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Florodora
''Florodora'' is an Edwardian musical comedy. After its long run in London, it became one of the first successful Broadway musicals of the 20th century. The book was written by Jimmy Davis under the pseudonym Owen Hall, the music was by Leslie Stuart with additional songs by Paul Rubens, and the lyrics were by Edward Boyd-Jones, George Arthurs and Rubens. The original London production opened in 1899 where it ran for a very successful 455 performances. The New York production, which opened the following year, was even more popular, running for 552 performances. After this, the piece was produced throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. The show was famous for its double sextet and its chorus line of "Florodora Girls". The piece was popular with amateur theatre groups, particularly in Britain, into the 1950s. Background ''Florodora'' was the first of a series of successful musicals by Stuart, including ''The Silver Slipper'' (1901), ''The School Girl'' (1903), ''The Bel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florodora Sextet
''Florodora'' is an Edwardian musical comedy. After its long run in London, it became one of the first successful Broadway theatre, Broadway musicals of the 20th century. The book was written by Jimmy Davis under the pseudonym Owen Hall, the music was by Leslie Stuart with additional songs by Paul Rubens (composer), Paul Rubens, and the lyrics were by Edward Boyd-Jones, George Arthurs and Rubens. The original London production opened in 1899 where it ran for a very successful 455 performances. The New York production, which opened the following year, was even more popular, running for 552 performances. After this, the piece was produced throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. The show was famous for its double sextet and its chorus line of "Florodora Girls". The piece was popular with amateur theatre groups, particularly in Britain, into the 1950s. Background ''Florodora'' was the first of a series of successful musicals by Stuart, including ''The Silver Slipper'' (190 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leslie Stuart
Leslie Stuart (15 March 1863 – 27 March 1928) born Thomas Augustine Barrett was an English composer of Edwardian musical comedy Edwardian musical comedy was a form of British musical theatre that extended beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both directions, beginning in the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the A ..., best known for the hit show ''Florodora'' (1899) and many popular songs. He began in Manchester as a church organist, for 14 years, and taught music while beginning to compose church music and secular songs in the late 1870s. In the 1880s, he began to promote and conduct orchestral and vocal concerts of popular and theatre music as "Mr. T. A. Barrett's Concerts". He began to focus his composition on music hall, including songs for blackface performers, such as "Lily of Laguna"; songs for musical theatre, such as pantomimes and London shows touring through Manchester; and ballads such as "Soldiers of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Owen Hall
Owen Hall (10 April 1853 – 9 April 1907) was the principal pen name of the Irish-born theatre writer, racing correspondent, theatre critic and solicitor, James "Jimmy" Davis, when writing for the stage. After his successive careers in law and journalism, Hall wrote the librettos for a series of extraordinarily successful musical comedies in the 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s, including ''A Gaiety Girl, An Artist's Model, The Geisha, A Greek Slave'' and ''Florodora''. Despite his achievements, Hall was constantly in financial distress because of his gambling and extravagant lifestyle; his pseudonym was a pun on "owing all". Life and career Born in a Jewish household, Hall was the eldest son of an English dentist who practised in Dublin and later became a portrait photographer in London, Hyman Davis (1824–1875), and his wife Isabella (1824–1900), whose maiden name was also Davis. Endelman, Todd M. "The Frankaus of London: A Study in Radical Assimilation, 1837â ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edna Goodrich
Edna Goodrich (born Bessie Edna Stevens; December 22, 1883 – May 26, 1971) was an American Broadway actress, ''Florodora'' girl, author, and media sensation during the early 1900s. At one point, she was known as one of America's wealthiest and best dressed performers. She was married to Edwin Stacey of Cincinnati, Ohio, and later Nat C. Goodwin. Family The daughter of Nellie Goodrich and A.S. Stevens, Edna was raised by her great-grandfather, Abner Scott Thornton, a member of the influential Logansport Thorntons. His brothers included William Patton Thornton, a noted physician; Henry Clay Thornton, a prominent lawyer and father of Sir Henry Worth Thornton; and Joseph Lyle Thornton, a respected educator and manufacturer. Judge William Wheeler Thornton was his nephew. Among his influential cousins were Military Reconstruction Judge James Johnston Thornton and Hon. Samuel W. Thornton, a member of the 1887 Nebraska State Legislature. Her grandfather, Justus Goodrich, died i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwardian Musical Comedy
Edwardian musical comedy was a form of British musical theatre that extended beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both directions, beginning in the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following the First World War. Between '' In Town'' in 1892 and ''The Maid of the Mountains'', premiering in 1917, this new style of musical theatre became dominant on the musical stage in Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world. The popularity of ''In Town'' and ''A Gaiety Girl'' (1893), led to an astonishing number of hits over the next three decades, the most successful of which included '' The Shop Girl'' (1894), '' The Geisha'' (1896), ''Florodora'' (1899), '' A Chinese Honeymoon'' (1901), '' The Earl and the Girl'' (1903), '' The Arcadians'' (1909), ''Our Miss Gibbs'' (1909), ''The Quaker Girl'' (1910), ''Betty'' (1914), ''Chu Chin Chow'' ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evelyn Nesbit
