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Stepping Stones (musical)
''Stepping Stones'' is a "fantastical musical play" (musical comedy) in two acts with book by Anne Caldwell and R. H. Burnside, lyrics by Anne Caldwell, and music by Jerome Kern. The show was produced by Charles Dillingham at the Globe Theater, and opened November 6, 1923.Mantle, Burns, Editor, "The Best Plays of 1923–1924", Dodd, Mead & Company, p. 348. The musical director was Victor Baravalle and the music was orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett. The show was staged by R. H. Burnside and choreographed by Mary Read and John Tiller. Scenic design by Wilhelm, Robert McQuinn, and P. Dodd Ackerman. Costume design by Robert McQuinn, Wilhelm, Cora MacGeachy, Will R. Barnes, and Brooks-Mahieu Company. It ran for 281 performances, closing on October 4, 1924. The cast headlined Fred Stone (Peter Plug), Dorothy Stone (Roughette Hood), Oscar Ragland (Otto DeWolfe), and Jack Whiting (Captain Paul). The plot is basically a musical comedy version of the adventures of Roughette H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Caldwell
Anne Marsh Caldwell (August 30, 1867 – October 22, 1936), also known as Anne Caldwell O'Dea, was an American playwright and lyricist. She wrote both pop songs and Broadway shows, sometimes working with composer Jerome Kern. Biography Anne Marsh Caldwell was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She began her career at the Juvenile Opera Co. as one of only four female songwriters active in the early 1900s. She was a charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, where her output between 1907 through 1928 focused mainly on Broadway scores. In 1929, lured by producer William LeBaron, she went to Hollywood where she became a script doctor and write lyrics for RKO Pictures. It was announced that she was engaged by Max Hart to write songs with Harry Tierny. By October, she was signed to write the lyrics for the film '' Dixiana''. From 1900 to the mid-1920s, she mostly collaborated with composer Jerome Kern. Her first collaboration with Kern was the musical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as " Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", " A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago (and Far Away)". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg. A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Dillingham
Charles Bancroft Dillingham (May 30, 1868 – August 30, 1934) was an American theatre manager and producer of over 200 Broadway shows. Biography Charles Bancroft Dillingham was born on May 30, 1868 in Hartford, Connecticut to Edmund Bancroft Dillingham, an Episcopalian clergyman and Josephine Potter. He graduated from the Hartford schools and went to work for a newspaper in Hartford, which sent him to Washington D.C. as a correspondent. He then went to Chicago where he joined the staff of the Chicago Times-Herald. He subsequently moved to New York City and was hired by The Evening Sun for $15 per week. He became a theater critic for the New York Post. In 1896 he wrote a play "Ten P.M." which was produced at the Bijou Theater. The producer Charles Frohman saw it and offered Dillingham a job as a advertising agent. They formed a theatrical alliance and a friendship that lasted until Frohman died in the 1915 sinking of the RMS Lusitania. After leaving the employ of Frohman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, originally the Globe Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 205 West 46th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1910, the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was designed by Carrère and Hastings in the Beaux-Arts style for Charles Dillingham. The theater is named after theatrical couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne; its original name was inspired by that of the Globe Theatre, London's Shakespearean playhouse. The current configuration of the interior, dating to 1958, has about 1,519 seats across two levels and is operated by the Nederlander Organization. The facade is a New York City landmark. The theater's only surviving facade is on 46th Street and was once the carriage entrance. The ground level contains the theater's entrance on the east, as well as exits from the auditorium and stage house. On the upper stories, the facade contains a five- bay-wide central pavilion with arches, flanked by simpler pavilions on either side ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Baravalle
Victor Baravalle (1885–1939) was an Italian born composer, music director, and conductor, best known for his work on both the stage and film productions of the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II musical, ''Show Boat''. Baravalle worked as musical director and conductor for several Broadway musicals, including as conductor for the Greenwich Village Follies in 1921. He conducted the Broadway premiere production of ''Show Boat'' in 1927, as well as for the original stage productions of nine other Jerome Kern shows, among them '' The Cat and the Fiddle'', ''Music in the Air'', and ''Roberta''. He continued a connection with Jules Bledsoe, the star of ''Show Boat'', and conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for Bledsoe's concert in 1929. Among the other stage musicals that he conducted was the first American production of ''White Horse Inn''. In 1929, he was Musical Director for RKO Pictures, at the time known as Radio Pictures, until Max Steiner took over in 1930. He cond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett (June 15, 1894 – August 18, 1981) was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers.Profile ibdb.com; accessed May 1, 2008. In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received recognizing his orchestrations for Broadway shows. Early in his career, he was often billed as Russell Bennett. Life and career Early life Robert Russell Bennett was born in 1894 to a musical family in |
