Phi-Phi
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Phi-Phi
''Phi-Phi'' is an opérette légère in three acts with music by Henri Christiné and a French libretto by Albert Willemetz and Fabien Solar. The piece was one which founded the new style of French comédie musicale, the first to really use the latest rhythms of jazz ( one-step, fox trot) along with a plot which emphasised comedy – with risqué dialogue of puns and anachronisms – more than the romantic style, which had predominated before. The success of the piece prompted imitators in Paris such as ''Le petit Phi-Phi'' (3 March 1922) and ''Les amants de Phi-Phi'' (13 March 1923). It also led to a spate of similarly titled stage works: ''Clo-Clo'', '' Dédé'', ''You-You'', ''Pan Pan''...Brinde-Jont-Offenbach J. L'opérette. In: ''Cinquante Ans de Musique Française de 1874 à 1925.'' Les Éditions Musicales de la Librairie de France, Paris, 1925. A 1922 London production, in English, was very successful. Performance history ''Phi-Phi'' opened on 12 November 1918, directly aft ...
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Phi-Phi
''Phi-Phi'' is an opérette légère in three acts with music by Henri Christiné and a French libretto by Albert Willemetz and Fabien Solar. The piece was one which founded the new style of French comédie musicale, the first to really use the latest rhythms of jazz ( one-step, fox trot) along with a plot which emphasised comedy – with risqué dialogue of puns and anachronisms – more than the romantic style, which had predominated before. The success of the piece prompted imitators in Paris such as ''Le petit Phi-Phi'' (3 March 1922) and ''Les amants de Phi-Phi'' (13 March 1923). It also led to a spate of similarly titled stage works: ''Clo-Clo'', '' Dédé'', ''You-You'', ''Pan Pan''...Brinde-Jont-Offenbach J. L'opérette. In: ''Cinquante Ans de Musique Française de 1874 à 1925.'' Les Éditions Musicales de la Librairie de France, Paris, 1925. A 1922 London production, in English, was very successful. Performance history ''Phi-Phi'' opened on 12 November 1918, directly aft ...
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Henri Christiné
Henri Marius Christiné (27 December 1867 – 25 November 1941) was a French composer of Swiss birth. The son of a French Savoyard watchmaker, Christiné was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He began by teaching at the lycée in Geneva, while pursuing his interest in music and playing organ in a local church. He married a cafe singer whose troupe was passing through Geneva, and went with her to Nice where they were married. He made his home in France, writing songs firstly for his wife and then for popular singers such as Mayol, Dranem, and Fragson. He also conducted for the music hall at the Place Clichy. Although Christiné wrote some operettas for the Scala theatre in Paris before the First World War, his career took off when he had his operetta '' Phi-Phi'' staged the day of the Armistice on 11 November 1918, with words by Albert Willemetz and Fabien Solar and which ran for three years at the Bouffes-Parisiens. This success was followed by '' Dédé'' in 1921, ''Madame'' (1 ...
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Albert Willemetz
Albert Willemetz (14 February 1887 – 7 October 1964) was a French libretto, librettist. Career Albert Willemetz was a prolific lyricist. He invented a new type of musical, with a humorous and "sexy" style. He was the author of more than 3000 songs, including "Mon homme" (popularized in English as "My Man"), "Valentine (Maurice Chevalier song), Valentine," "Dans la vie faut pas s'en faire," "Les palétuviers," "Ramona," "Est-ce que je te demande," "Ah si vous connaissiez ma poule," "Amusez-vous," and "Félicie aussi"), more than 100 musicals (including ''Phi-Phi'', ''Ta Bouche'', ''Là-Haut'', ''Dédé (opérette), Dédé'', ''3 jeunes filles nues'', ''Florestan 1er'', and ''Trois Valses''), more than 100 revues (including seven with Sacha Guitry), and work for films. He worked with some of the notable musicians of his day, including André Messager, Maurice Yvain, Arthur Honegger, Henri Christiné, José Padilla Sánchez, José Padilla, Vincent Scotto, Reynaldo Hahn, Raoul Mo ...
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Herman Darewski
Herman Darewski (17 April 1883 – 2 June 1947) was a British composer and conductor of light music. His most successful work was perhaps ''The Better 'Ole'', which ran for over 800 performances in its original London production in 1917. Some of his songs became very successful in musical revues. Born in Minsk, and musically trained in Vienna, he worked in London, for the first 15 years of the new century, as a composer of light songs, some of which were written for the new theatre form, revue. After the First World War, Darewski had a long career as a conductor of light music, both in London and at English coastal resorts. Life and career Darewski was born in Minsk, then part of the Russian empire, where his father Eduard Darewski, a Polish singing professor, was working. The family moved to London, where Herman was educated. He studied at the London College of Music, where he distinguished himself as a piano student, passing examinations in record time. One of his brothers w ...
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Clifton Webb
Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck (November 19, 1889 – October 13, 1966), known professionally as Clifton Webb, was an American actor, singer, and dancer. He worked extensively and was known for his stage appearances in the plays of Noël Coward, including '' Blithe Spirit'', as well as appearances on Broadway in a number of successful musical revues. As a film actor, he was nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Supporting Actor for '' Laura'' (1944) and ''The Razor's Edge'' (1946), and Best Actor in a Leading Role for '' Sitting Pretty'' (1948). Early life Webb was born Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the only child of Jacob Grant Hollenbeck (1867 – May 2, 1939), the ticket-clerk son of a grocer from an Indiana farming family, and his wife, the former Mabel A. Parmelee (Parmalee or Parmallee; March 24, 1869 – October 17, 1960), the daughter of David Parmelee, a railroad conductor. The couple married in Kankakee, Illinois, on January 18, ...
