Pompeii), A Little Night Music and Into the Woods.