Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...

vehicle with contemporary satirical humor. Musical comedy actually began in London
and was imported to New York where American songwriters would “Americanize” the
music and humor. 18 The first quintessential American musical comedy was George M.
Cohan’s Little Johnny Jones (1904), not surprisingly set in London. 19 Although the plot
is almost non-existent, it is important to the canon of classic musicals for its patriotism
and its introduction of the American classics, “Yankee Doodle Boy,” “Give My Regards
to Broadway,” and “Life is a Funny Proposition After All.”
Cohan continued to write many popular comedies, but with the success of The
Merry Widow and its Viennese operetta style, musical comedy was overshadowed until
after World War I. This interlude allowed composers time to hone their skills and work
toward an original American comedic style, described by Cecil Smith in Musical Comedy
in America, as “its manifest destiny as a native and genuinely popular expression.” 20
Princess Theater Shows
An important event in the development of American musical comedy occurred
when composer Jerome Kern and librettist/lyricist Guy Bolton became creative partners
for the Princess Theater in 1915. The “Princess Theater Form” is labeled as intimate
because of the small house (only 299 seats), the use of simple costuming, sparse but
18 The origin of British musical comedy is attributed to George Edwards at the Gaiety Theater in
London. Burkholder, 765. Jerome Kern cut his compositional teeth by working in London’s West End,
where he interpolated songs into British musical comedies. He returned to New York’s Broadway to do the
same thing, American-style.
19 The plot is about an American jockey who must clear his name after being charged with
cheating at the English Derby. Cohan wrote the music and lyrics, directed, and starred in the original
production while only in his early twenties.
20 Quoted by Elaine Small Klein, “The Development of the Leading Feminine Character in
Selected Librettos of American Musicals from 1900 to 1960” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1962), 40.
23