AS THE STORY GOES, on January 15, 1930, the night after the revised Strike Up the Band opened on Broadway, the two men who wrote the book—George Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind—watched the performance from the back of the theater with mixed feelings. Producer Edgar Selwyn joined them in a triumphal mood. Changes that had softened what some had found unpatriotic about the first version, he told them, explained the audience’s enthusiastic reception. But the playwrights took his opinion less as a compliment than as a challenge: the next time they should “do one just for ourselves,” with the Gershwins again on board.1
By the time the authors came up with a workable idea, George and Ira had signed on for the screen and Delicious. But when the brothers headed west, they took with them Kaufman and Ryskind’s fourteen-page scenario for a new show, which enabled them, during spare moments in California and after their return home, to work on at least some ideas. With fingers crossed, the authors also sent their scenario to producer Sam Harris, who wired them back that “it’s certainly different,” which Kaufman rightly took as a yes.2 By July 1931, the first-act script of the new show, apparently first called The Big Charade, was in the Gershwins’ hands, and conversations were taking place about where the plot might need songs and which music should go where.
Meanwhile, in London on July 27, the BBC Symphony played a program in Queen’s Hall as part of the International Society for Contemporary Music’s Ninth Festival. Six orchestral works were performed, each by a composer from a different nation, and the concert ended with An American in Paris, conducted by Alfredo Casella.3 Gershwin’s composition drew neither enthusiastic plaudits nor scornful dismissals from the critics, though more than one found the taxi horns overdone. The London Times critic found that “like all musical jokes, it went on too long, repeated a good joke (that of the motor-horns, for example) too often, and between the jokes relapsed into platitudes.”4
As the ISCM explored present-day inventiveness in the U.K., in New York City the Philharmonic was introducing a conductor new to the orchestra to lead a two-week series of summer concerts at Lewisohn Stadium. Fritz Reiner, erstwhile music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was now on his way to a new post as assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Reiner had just returned from a European trip, and he singled out George Gershwin as “the only American composer who has a popular following in Europe,” where “critics and public alike respect his work.” 5 The last concert in his Lewisohn series was to be an all-American affair scheduled for Monday, August 10. But that plan was foiled by rain, which lasted until the 13th, by which time Reiner had left to fulfill an engagement in Philadelphia.
Despite the delays, that concert proved a source of satisfaction for Gershwin. “Who do you suppose I got to conduct for me?” he wrote Rosamond Walling, who by then was in Europe. “None other than my good-looking Irish pal Bill Daly. It will be his first performance as symphony conductor & we’re all excited about it.”6 In a letter to George Pallay the day after the concert, he left no doubt that the evening’s highlight had been Daly’s debut as symphonic conductor. “I believe I have told you about Bill being probably my best friend. Well, I got him to conduct the Rhapsody and also Russell Bennett’s March for Orchestra and Two Pianos. It was the general opinion that the Rhapsody had never been heard to better advantage, even when Whiteman played it.” Nor was Gershwin alone in his appreciation. Francis Perkins of the Herald Tribune considered that the Rhapsody in Blue blossomed under Daly’s approach to sonority:
Mr. Gershwin, as a rhapsodist in blue, is well known to Stadium audiences, but the orchestral colors of the work were set forth with unusual brilliance, the jazz had an unusual warmth in last night’s performance under the spirited, able leadership of Mr. Daly. . . . Under his direction the orchestra gave probably the most Whit[e]manesque performance of its career.7
September 26 saw the publication of Isaac Goldberg’s biography, the outcome of a personal connection that had begun in the summer of 1929, when the two men met after an American in Paris concert in Boston. Since then, the scholarly Goldberg had become a friend of both George and Ira, as well as a close student of George’s music and career. Deems Taylor advised his readers:
If you want to read the life story, so far, of an authentically talented musician, who began his career as a fifteen-dollar-a-week song plugger in Tin Pan Alley . . . a young man who still rides with one foot on the back of the bucking bronco of musical comedy and the other on that of the milk-white steed of symphonic music, and has not been thrown yet; all told by a chronicler whose unabashed devotion to his subject matter is not the least attractive feature of his work—where were we? If memory serves, there was an “if” somewhere in the misty beginning of that sentence. Anyhow, try the book. It will, I think, amuse and interest you.8
A month later, Ira was informing Pallay in Los Angeles that “we are up to our necks in ‘Of Thee I Sing’ which goes into rehearsal in a couple of weeks. We’re a little stale on it just now and, for the past three weeks, I give up trying to get ideas, and forget the show, on the slightest invitation to a cross word puzzle or backgammon. But as it’s been that way with every show in the past, I’m not particularly worried. We’ll probably get a lot done at the last minute.”9 By early November, they had finished drafting a score for an endeavor George called “different from anything we’ve ever done. . . . the music & the book are wedded to such a degree that most of the big situations are done to music.”10
On November 10 George wrote “Ike” Goldberg to explain his current optimism:
We are in rehearsal with the principals and chorus of the new show. The principals seem to be thrilled wth the music and the chorus—which started yesterday—also seem pleased. It’s a little hard for me to tell you how it is going to turn out but, at the moment, I feel it is the most complete score that Ira and I have ever written. We have taken whole scenes of Kaufman’s book and set them to music and lyrics. As I have never written this sort of thing so completely before, I find it difficult to predict its final value. However, I will say that it has a chance, in my opinion, of having some importance in American musical comedy.
