1.
Animal Crackers (1930 film)
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A critical and commercial success on its initial release, filming took place at Paramounts Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, it was the second of two films the Brothers would make in New York City. The film stars the four brothers, Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx and it was directed by Victor Heerman and adapted from a successful 1928 Broadway musical of the same title by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, also starring the Marx Brothers and Margaret Dumont. The part of Hives the butler was played by Robert Greig who also appeared with the Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers, prologue, A newspaper headline explains that society matron Mrs. Rittenhouse is holding a lavish party at her home in Long Island. The party will host renowned explorer Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding as the guest of honor, also, as a special treat for the guests and Capt. Spaulding, revered art collector Roscoe W. Chandler will unveil his recently acquired painting by famous fictional artist Beaugard. The bulk of the consists of a succession of comedy sketches, one liner jokes. Hives instructs the servant crew on preparations for the party, Chandler arrives with the Beaugard and proceeds to set it up to be displayed. Hives announces Capt. Spauldings assistant Horatio Jameson who arrives to announce the captain, immediately, Capt. Spaulding makes a grand entrance and announces that he cannot stay and must leave immediately, uninterested in the party. Mrs. Rittenhouse begs him to stay and the guests declare their admiration for the Captain, soon after, Signor Emanuel Ravelli arrives with his colleague the professor, hired to provide music for the weekend event. After an elaborate introduction, The Professor scares the guests away with a pistol he grabs from Capt. Spauldings supplies, the Professor soon takes off chasing after a young, attractive, blonde party-goer. Mrs. Rittenhouses daughter Arabella is attending the party with her fiancé John Parker, John feels discouraged because he hasnt be able to make a living with his art in order to support himself and Arabella. Arabella suggests John do a portrait for Chandler, suggesting he would receive an impressive commission, John laughs at the idea, not believing Chandler to have a genuine appreciation for art. After the painting is unveiled at the party, they will surprise everyone, Arabella asks Ravelli to switch the paintings. Meanwhile another guest, neighbor Mrs. Whitehead thinks up the idea with her friend Grace Carpenter as a means of humiliating Mrs. Rittenhouse. They grab Graces poorly made copy that she painted and ask Hives to put it in place of the Beaugard, throughout the day a series of comedy sketches and visual gags take place, Ravelli catches the Professor chasing after the blonde girl and scolds him. Soon Mrs. Rittenhouse and Mrs. Whitehead arrive and the four proceed to play a variation on Bridge. Ravelli and the Professor run into Chandler on the staircase and recognize him as a peddler from Czechoslovakia. Chandler tries to bribe the two in order to keep quiet, but they end up taking his money, tie and garters as well as, miraculously. After a series of strange interludes while speaking with Mrs. Rittenhouse, Capt. Spaulding has a debate with Chandler outside on the balcony after his encounter with Ravelli and the Professor
2.
Bert Kalmar
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Bert Kalmar was a Jewish American lyricist, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Kalmar, a native of New York City, left school at an early age and he appeared on stage as a magician, comedian and dancer before switching to songwriting after a knee injury ended his performing career. By this time he had earned enough to start a publishing company, Kalmar and Puck. Together, they wrote the score for the Marx Brothers stage production of Animal Crackers. Their songs were featured in the Marx Brothers films Horse Feathers. Kalmars partnership with Ruby was portrayed in the 1950 MGM musical Three Little Words, starring Fred Astaire, Kalmar did, however, occasionally work with Oscar Hammerstein II, Ted Snyder and other songwriters. Bert Kalmar was married to Jessie Brown, with whom he had two children and he died in Los Angeles, California and was interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. 1923, Kalmar and Rubys first big hit, I Wanna Be Loved by You 1928, a hit for Helen Kane, known as the Boop-boop-a-doop girl, and sung by Marilyn Monroe in the film Some Like It Hot. I Love You So Much 1928 Three Little Words 1930, their biggest hit, nevertheless 1931, a hit for both Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee, later done by The Mills Brothers and Frank Sinatra. Im Against It, I Always Get My Man and Everyone Says I Love You from Horsefeathers 1932, Hail, Hail Fredonia from Duck Soup,1933. What A Perfect Combination 1932, lyrics by Kalmar and Irving Caesar, music by Ruby and Harry Akst, a Kiss to Build a Dream On 1935, their last hit
3.
Harry Ruby
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Harry Ruby was a Jewish American composer and screenwriter, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Ruby was born in New York City, Ruby died in Woodland Hills, California and was interred at the Chapel of the Pines in Los Angeles. A good friend of Groucho Marx, Ruby appeared several times on his television program, in his 1972 concert at Carnegie Hall, Marx gave the following introduction before performing a song of Rubys, I have a friend in Hollywood. I think I do, Im not so sure and his name is Harry Ruby and he wrote a lot of songs that Ive sung over the years. 16 men in that orchestra, nine of them are illegitimate children, nine and a half including the director. The tie that you got Didnt cost such a lot And well give you the same tie next year. You tell us it was nice of us to bother But it really was a pleasure to fuss For they say, and you are the one for us. Songs My Mother Never Sang Random House B002B9VFCA The Four Marx Brothers in Monkey Business and Duck Soup Simon & Schuster 978-0671212735 S. J
4.
