The Passing Show Of 1918
''The Passing Show of 1918'' is a Broadway musical revue featuring music of Sigmund Romberg and Jean Schwartz (and other songwriters), with book and lyrics by Harold R. Atteridge. The show introduced the hit songs "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" and "Smiles". Staged by J. C. Huffman and choreographed by Jack Mason, the show debuted at the Winter Garden Theater on July 25, 1918. Playing for 142 performances, it closed on November 9 of the same year. The show was produced by Lee and Jacob J. Shubert. The production featured an early appearance of Fred Astaire (with his sister Adele). ''The New York Times'' called it "rattling good entertainment" and praised the "vaudeville team" of Fred and Adele Astaire, as well as the brothers Willie and Eugene Howard. Background The original ''The Passing Show'' was presented in 1894 by George Lederer at the Casino Theatre. It featured spoofs of theatrical productions of the past season. It was one of the first musical revues on Broadway and le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles (sheet Music Cover)
"I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" is a popular American song written in 1918, released in late 1919, becoming a number one hit for Ben Selvin's Novelty Orchestra. It has been revived and adapted over the years, serving as the anthem of Premier League club, West Ham United. Origins The music was composed by John Kellette in 1918. The lyrics are credited to "Jaan Kenbrovin" — actually a collective pseudonym for the writers James Kendis, James Brockman and Nat Vincent, combining the first three letters of each lyricist's last name. The number debuted in the Broadway musical, ''The Passing Show of 1918'', and it was introduced by Helen Carrington. The copyright to "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" was registered in 1919 by the Kendis-Brockman Music Co. Inc. It was transferred later that year to Jerome H. Remick & Co. of New York and Detroit. James Kendis, James Brockman, and Nat Vincent all had separate contracts with their own publishers, leading them to use the name Jaan Kenbrovi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Casino Theatre (New York, New York)
The Casino Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 1404 Broadway and West 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 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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charles Winninger
Charles J. Winninger (May 26, 1884 – January 27, 1969) was an American stage and film actor, most often cast in comedies or musicals. Life and career Winninger was born in Athens, Wisconsin, the son of Rosalia (Grassler) and Franz Winninger. His parents were Austrian immigrants. He began as a vaudeville actor. His most famous stage role was as Cap'n Andy Hawks in the original production of ''Show Boat'', the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical classic, in 1927. He played the role in the 1932 stage revival and the 1936 film version of the show. He became so identified with the role and with his persona as a riverboat captain that he played several variations of the role, notably on the radio program ''Maxwell House Show Boat'', which was clearly inspired by the Broadway musical. Winninger's pre-Code film career includes '' Night Nurse'', a 1931 drama about two girls being systematically starved to death by the family chauffeur. Winninger portrays a kindly physician who a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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De Wolf Hopper
William DeWolf Hopper (March 30, 1858September 23, 1935) was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer. A star of vaudeville and musical theater, he became best known for performing the popular baseball poem "Casey at the Bat". Life and career Hopper was born William D'Wolf Hopper in New York City, the son of John Hopper (born 1815) and Rosalie D'Wolf (born 1827). His father was a wealthy Quaker lawyer and his mother came from a noted Colonial family. His paternal grandfather Isaac Hopper was a Philadelphia Quaker, and conductor of the Philadelphia station of the Underground Railroad. Though his parents intended that he become a lawyer, Hopper did not enjoy that profession. Hopper was called Willie as a child, and then Will or Wolfie, but when he set out on an acting career he chose his more distinguished middle name as his stage name. It was modified to "DeWolf" because of the frequency that it was mispronounced "Dwolf". He made his stage debut in New Have ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ed Wynn
Isaiah Edwin Leopold (November 9, 1886 – June 19, 1966), better known as Ed Wynn, was an American actor and comedian. He was noted for his ''Perfect Fool'' comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a dramatic actor.Obituary '' Variety'', June 22, 1966, page 71. Background Wynn was born Isaiah Edwin Leopold in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family. His father, Joseph, a milliner, was born in Bohemia. His mother, Minnie Greenberg, of Romanian and Turkish ancestry, came from Istanbul. Wynn attended Central High School in Philadelphia until age 15. He ran away from home in his teens, worked as a hat salesman and as a utility boy, and eventually adapted his middle name "Edwin" into his new stage name, "Ed Wynn", to save his family the embarrassment of having a lowly comedian as a relative. Career Wynn began his career in vaudeville in 1903 and was a star of the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' starting in 1914. During ''The Follies of 1915'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marilyn Miller
Marilyn Miller (born Mary Ellen Reynolds; September 1, 1898 – April 7, 1936) was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, and the combination of these talents endeared her to audiences. On stage, she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. Her enormous popularity and famed image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which was marred by disappointment, tragedy, frequent illness, and ultimately her sudden death due to complications of nasal surgery at age 37. Early life Marilyn Miller was born in 1898 in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a telephone lineman, and his first wife, the former Ada Lynn Thompson.Staff (March 20, 1942"Marilyn Miller's Mother Dies"''The New York Times'', p.19 The tiny, delicately featured blonde was only four years old when she debuted in the role of Mademoiselle Sugarlump at Lakes ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charlotte Greenwood