In other words, as in the Finaletto to Act I of Strike Up the Band, the Gershwins were now creating a musical comedy steeped in operatic dramaturgy.11
And two weeks later, in another letter to Goldberg, George confessed that “the last two weeks in Boston” had been “unusual and delightful” because “the show went so well.” The cause? “I feel Ira and I had at last become fortunate in the finding of a first rate book.”12
. . .
A TALE of presidential politics set in Washington, D.C., the plot of Of Thee I Sing centers on one John P. Wintergreen, played by William Gaxton, nominated before the show begins to fill the highest office in the land.13 Wintergreen is the candidate of a political party that has found no issue to run on. A hint of that problem surfaces in the opening scene, a torchlit political parade whose marchers are singing “Wintergreen for President” and carrying banners with such slogans as “Win with Wintergreen” and “A Vote for Wintergreen Is a Vote for Wintergreen.” Lasting barely two minutes, the arresting scene consists entirely of music delivered in unison by a mixed chorus with orchestra—mostly in call-and-response exchanges, and peppered with quotations from patriotic songs.
Scene 2 shows the party’s National Committee hammering out an election platform. The committee’s membership numbers five: Matthew Fulton, owner of a big-city newspaper; two U.S. senators, one from the South and the other from the West; and two political bosses—Gilhooley from New York’s Tammany Hall, where Irish political power is centered, and Lippman, who can deliver the Jewish vote. After much palaver and a bit of debate, the members stumble onto an issue: Wintergreen, a bachelor, will run as an advocate of “love,” and his campaign will include a search for a first lady. A beauty contest will be held in Atlantic City with a contestant from each of the forty-eight states; if elected, President Wintergreen will marry the winner.
The convention has chosen a running mate for Wintergreen so innocuous that nobody can remember his name. In fact, when Alexander Throttlebottom, played by Victor Moore, shows up at the committee’s strategy session seeking to resign from the ticket—he fears that his mother will learn of his nomination—he is almost ejected as an interloper. When party leaders learn that he spent years as a hermit before entering politics, they return him to the cave where he came from, on the grounds that vice presidents must stay out of sight. But he reappears immediately, having been thrown out by the other hermits.
Scene 3 takes place in Atlantic City, where beauty pageant contestants parade by in bathing suits. In “Who Is the Lucky Girl to Be?,” the girls comment on the experience of being in a competition with one winner and forty-seven losers. Wintergreen is introduced to the bevy of beauties as their “future husband.” Dazzled at first, he grows uneasy with the prospect of life at the side of the likely winner: Diana Devereaux of Louisiana, a southern belle played by Grace Brinkley with a thick regional drawl. He then strikes up a conversation with a noncontestant: Mary Turner, played by Lois Moran, secretary of the organizing committee, who can, the candidate learns, bake “the best darned corn muffins you ever ate.” Sampling one of Turner’s glories as Devereaux is declared the winner, Wintergreen rejects the party’s political agenda. With apologies to Devereaux, he declares that Turner will be his bride because he loves her and her muffins (“Some Girls Can Bake a Pie”). At first, consternation reigns, but eventually Wintergreen carries the day, as Devereaux and the other would-be first ladies protest in agitated counterpoint.
Scene 4, staged shortly before the election, is a political rally—with banners, music, speeches, and, for spectators who find politics a bore, a wrestling match—in New York’s Madison Square Garden. In “Love Is Sweeping the Country,” an inspirational campaign song, the ensemble predicts that passion will “soon be national,” with Gershwin’s music supplying the high-octane vitality required for the song to energize Americans to vote for love and Wintergreen. The brisk, 2/4 refrain music, with its bold melodic gestures, persistent syncopation, and fast-moving declamation, embodies exhilaration. The rally’s central moment is the appearance of Wintergreen and Turner, who implore the crowd to join in their political quest before Wintergreen leads a rendition of the show’s title song. If “Love Is Sweeping the Country” is brash and challenging, “Of Thee I Sing” exudes dedication, fusing romance with love of country. Borrowing a line of text from a patriotic classic originally sung to the melody of the British “God Save the King,” it desolemnizes the worshipful gravity of the first two phrases by ending both with the colloquial “baby.” The final measures, broadening the tempo, approach anthemlike majesty.