John Tiller
John Thomas Ibbotson Tiller (13 June 1854 in Blackburn, Lancashire – 22 October 1925 in New York) was a musical theatre director who was credited with inventing precision dance and was the originator of the 'Tiller Girls'. Biography John Tiller always had a keen interest in music. At ten years old he became a choirboy, and a choirmaster at fourteen. He took music lessons with a tutor named Dr Hiles, who later became Professor of Harmony and composition at the Royal Northern College of Music. One of John's uncles, John George Tiller, was the wealthy owner of a successful cotton agency (one of the largest in Manchester). John wanted the same lifestyle. John's uncle took him into the family business and treated him like a son. During the day John worked in the cotton trade and after work he devoted himself to music and acting. He soon progressed to management in the cotton industry. At 19 one of his girlfriends, Mary Elizabeth Carr, told him she was pregnant. On Christmas Eve 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Stone
Fred Andrew Stone (August 19, 1873 – March 6, 1959) was an American actor. Stone began his career as a performer in circuses and minstrel shows, went on to act in vaudeville, and became a star on Broadway and in feature films, which earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Biography He was particularly famous for appearing on stage opposite David C. Montgomery. They had a 22-year partnership until Montgomery's death in 1917. They performed in shows such as '' The Wizard of Oz'' premiering in 1902, the Victor Herbert operetta ''The Red Mill'' in 1906, and '' Chin-Chin, a Modern Aladdin'', in 1914. In 1939, he appeared in a radio program promoting the new MGM film '' The Wizard of Oz,'' in which he got to meet the actor who played the Scarecrow, Ray Bolger, who was a great admirer of Stone's work, and although Bolger was too young to have seen Stone play the Scarecrow in the stage play, he did see Stone in ''The Red Mill''. In 1917, he appeared on Broadway in ''Jack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothy Stone (actress)
Dorothy Stone (June 3, 1905 – September 24, 1974) (a/k/a Dorothy B. Stone and Dorothy Stone Collins) was an actress, dancer, and singer in theater and motion pictures, born in Brooklyn, New York. Early life She was the daughter of Fred Stone, a stage actor, dancing comedian, and owner of the Fred Stone theatrical stock company. Her mother, Allene Crater Stone, acted with her father and was a singer. Her sisters were Paula Stone and Carol Stone. The family had a ranch at Lyme, Connecticut. She went into show business at an early age and in July, 1921, she was thrown and kicked by a pony she rode in the second annual circus and Wild West show of the Lights Club, an organization composed of theatrical people living on Long Island. Dorothy, known as the "Queen of Chin Chin Ranch," was shaken up by her fall and bruised by kicks from the pony but not otherwise injured. Theater Dorothy’s Broadway debut was in 1923 in Jerome Kern’s ''Stepping Stones'' in which she played th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Whiting (actor)
Jack Whiting (born Albert Draper Whiting, Jr.; June 22, 1901 – February 15, 1961) was an American actor, singer and dancer whose career ran from the early 1920s through the late 1950s, playing leading men or major supporting figures. He performed in 30+ musicals on Broadway, including ''Stepping Stones'' (1923–1924), ''Hold Everything!'' (1928–1929), '' Take A Chance'' (1932–1933), ''Hooray for What!'' (1937–1938), '' Hold On to Your Hats'' (1940–1941), ''Hazel Flagg'' (1953) and '' The Golden Apple'' (1954). As a dancer, his talent was likened to Fred Astaire's and Gene Kelly's. He starred in London's West End premieres of ''Anything Goes'' (1935–1936) and ''On Your Toes'' (1937), and recorded medleys from these shows while in England. As a singer, he enjoyed great success with a few hit songs, such as "You're the Cream in My Coffee" (1928), "I've Got Five Dollars" (1931), and "Every Street's A Boulevard In Old New York" (1953). Whiting acted in theatre plays ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing company National Book Network based in Lanham, Maryland. History The current company took shape when University Press of America acquired Rowman & Littlefield in 1988 and took the Rowman & Littlefield name for the parent company. Since 2013, there has also been an affiliated company based in London called Rowman & Littlefield International. It is editorially independent and publishes only academic books in Philosophy, Politics & International Relations and Cultural Studies. The company sponsors the Rowman & Littlefield Award in Innovative Teaching, the only national teaching award in political science given in the United States. It is awarded annually by the American Political Science Association for people whose innovations have advanced po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was an American drama critic and commentator for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio personality. Woollcott was the inspiration for two fictional characters. The first was Sheridan Whiteside, the caustic but charming main character in the play ''The Man Who Came to Dinner'' (1939) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart,Oscar Levant, '' The Unimportance of Being Oscar'', Pocket Books 1969 (reprint of G.P. Putnam 1968), p. 81. . later made into a film in 1942. The second was the snobbish, vitriolic columnist Waldo Lydecker in the novel Laura, later made into a film in 1944. Woollcott was convinced he was the inspiration for his friend Rex Stout's brilliant, eccentric detective Nero Wolfe, an idea that Stout denied. Early life and education Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was the youngest of five children of William and Frances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
