The Casino Girl is an Edwardian musical comedy in two acts with music by Ludwig Engländer, Will Marion Cook, Will Accooe, Harry Truman MacConnell and Arthur Nevin, lyrics by Engländer, Cook and MacConnell, and a book by Harry B. Smith and Arthur Nevin. The story concerns a former chorus girl at the Casino Theatre in New York, who flees to Cairo under an assumed name to escape amorous advances of an admirer.
Poster for The Casino Girl
The Casino Girl at the Illinois Theatre in Chicago (1906)
Mabelle Gilman as Laura Lee
James E. Sullivan as Pilsener
William Mercer Cook, better known as Will Marion Cook, was an American composer, violinist, and choral director. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák. In 1919 he took his New York Syncopated Orchestra to England for a command performance for King George V of the United Kingdom, and tour. Cook is probably best known for his popular songs and landmark Broadway musicals, featuring African-American creators, producers, and casts, such as Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk (1898) and In Dahomey (1903). The latter toured for four years, including in the United Kingdom and United States.
Cook in 1910
Will Marion Cook
Playbill from 1898 showing Edward E. Rice's production of Cook's Clorindy, featuring the song "Darktown is Out Tonight"