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London Pavilion
The London Pavilion is a building on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Coventry Street on the north-east side of Piccadilly Circus in London. It is currently a shopping arcade and part of the Trocadero Centre. Early history The first building bearing the name, a music hall formed from roofing the yard of the Black Horse Inn, was built in 1859 for Emil Loibl, and Charles Sonnhammer. A gallery was constructed for the hall but it could not utilize the full width, because one part of the premises was used by Dr. Kahn's "Delectable Museum of Anatomy". In 1885, Shaftesbury Avenue was built through part of the site, and a new London Pavilion Theatre was constructed. This opened on 30 November 1885 with a popular revue. The new theatre was the first 'music hall deluxe', with marble-topped tables for dining in the auditorium. According to Charles Stuart and A. J. Park in ''The Variety Stage'' (1895) the rebuilding signaled a new era of variety theatre:Hitherto the halls had borne un ...
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Arthur Roberts (comedian)
Arthur Roberts (21 September 1852 – 27 February 1933) was an English comedian, music hall entertainer and actor. He was famous for portraying the pantomime dames and later for his comic characters and "gagging" in farces, burlesques and musical comedies. He is credited with coining the word "spoof". Biography Early life and career Roberts was born in Kentish Town, London,Baker, p. 49 the son of a Savile Row tailor who attended to Edward, Prince of Wales. His father's death when Roberts was 12 left the family in "a grim struggle for existence".Roberts, p. 4 Roberts walked three miles a day to work in a seed shop in Covent Garden. He joined a choral society and sang at the Crystal Palace. Roberts began performing professionally in 1871 after being persuaded to sing by an impresario from Norfolk who was busking near Roberts' home in Bayswater. He performed "The Mad Butcher", which he was later paid £1 a week to sing on the beach at Great Yarmouth. The following summer, R ...
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Evelyn Laye
Evelyn Laye (née Elsie Evelyn Lay; 10 July 1900 – 17 February 1996) was an English actress who was active on the London light opera stage, and later in New York and Hollywood. Her first husband, actor Sonnie Hale, left her for Jessie Matthews, earning much public sympathy for Laye. Her second husband was actor Frank Lawton, with whom she often appeared in stage productions. Early years Laye was born as Elsie Evelyn Lay in Bloomsbury, London, and known informally as Boo. Her parents were both actors and her father a theatre manager. Career Lay made her first stage appearance in August 1915 at the Theatre Royal, Brighton as Nang-Ping in ''Mr. Wu'', and her first London appearance at the East Ham Palace on 24 April 1916, aged 15, in the revue ''Honi Soit'', in which she subsequently toured. For the first few years of her career she mainly played in musical comedy and operetta, including ''The Beauty Spot'' in 1917 and '' Going Up'' in 1918. Among her successes dur ...
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Stanley Lupino
Stanley Richard Lupino Hook (15 June 1893 – 10 June 1942), known professionally as Stanley Lupino, was an English actor, dancer, singer, librettist, director and short story writer. During the 1930s, Lupino appeared in a successful series of musical comedy films, often based on his already popular stage shows. Career Lupino was a member of the celebrated theatrical Lupino family. His father was the actor George Lupino. He was the brother of actor Barry Lupino (1884–1962) and the father of Ida Lupino. Lupino began his career as an acrobat. He made his first stage appearance at the age of 6 as a monkey in ''King Klondyke''. After prize fighting for a while, he toured with the Albert and Edmunds troupe of acrobats, the Brother Luck and other vaude units. In 1910 he appeared in ''Dick Whittington'', and 4 years later was signed by his brother, Barry, for a role in ''Sleeping Beauty''. He first became known as a music hall performer and played in pantomimes at the Theatre Roya ...
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Clifford Grey
Clifford Grey (5 January 1887 – 25 September 1941) was an English songwriter, librettist, actor and screenwriter. His birth name was Percival Davis, and he was also known as Clifford Gray. Grey contributed prolifically to West End and Broadway shows, as librettist and lyricist for composers including Ivor Novello, Jerome Kern, Howard Talbot, Ivan Caryll and George Gershwin. Among his best-remembered songs are two from early in his career, in 1916: " If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)" and "Another Little Drink Wouldn't Do Us Any Harm". His later hits include "Got a Date with an Angel" and "Spread a Little Happiness". For 35 years after 1979 it was widely believed that Grey secretly competed as an American bobsleigher, under the name Clifford "Tippy" Gray, in two Winter Olympics, in 1928 and 1932, winning gold medals, but it was finally shown that the sportsman was a different person. Life and career Early years Grey was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, the son o ...
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Dédé (opérette)
''Dédé'' is an opérette or musical comedy in three acts with music by Henri Christiné and a French libretto by Albert Willemetz. It marked an important milestone in developing the career of Maurice Chevalier. Performance history ''Dédé'' opened at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Paris on 10 November 1921, almost exactly three years after Christiné's hit ''Phi-Phi'', and although ''Dédé'' did not manage that long a run, this was mainly due to a change of theatre. Revivals took place at the Théâtre Marigny in 1942, again in Paris in 1973 and in Lyon in 1993.’L'encyclopédie multimedia de la comédie musicale théâtrale en France (1918-1940)’ (http://comedie-musicale.jgana.fr/index.htm), accessed 17.08.09. In recent years it has been produced in Brussels, Cannes, Marseille, Metz, Reims (broadcast on France 3), and on tour by Opéra Éclaté. A film adaptation of the piece was released in 1935, starring Albert Préjean and Danielle Darrieux. A complete sound recor ...
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