Evelyn Nesbit (born Florence Evelyn Nesbit; December 25, 1884 or 1885 – January 17, 1967) was an American artists' model, chorus girl, and actress. She is best known for her years as a young woman in New York City, particularly her involvement in a deadly and abusive triangle between railroad scion Harry Kendall Thaw and architect Stanford White, which resulted in White's murder by Thaw in 1906. In her day, Nesbit was a famous fashion model, being frequently photographed for mass circulation newspapers, magazine advertisements, souvenir items, and calendars. When in her early teens, she had begun working as an artist's model in Philadelphia. Nesbit continued after her family moved to New York, posing for legitimate artists including James Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church, and notably Charles Dana Gibson, who idealized her as a "Gibson Girl". She was an artists' and fashion model when both fashion photography (as an advertising medium) and the pin-up (as an art genre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evie Greene
Edith Elizabeth "Evie" Greene (14 January 1875 – 11 September 1917) was a much-photographed English actress and singer who played in Edwardian musical comedies in London and on Broadway. She starred as Dolores in the international hit musical ''Florodora''. She also sang on the world's first original cast album, recorded for that musical. Life and career Greene was born at 82 Fratton Road in Portsmouth, England, in 1875 (the 1881 census gives her age as 6). She was the daughter of Richard Bentley Greene, a retired naval officer, and his wife Edith. The 1891 census states that she was a sixteen-year-old "teacher of music". Early in her career, Greene starred in pantomime in the provinces. She went on to star in hit musicals, most notably ''Florodora'' at the Lyric Theatre in London beginning in 1899, as well as the title roles in ''Kitty Grey'' in 1900 and 1901 (Apollo Theatre), also starring Mabel Love and Edna May, ''A Country Girl'' in 1903 (at Daly's Theatre), (divorced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Casino Theatre (New York City)
The Casino Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 1404 Broadway and West 39th Street (Manhattan), 39th Street in New York City. Built in 1882, it was a leading presenter of mostly musicals and operettas until it closed in 1930."Casino Theatre (Built: 1882 Demolished: 1930 Closed: 1930)" ''Internet Broadway Database'' (Retrieved on December 31, 2007) The theatre was the first in New York to be lit entirely by electricity, popularized the chorus line and later introduced white audiences to African-American shows. It originally seated approximately 875 people, however the theatre was enlarged in 1894 and again in 1905, after a fire, when its capacity was enlarged to 1,300 seats. It hosted a number of long-running comic operas, operettas and musical comedies, including ''Erminie'', ''Florodora'', ''Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clarita Vidal
Clarita Vidal (20 January 1883 – 17 June 1919) was an actress in Edwardian musical comedies, later known for her wartime work in Italy as Countess Chiquita Mazzuchi. Early life Vidal's origins were unclear, even to herself. "I really don't know what my nationality is," she confessed to a reporter in 1901."Recruiting the Ranks of the Famous Florodora Sextette" ''San Francisco Examiner'' (December 29, 1901): 28. via She said she was born in , the daughter of a Spanish ambassador and an Englishwoman. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kate Cutler
Kate Ellen Louisa Cutler (14 August 1864 – 14 May 1955) was an English singer and actress, known in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as an ''ingénue'' in musical comedies, and later as a character actress in comic and dramatic plays. She is possibly best known for walking out of the lead role in Noël Coward's ''The Vortex'' in 1924 shortly before opening night. Early years Cutler was born in Marylebone, London, daughter of Henry Cutler, a singer, and his wife Mary Ann, ''née'' Tims. Gänzl, Kurt"Cutler, Kate Ellen Louisa (1864–1955)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 29 May 2009 She trained at a conservatoire in Watford, north of London, where one of her tutors described her as "an ideal Cherubino" in Mozart's ''The Marriage of Figaro''.''The Times'' obituary notice, 18 May 1955, p. 13 Her career, however, took her not into opera, but into operetta and then musical comedy. Musical stage In 1888, she appea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Arthurs
George Arthurs (13 April 1875 Р14 March 1944) was an English songwriter, playwright, composer, author and screenwriter who contributed lyrics to several successful musical comedies such as ''The Belle of Mayfair'' (1906), ''Havana'' (1908) and ''Yes, Uncle!'' (1917), before writing dialogue for such films as ''The Yellow Mask'' (1931). Early life and songwriting Arthurs was born at Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester in 1875, the son of John Arthurs, a commercial traveller, and Harriet Laurina ''n̩e'' Savage. As a young man, Arthurs worked as an accountant in his native city, but at night he regularly visited the music halls where he got to know performers for whom he began to write jokes.Baker, Richard Anthony''British Music Hall: An Illustrated History'' Pen & Sword History (2014), Google Books p. 151 Encouraged by his joke writing success, he began also to write songs for famous music hall artistes. Songs he wrote lyrics for at that time include "I Want to Sing In Opera" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willie Edouin
Willie Edouin (1 January 1846Edouin's ''New York Times'' obituary says 1841 – 14 April 1908) was an English comedian, actor, dancer, singer, writer, director and theatre manager. After performing as a child in England, Australia and elsewhere, Edouin moved to America, where he joined Lydia Thompson's burlesque troupe, performing with this company both in the US and Britain. He returned to America in 1877, where, by 1880, he managed his own company. For over a decade, starting in 1884, Edouin managed theatres in London, particularly the Strand Theatre, producing and starring in comedies, farces and burlesques. From the 1890s, he appeared as the comic lead in several hit Edwardian musical comedies, including ''Florodora''. Early years Edouin was born in Brighton under the name William Frederick Bryer, the youngest of five children of John Edwin Bryer, an English dance instructor, and his wife Sarah Elizabeth (née May). He and his siblings played together in children's sho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