Scene 5, election night, unfolds on a moving picture screen, the melodies of “Love Is Sweeping the Country” and “Of Thee I Sing” providing an aural backdrop. Returns show that Wintergreen has beaten Jefferson Davis in Atlanta, barely edged out Mickey Mouse in Hollywood, and won handily in Richmond over Mason, Dixon, and Mason and Dixon. Wintergreen is elected and Throttlebottom refuses to concede his election as vice president.14
Act I closes in scene 6 on the steps of the Capitol, where Wintergreen takes his oath of office and promises to be a faithful husband to Mary Turner. A fanfare based on the title song’s first phrase introduces the nine Supreme Court justices, who boast that “only we can take a law and make it legal.” The president-elect sings a farewell to his bachelor days (“Here’s a Kiss for Cinderella”), as the crowd adds a countermelody of its own. Turner arrives, accompanied by music that includes portions of the wedding march from Wagner’s Lohengrin. As the chief justice administers both the oath of office and the matrimonial vows, the orchestra plays “Of Thee I Sing” softly in the background. But the solemnity is shattered when a strident female voice breaks in: “Stop! Halt! Pause! Wait!” Diana Devereaux has arrived to serve Wintergreen with a summons for breach of promise. “I was the most beautiful blossom in all the Southland,” she begins, going on to relate what happened after she was “sent up north” and denied her prize unfairly. Wintergreen then raises the question of the hour: “Which is more important? Justice or corn muffins?” The Supreme Court justices go into a football-team huddle, and suspense builds over background music until they break for their verdict: The muffins have it, the crowd hails the decision, and Act I closes on a note of solemnity.
The curtain of Act II rises in the White House on a his-and-hers presidential office as secretaries show up for work, whistling and dancing to a graceful melody (“Hello, Good Morning”). Fulton from the National Committee, however, informs the first couple that Diana Devereaux’s complaint is the talk all over the country. His news prompts the show’s third and last freestanding song, “Who Cares?,” with a scornful verse. “I love him and he loves me and that’s how it will always be so what care we about Miss Devereaux?,” the first lady announces on a succession of quarter notes. But now a foreign entanglement looms, in the person of the ambassador of France, whose entourage arrives to walking music borrowed from the composer’s An American in Paris. He has come to the White House because a grievous wrong has been done to a French descendant.
This notion had struck Ira in Hollywood, when he figured that an important French father for Diana might have comic potential. “Not wishing to use the names of any contemporary personages,” he recalled, “I went historical.” She would be the “illegitimate daughter of an ill. nephew of Louie-Philippe (or Napoleon)”—and her blue blood would enable Ira to rhyme “Napoleon” with “the old Simoleon” (i.e., the almighty dollar).15
“The Illegitimate Daughter,” a pompous 6/8 march delivered by the ambassador with mock dignity and pristine clarity, leaves his audience unsettled. To sharpen his case, he has brought the spurned damsel with him, her voice heard first in the distance singing “I was the most beautiful blossom in all the Southland.” When the Wintergreens cut her off with an abrupt “We know all that!” the ambassador insists that their marriage be annulled. But Wintergreen stands by his wife, whereupon the politicos, concerned with their own standing, decide to begin an impeachment hearing. The president and first lady sing a reprise of “Who Cares?” softly, with a wispy violin obbligato, substituting steadfast new words for the original defiant ones.
By scene 2, it has dawned on the committee that if Wintergreen is removed from office, Throttlebottom will become president. Wintergreen, however, seems unbothered by that prospect, and he dispenses advice to his vice president: on policy (during the first four years “don’t do anything except try to get re-elected”), Congress (“keep them out of Washington”), and speech-making (“only make a speech when you want the stock market to go down”). Scene 3, staged in the Senate, is called to order by Throttlebottom (“The Senator from Minnesota”), who does his best to welcome Wintergreen to his own impeachment: “Won’t you sit down, while we kick you out?” The charge against the president is chanted in four parts, each beginning with “Whereas.” Diana delivers a new lament (“Jilted”) in waltz time about the humiliation she has suffered, while Wintergreen embraces his fate.
But now a cry from the first lady brings the impeachment to a halt. “I’m about to be a mother,” she carols, in a lilting waltz-time filled with bold leaps, exuding an aura of vitality and joy. The singing and dancing ensemble agrees that “we can’t bother / A budding young father,” as the president faints at the bombshell his wife has just dropped. After Throttlebottom notes that “the Senate has never impeached an expectant father,” the senators all vote “Not guilty!” As the melody of Diana’s well-worn lamentation “I was the most beautiful blossom . . .” echos once more, the Atlantic City girls restate phrases from one of their pageant songs, and the chief justice congratulates the president: “You’ve done your duty by posterity.” His line allows Wintergreen to deliver the title of the next number, “Posterity is just around the corner.” A tango rhythm emerges from the orchestra, giving the melody such a lift that the ensemble jumps on board in a flash—the senators are already wielding tambourines—and so does the first lady. “France consents to your having a child,” the president is informed in the next scene, but only if the baby is turned over to the French state.