Frances Charlotte Greenwood (June 25, 1890 – December 28, 1977) was an American actress and dancer. Born in Philadelphia, Greenwood started in vaudeville, and starred on Broadway, movies and radio. Standing almost six feet tall (some sources say 5'10"), she was best known for her long legs and high kicks. She earned the unique praise of being, in her words, the "...only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye." Theatre In 1913, Oliver Morosco cast her as Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo late in the run of L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk's ''The Tik-Tok Man of Oz'' (better known in its novelization as ''Tik-Tok of Oz''). In 1916, Morosco commissioned a successful star vehicle stage play titled ''So Long Letty''. In 1919 Morosco brought her back in the sequel ''Linger Longer Letty''. This role made her a star; she reprised it in the 1929 movie of the same name. She appeared with actors including Charles Ruggles, Betty Grable, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George White's Scandals
''George White's Scandals'' were a long-running string of Broadway revues produced by George White that ran from 1919–1939, modeled after the ''Ziegfeld Follies''. The "Scandals" launched the careers of many entertainers, including W. C. Fields, the Three Stooges, Ray Bolger, Helen Morgan, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr and Rudy Vallée. Louise Brooks, Dolores Costello, Barbara Pepper, and Alice Faye got their show business start as lavishly dressed (or underdressed) chorus girls strutting to the "Scandal Walk". Much of George Gershwin's early work appeared in the 1920–24 editions of ''Scandals.'' The Black Bottom, danced by ''Ziegfeld Follies'' star Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola, touched off a national dance craze. ''George White's Scandals'' is also the name of several movies set within the ''Scandals'', all of which focus primarily on the show's acts, with a thin backstage plot stringing them all together. The best known of these was 1934's ' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Herman Finck
Herman Finck (November 4, 1872 – April 21, 1939) was a British composer and conductor of Dutch extraction. Born Hermann Van Der Vinck in London, he began his studies training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and established a career as the musical director at the Palace Theatre in London (from 1900 until 1920), with whose orchestra he made many virtuoso recordings. During these decades, he was also a principal conductor at the Queen's Theatre, at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and at Southport. Finck was a prolific composer throughout the 1910s and 1920s. He composed around thirty theatre shows of most types - operettas (such as ''Decameron Nights''), ballets (like ''My Lady Dragon Fly''), incidental music, revues (annual revues ''Round the Map'' and ''The Passing Show'' were especially popular), plus songs, "mood music" for the silent cinema and many light orchestral pieces - suites such as ''Vive La Danse'' and ''Marie Antoinette'', marches such as ''Pageant March'', ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Gershwin
George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ''Rhapsody in Blue'' (1924) and ''An American in Paris'' (1928), the songs " Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera ''Porgy and Bess'' (1935), which included the hit " Summertime". Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris, intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style; Maurice Ravel voiced similar objections when Gershwin inq ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ziegfeld Follies
The ''Ziegfeld Follies'' was a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934 and 1936. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as ''The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air''. Founding and history Inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris, the Ziegfeld Follies were conceived and mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., reportedly at the suggestion of his then-wife, the stage actress and singer Anna Held. The shows' producers were turn-of-the-twentieth-century producing titans Klaw and Erlanger. The Follies were a series of lavish revues, something between later Broadway shows and the more elaborate high class vaudeville and variety show. The first follies, '' The Follies of 1907'', was produced that year at the ''Jardin de Paris'' roof theatre. During the Follies era, many of the top entertainers, including W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Josephine Baker, Fanny Brice, Ann Pennington, Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, Bob H ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Winter Garden Theatre
The Winter Garden Theatre is a Broadway theatre at 1634 Broadway in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It opened in 1911 under designs by architect William Albert Swasey. The Winter Garden's current design dates to 1922, when it was completely remodeled by Herbert J. Krapp. Due to the size of its auditorium, stage, and backstage facilities, it is favored for large musical productions. It has 1,600 seats and is operated by The Shubert Organization. The auditorium interior is a New York City landmark. The Winter Garden Theatre was adapted from the old building of the American Horse Exchange, completed in 1896. Its original facade consisted of several arches on Broadway, which were subsequently converted to a brick wall with a large sign. The interior is covered with detailing in the Adam style. Though the auditorium contains a single balcony above the orchestra level, the boxes are arranged in two levels above the orchestra. The auditorium contains a ribbed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |