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| The Earl Carroll Theater, and the sheet music cover page for "Manhattan" from 1926's "Garrick Gaieties." |
"Earl Carroll's Vanities." Anyone who wondered where Earl Carroll's passions lay had only to glimpse one of the innumerable voluptuous tableaux, where dozens of sexy women were draped all over the set wearing as little as possible, that were part of his revues. Carroll tweaked Ziegfeld by placing a sign over his stage door that read "Through These Portals Pass the Most Gorgeous Girls in the World." His shows prioritized raciness over sophistication, and his comedians included Sophie Tucker, Jack Benny, and Milton Berle. Throughout his nine editions, the most interesting thing Carroll ever did was to get arrested in 1926 when, in one number, a girl was bathing nude in a tub filled with champagne. It wasn't the nudity that annoyed authorities; Carroll was indicted for perjury when he falsely claimed the tub was filled with ginger ale.
"The Garrick Gaieties." "The Gaieties" were the "hey-let's-put-on-a-show" of the revue world. Produced by the Theater Guild in 1925 as a way of raising money, the three editions of the "Gaieties" emphasized youth and wit, and parodied contemporary shows. Famously, the initial edition gave Rodgers and Hart their start with the song "Manhattan," but other songwriters who got their break here included Vernon Duke and Johnny Mercer.
Schwartz and Dietz. Composer Arthur Schwartz was trained as a lawyer, and lyricist Howard Dietz had a day job as MGM's advertising manager (he created the famous lion), but when they began collaborating at the end of the 1920s, they made beautiful music together. They rode in on the coattails of the "Little Shows," intimate, sophisticated revues that gave audiences some relief from the bombast of Ziegfeld and White. The team found its true voice in four revues from 1930 to 1935 -- "Three's a Crowd," "The Band Wagon," "Flying Colors," and "At Home Abroad." Dietz also contributed sketches and direction to many of their shows.
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| Chorus girls from the revue "Hot Chocolates." |
African-American Revues: Lew Leslie was a white producer who brought some of Harlem's best black talent to Broadway and London's West End. His "Blackbirds of 1928" introduced the incomparable machine-gun tap technique of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson to audiences, as well as the singer Adelaide Hall. The songwriting team of Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields contributed a break-out score that included "Doin' the New Low Down" and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby." Another black revue of the period was 1930's "Hot Chocolates," which transferred from Harlem directly and featured Louis Armstrong in the pit band and onstage performing Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'."
The revue continued successfully into the Great Depression, but those that survived had a greater discipline or a stronger theme to unite all the various acts. Typical of this change was Irving Berlin and Moss Hart's "As Thousands Cheer," which took topical headlines from the daily newspaper as its "unifying principle." After the advent of the narrative musical, so beautifully rendered by "Oklahoma!" in 1943, it was harder to engage audience interest in a disconnected show. Television put the final nail in the coffin of the revue in 1948 by offering topical material, comedy, and dancing with a speed and economy that the Broadway stage could no longer match.
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photo credits: Photofest, the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, and the New York Public Library
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