When the curtain rises on the last scene in the Yellow Room of the White House, it unveils a stage full of gifts as everyone wonders whether the baby will be a boy or a girl. The Supreme Court judges, who alone can decide the gender of a sitting president’s baby, are announced by fanfare. “By a strict party vote,” proclaims the chief justice, “it’s a boy.” Congratulations are showered upon Wintergreen, who distributes cigars. But then another fanfare is heard. The Court returns, and the chief justice repeats the birth announcement: “This time it’s a girl.” An outraged French ambassador warns that war is now virtually certain, for the United States has deprived France of not just one baby, but two. Somewhere in the distance, Devereaux may be heard singing, “I was the most beautiful blossom. . . .”
With tension between America and France near the breaking point, it dawns on Wintergreen that it’s in circumstances like these that the vice president can replace the president. “I get her!” Throttlebottom gloats. “Article Twelve!” confirms the chief justice. “Monsieur, you are a genius,” says the ambassador. “Oh, my God!” Wintergreen exclaims when a third fanfare sounds, relaxing only after the chief justice assures him that it’s only “the boys” practicing. As a huge canopied bed comes into view, occupied by Mary Wintergreen with a baby on each arm, the show ends with the entire cast singing the refrain “Of Thee I Sing.”16
Of Thee I Sing, opening on December 8 in Boston and December 26 on Broadway, proved a near-unanimous success with the drama critics. As one New York reviewer put it, the show was original without sacrificing any of “the virtues of the musical comedy, per se. Beautiful girls, lively music, lovers nearly parted—all these are present,” along with a “great generosity of ideas” that put the musical in a class by itself.17 No critic paid closer heed to the show than Boston’s Henry Taylor Parker, who credited Gershwin’s compositional approach for “a music that is part and parcel of the narrative. . . . We who are fond and foolish, and so ambitious for the American theater, went home with a warming sense that the new play had enlarged it.”18
The reviewer for the Boston Globe commented that while Gershwin had received great applause as he walked down the aisle to conduct the first performance, Kaufman, Ryskind, and his brother should have been with him. For “happy as Mr. Gershwin’s music is, happier indeed are book and lyric,” which together “make one of the funniest plays in a long, long time. . . . The lyricist has worked out a style that combines the method of [W. S.] Gilbert with that of the librettists of Italian grand operas—now rapid patters of short, jerky rhymes, now the repetition by the chorus of the statements of the principals, and again the operatic style of tossing a line here and a line there to different sections of the chorus. Extremely effective.”19 A review by Leslie A. Sloper, music critic of the Christian Science Monitor, was more measured in its praise, finding “various coarsenesses which are quite gratuitous and which belong to the tradition of a lower type of musical comedy.” Nevertheless, “we must not forget to mention that this imperfect operetta is hugely amusing.”20 As the tryout run in Boston neared its end, Parker revisited Of Thee I Sing and was more than ever convinced that the show was “original work, American through and through.”21
A substantial number of New York critics agreed that the show’s originality and inventiveness would earn it a place in American theater history. Richard Lockridge’s judgment, “the grandest American stage satire I have any knowledge of,” was typical.22 Robert Garland of the World Telegram wrote, “I must remember to tell my grandchildren that I was present at its opening.”23 Brooks Atkinson of the Times called librettists Kaufman and Ryskind “as neat a pair of satirists as ever scuttled a national tradition.”24 And in the Evening Post, John Mason Brown singled out Victor Moore’s triumph in making Throttlebottom “as richly humorous as he is wistfully pathetic.”25
In the January 2, 1932, issue of the New Yorker, E. B. White, after stating that “ ‘Of Thee I Sing’ has the funniest book of any musical comedy you can put your finger on,” added that “whatever it is, it is a Step Forward, as anybody feels who has seen the show. . . . The moment never arrives (as it does early in most musical comedies) when the startling clarity of the plot sickens you with the realization that it is going to take another act and a half to get it down on paper. This show really covers ground, and keeps building up and up.”26 On January 3, Atkinson, returning for another performance, saluted the musical’s success in presenting entertainment “funnier than the government, and not nearly so dangerous.”27
Sometime after the opening, a lonely dissenting view came from New York’s Franco-American Society, which counted itself unamused by lines that referred jokingly to the weighty war debt owed by France to the United States. On the society’s behalf, the Rt. Reverend William T. Manning submitted a resolution asking that the charge be toned down. Kaufman responded that he would gladly remove these offending lines “if Bishop Manning will write a couple for me which will get the same big laughs.” The lines remained, and the show ran on Broadway for more than a year, logging 441 performances.28