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Very Warm For May
''Very Warm for May'' is a musical composed by Jerome Kern, with a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was the team's final score for Broadway, following their hits ''Show Boat'', '' Sweet Adeline'', and '' Music in the Air''. It marked a return to Broadway for Kern, who had spent several years in Hollywood writing music for movies, including '' Swing Time'' for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Vincente Minnelli directed ''Very Warm for May'', which opened at the Alvin Theatre on November 17, 1939. It contained such favorite songs as "All the Things You Are", "All in Fun", and "In the Heart of the Dark." Gerald Bordman, author of the definitive Kern biography ''Jerome Kern: His Life and Music'', hailed the score as one of Kern's finest. ''Billboard'' magazine saw the show pre-Broadway, and was enthusiastic: "Prophesied this venture will be a season's hit. The ballet corps keeps the audience awake and eager. Choreography is unique and excellent. Its lyrics, in numbers such as ...
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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 (song), 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 theatre, Broadway musicals and musical films, 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 syncopati ...
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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 ...
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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 (or scantily) dressed 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 ...
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Buddy DeSylva
George Gard "Buddy" DeSylva (January 27, 1895 – July 11, 1950) was an American songwriter, film producer and record executive. He wrote or co-wrote many popular songs, and along with Johnny Mercer and Glenn Wallichs, he co-founded Capitol Records. Biography DeSylva was born in New York City, but grew up in California, and attended the University of Southern California, where he joined the Theta Xi fraternity. His father, Aloysius J. De Sylva, was better known to American audiences as actor Hal De Forrest. Aloysius was of multiracial ancestry, with his father being born in the West Indies and his mother being born in either England or Scotland. His father was Dr. James M. Fenwick, a Black physician who emigrated to the United States in 1865. In 1889, Aloysius legally changed his surname from Fenwick to De Sylva to pass as for white, more specifically, someone from Portugal. Buddy's father was also a lawyer as well as an actor. His mother, Georgetta Miles Gard, was the dau ...
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Du Barry Was A Lady
''Du Barry Was a Lady'' is a Broadway musical, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, and the book by Herbert Fields and Buddy DeSylva."'Du Barry Was a Lady'"
sondheimguide.com, accessed February 15, 2010
The musical starred , and , and the song "Friendship" was one of the highlights. The musical was made into the 1943

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Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became Standard (music), standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway theatre, Broadway and in Hollywood films. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather's wishes for him to practice law and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback w ...
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Babes In Arms
''Babes in Arms'' is a 1937 coming-of-age musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and book by Rodgers and Hart. It concerns a group of small-town Long Island teenagers who put on a show to avoid being sent to a work farm by the town sheriff. Several songs in ''Babes in Arms'' became pop standards, including the title song, " Where or When", " The Lady Is a Tramp", and " My Funny Valentine". The film version, released in 1939, starred Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney and was directed by Busby Berkeley. Different versions The original version had strong political overtones with discussions of Nietzsche, the appearance of a Communist character, and two African-American youths who are victims of racism. In 1959 George Oppenheimer created a "sanitized, de-politicized rewrite" for stage performance; it is now the most frequently performed version. In the new version, the young people are trying to save a local summer stock theatre from being demolishe ...
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Max Gordon (producer)
Max Gordon (June 28, 1892 – November 2, 1978) was an American theater and film producer. His credits included ''My Sister Eileen'', which he produced both on stage and on film. Biography Born Mechel Salpeter, Gordon was the youngest son of immigrants from Poland. His older brother Cliff used the stage name of "Gordon," which Max adopted as well. Cliff, an entertainer in vaudeville and burlesque, died at age 32 in 1913. Shortly after his brother's death Gordon, then in his early 20s, formed a vaudeville agency with Albert Lewis, his late brother's performing partner. They specialized in providing sketches for shows, and their material, and performers such as Phil Baker and Lou Holtz, played the Keith and Orpheum circuits. In May 1921, Gordon married Mildred Bartlett of Amsterdam, New York, who performed under the stage name Raye Dean; at the request of her fiancé, Bartlett gave up her acting career a few months before the wedding. Soon after, Gordon started to produce p ...
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Summer Stock Theater
In American theater, summer stock theater is a theater that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes. Summer stock theaters frequently take advantage of seasonal weather by having their productions outdoors, under tents set up temporarily for their use, or in barns. Some smaller theaters still continue this tradition, and a few summer stock theaters have become highly regarded by both patrons as well as performers and designers. Often viewed as a starting point for professional actors, stock casts are typically young, just out of high school or still in college. Elitch Theatre Summer stock started in Denver, Colorado, at the Elitch Theatre (part of Elitch Gardens). A 1937 article in Time magazine reported: "Elitch's Gardens is the great-grandfather of all U. S. summer stock companies... and nearly every personage in U. S. show business, from Genera ...
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Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land area. The island extends from New York Harbor eastward into the ocean with a maximum north–south width of . With a land area of , it is the List of islands of the United States by area, largest island in the contiguous United States. Long Island is divided among four List of counties in New York, counties, with Brooklyn, Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, and Nassau County, New York, Nassau counties occupying its western third and Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk County its eastern two-thirds. It is an ongoing topic of debate whether or not Brooklyn and Queens are considered part of Long Island. Geographically, both Kings and Queens county are located on the Island, but some argue they are culturally separate from Long Island. Long Island may ref ...
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The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York Times''. Together with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann, they established the F-R Publishing Company and set up the magazine's first office in Manhattan. Ross remained the editor until his death in 1951, shaping the magazine's editorial tone and standards. ''The New Yorker''s fact-checking operation is widely recognized among journalists as one of its strengths. Although its reviews and events listings often focused on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' gained a reputation for publishing serious essays, long-form journalism, well-regarded fiction, and humor for a national and international audience, including work by writers such as Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, and Alice Munro. In the late ...
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Robert Benchley
Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 – November 21, 1945) was an American humorist, newspaper columnist and actor. From his beginnings at ''The Harvard Lampoon'' while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for ''Vanity Fair (magazines), Vanity Fair'' and ''The New Yorker'' and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry. Benchley is remembered best for his contributions to the magazine ''The New Yorker''; his essays for that publication, whether topical or absurdist, influenced many modern humorists. He also made a name for himself in Hollywood, when his short movie ''How to Sleep'' was a popular success and won Best Short Subject at the 8th Academy Awards, 1935 Academy Awards. He also made many memorable appearances acting in movies such as Alfred Hitchcock's '' ...
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