George S. Kaufman
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George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, One play and one musical that he wrote won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, You Cant Take It with You, and Of Thee I Sing. He also won the Tony Award as a Director, for the musical Guys, Kaufman then began his career as a journalist and drama critic, he was the drama editor for The New York Times from 1917 through 1930. Kaufman took his editorial responsibilities very seriously, according to legend, on one occasion a press agent asked, How do I get our leading ladys name in the Times. He worked with Moss Hart in 1930 on the Broadway hit Once in a Lifetime and also with Hart, wrote You Cant Take it With You, Kaufmans Broadway debut was September 4,1918 at the Knickerbocker Theatre, with the premiere of the melodrama Someone in the House. He coauthored the play with Walter C, percival, based on a magazine story written by Larry Evans. The play opened on Broadway during that years serious flu epidemic, with dour glee, Kaufman suggested that the best way to avoid crowds in New York City was to attend his play. In every Broadway season from 1921 through 1958, there was a written or directed by Kaufman. Since Kaufmans death in 1961, there have been revivals of his work on Broadway in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 2000s, Kaufman wrote only one play alone, The Butter and Egg Man in 1925. Marquand he wrote an adaptation of Marquands novel The Late George Apley. According to his biography on PBS, he wrote some of the American theaters most enduring comedies with Moss Hart. Their work includes Once in a Lifetime, Merrily We Roll Along, The Man Who Came to Dinner and You Cant Take It with You, for a period, Kaufman lived at 158 West 58th Street in New York City. The building later would be the setting for Stage Door and it is now the Park Savoy Hotel and for many years was considered a single room occupancy hotel. Musical theatre Despite his claim that he knew nothing about music and hated it in the theatre, according to Charlotte Chandler, By the time Animal Crackers opened. The Marx Brothers were becoming famous enough to interest Hollywood, paramount signed them to a contract. Kaufman was one of the writers who excelled in writing intelligent nonsense for Groucho Marx, though the Marx Brothers were notoriously critical of their writers, Groucho and Harpo Marx expressed admiration and gratitude towards Kaufman. Dick Cavett, introducing Groucho onstage at Carnegie Hall in 1972, while The Cocoanuts was being developed in Atlantic City, Irving Berlin was hugely enthusiastic about a song he had written for the show. Kaufman was less enthusiastic, and refused to rework the libretto to include this number, the discarded song was Always, ultimately a huge hit for Berlin, recorded by many popular performers
5.
Morrie Ryskind
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Morrie Ryskind was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and motion pictures, who became a conservative political activist later in life. Ryskind was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Ida, Ryskind was criticizing Butler for refusing to allow Count Nikolai Tolstoy, nephew of Leo Tolstoy, to speak on campus. He collaborated with George S. Kaufman on several Broadway hits, in 1933, he earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway production Of Thee I Sing, a musical written in collaboration with composer George Gershwin. Ryskind also rewrote the stage version of Room Service, the original of which did not have the Marx Brothers, during this period, Ryskind was also twice nominated for an Academy Award for his part in writing the films My Man Godfrey and Stage Door. Later, he wrote the screenplay for the successful Penny Serenade, wrote the stage musical Louisiana Purchase and his politics soon moved to the right. He maintained some ties to the Socialist Party throughout the 1940s, about this time, he became a friend to writers Max Eastman, Ayn Rand, John Dos Passos, Suzanne La Follette and Raymond Moley. Later, he would become friend to William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1947, he appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a Friendly Witness. Ryskind briefly joined the John Birch Society, but soon disassociated himself from the group when they began to claim that Roosevelt, Truman and he was also a vocal sympathizer with the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Starting in 1960, Ryskind wrote a column in the Los Angeles Times. His son, Allan H. Ryskind, was the editor of the conservative Washington. The elder Ryskinds autobiography, I Shot an Elephant in My Pajamas, The Morrie Ryskind Story, details his adventures from Broadway to Hollywood and its in the Bag. starring Fred Allen George S. Kaufman et al
6.
Broadway theatre
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Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
7.
Musical theatre
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Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement, since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan. Musicals are performed around the world and they may be presented in large venues, such as big-budget Broadway or West End productions in New York City or London. Alternatively, musicals may be staged in smaller fringe theatre, Off-Broadway or regional theatre productions, musicals are often presented by amateur and school groups in churches, schools and other performance spaces. In addition to the United States and Britain, there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in continental Europe, Asia, Australasia, Canada, the three main components of a book musical are its music, lyrics and book. The interpretation of a musical is the responsibility of its team, which includes a director. A musicals production is also characterized by technical aspects, such as set design, costumes, stage properties, lighting. The creative team, designs and interpretations generally change from the production to succeeding productions. Some production elements, however, may be retained from the production, for example. There is no fixed length for a musical, while it can range from a short one-act entertainment to several acts and several hours in length, most musicals range from one and a half to three hours. Musicals are usually presented in two acts, with one intermission, and the first act is frequently longer than the second. A book musical is usually built four to six main theme tunes that are reprised later in the show. Several shorter musicals on Broadway and in the West End have been presented in one act in recent decades, moments of greatest dramatic intensity in a book musical are often performed in song. Proverbially, when the emotion becomes too strong for speech, you sing, typically, many fewer words are sung in a five-minute song than are spoken in a five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore, there is time to develop drama in a musical than in a straight play of equivalent length. Within the compressed nature of a musical, the writers must develop the characters, the material presented in a musical may be original, or it may be adapted from novels, plays, classic legends, historical events or films. On the other hand, many musical theatre works have been adapted for musical films, such as West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver
8.
Marx Brothers
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The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Five of the Marx Brothers thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films and they are widely considered by critics, scholars, and fans to be among the greatest and most influential comedians of the 20th century. The brothers were included in AFIs 100 Years.100 Stars list of the 25 greatest male stars of Classic Hollywood cinema, the group are almost universally known today by their stage names, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo Marx. The core of the act was the three brothers, Chico, Harpo, and Groucho. Each developed a highly distinctive stage persona, Harpo and Chico more or less retired after 1949, while Groucho went on to begin a second career in television. The two younger brothers, Gummo and Zeppo, did not develop their characters to the same extent. The two eventually left the act to pursue careers at which they were successful, as well as a large theatrical agency for a time. Gummo was not in any of the movies, Zeppo appeared in the first five films in relatively straight roles, the performing lives of the brothers were brought about by their mother Minnie Marx, who also acted as their manager. The Marx Brothers were five brothers born to U. S. immigrants Miene Minnie Schoenberg, the brothers are best known by their stage names, Another brother, Manfred, the first-born son of Sam and Minnie, was born in 1886 and died in infancy. Family lore told privately of the son, Manny, born in 1886. Even some members of the Marx family wondered if he was pure myth. A death certificate of the Borough of Manhattan reveals that he died, aged seven months, on 17 July 1886, of enterocolitis, with asthenia contributing, i. e. probably a victim of influenza. He is buried at New Yorks Washington Cemetery, beside his grandmother, Fanny Sophie Schönberg, the Marx Brothers also had an older sister, actually a cousin, born in January 1885 who had been adopted by Minnie and Frenchie. Her name was Pauline, or Polly, Groucho talked about her in his 1972 Carnegie Hall concert. Minnie Marx came from a family of performers and her mother was a yodeling harpist and her father a ventriloquist, both were funfair entertainers. Around 1880, the family emigrated to New York City, where Minnie married Sam in 1884, Minnie also acted as the brothers manager, using the name Minnie Palmer so that agents did not realize that she was also their mother. Gummo and Zeppo both became successful businessmen, Gummo gained success through his activities and a raincoat business. The Marx Brothers were born in New York City, the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and their mother Minnie Schönberg was from Dornum in East Frisia, and their father Simon Marx was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor
9.
44th Street Theatre
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The 44th Street Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 216 West 44th Street in New York City from 1912 to 1945. It opened and operated for three years as the Weber and Fields Music Hall and its rooftop theatre, the Nora Bayes Theatre, presented many productions of the Federal Theatre Project in the mid 1930s. Its basement club became the famed Stage Door Canteen during World War II, the 44th Street Theatre was located at 216 West 44th Street in New York City. The architect was William A. Swansea, built by The Shubert Organization in 1912, it was first named Weber and Fields Music Hall. The theatre was renamed in 1915 when the duo of Joe Weber. A theatre on the roof of the building, Lew Fields 44th Street Roof Garden, in the mid-1930s it presented Federal Theatre Project shows. In the basement of the 44th Street Theatre was a small nightclub, in 1940 the building was purchased by The New York Times Company, which leased it back to Lee Shubert. When the American Theatre Wing requested the basement club as an entertainment venue for servicemen, after Shuberts lease expired in June 1945, the building was demolished. The New York Times printing plant built to replace the 44th Street Theatre was later abandoned, productions staged at the 44th Street Theatre are listed at the Internet Broadway Database
10.
Sam H. Harris
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Sam H. Harris was a Broadway producer and theater owner. After a stint as a cough drop salesman and boxing manager, Harriss first production was Theodore Kremers The Evil That Men Do, which he co-produced with Al Woods in 1903. Harris found success in 1904 as the partner of George M. Cohan, with whom he produced eighteen Broadway musicals. From 1916 to 1919, most of these productions were in the Chandler Theater on 42nd street, renamed the Cohan, Harris separated from Cohan after a 1919 actors strike, and renamed the theater the Sam H. Harris Theatre. He sold it in 1926 to the Shubert Organization, but it continued to operate under the Harris name until 1933 when it was converted to a movie house. He proposed a musical revue to his friend Irving Berlin in 1919 and his estate held an interest in the theater through 1960. On Harriss death, most shares in the theater were sold to Berlin, Harris produced over 130 shows, including several of the biggest hits of the 1920s and 1930s. He was known for fairness to actors and writers amid the harsh treatment prevailing in the industry. Harris was portrayed by Richard Whorf in the Academy Award winning biopic, weakened by an appendectomy Harris died of pneumonia on July 3,1941. He was buried next to Cohan in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Harris at the Internet Broadway Database
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