THE JouRNAL oF

AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 24, Number 1 Winter 2012
Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve
Co-Editors: David Savran and James F. Wilson
Managing Editor: Shane Breaux
Editorial Assistant: Jordan Cohen
Circulation Manager: Benjamin Gillespie
Circulation Assistant: Sivan Grunfeld
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
Frank Hentschker, Executive Director
Professor Daniel Gerould (in memoriam), Director of Publications
Jan Stenzel, Director of Administration
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER
OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEw YoRK
THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE
Volume 24, Number 1 Winter 2012
CONTENTS
MicHAEL AMAN 5
Edward Harrigan's Realism of Race
J ENNIFERJONES CANVENAUGH AND KATHERINE J ONES 31
"What Price Glory?" The Sexual Economy of Ziegfeld's Follies
ALISA ROOST 59
Sex and the Singing Gal (of a Certain Age)
CoNTRIBUTORS 83
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO.1 (WINTER 2012)
EDwARD IlAruuGAN's REALISM oF RAcE
Michael Aman
From 1879 to 1883 the two most recognizable names in New York theatre
were not WS. Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), but
rather Edward Harrigan (1844-1911) and Tony Hart (1855-1891), a comic
duo who achieved fame through Harrigan's Mulligan Guard series. Often
receiving no more than passing mention in musical theatre histories,
the Mulligan Guard plays, which all included musical numbers, show
early development of the musical comedy structures that would come
to maturity in the mid-twentieth century.
1
On 11 January 1879 Edward
Harrigan's Mulligan Guards Ba/ibecame the first of six full-length Mulligan
Guard musical plays, launching a series that eclipsed even the Gilbert
and Sullivan operettas in popularity.
2
Harrigan wrote the book, music,
and lyrics of these early musicals, and with the immensely popular comic
performances of Tony Hart, he created characters whose stories linked
the six plays. Harrigan's works embodied particular cross sections of New
York life in the ninth ward, a poorer section of New York and now called
the Lower East Side. His stage Americans come from working class New
York, and these characters are extremely detailed in their wants, pursuits,
peeves, and drives. At the core of the Mulligan Guard series lies a depiction
of the New York Irish community and, to a slightly lesser extent, the
African American community. Surrounding these two groups are a variety
of ethnicities: German, Chinese, and Eastern European Jews. The series,
which traced the family, friends and neighbors of Dan Mulligan-a part
played by Harrigan-was noted for attention to physical detail inherent
as well as for the supposedly truthful portrayals of diverse communities,
both of which gave the series a reputation for realism, a label first assigned
to the series by William Dean Howells (1837-1920), and later adopted by
the author.
The Mulligan Guard series offers a unique perspective on
dramatic realism in its depiction of race. In this article I examine that
intersection. Dramatic realism as applied to Harrigan's works seems
inaccurate when measured by today's understanding, but Harrigan
1
Although Harrigan and Hart are mentioned in musical theatre histories
as significant contributors to the genre in regard to their realism, the only in-depth
examination of Harrigan's comedies thus far is Alicia Koger's dissertation in 1984, ''A
Critical Analysis of Edward Harrigan's Comedy," University of Michigan.
2
The plays are as follows: Mulligan Guards Ball (1879), Mulligan Guards Chowder
(1879), Mulligan Guards Christmas (1879), Mulligan Guards Surprise (1880), Mulligan Guard
Picnic (1880), and Mulligan Guard Nominee (1880).
EowARD HARRIGAN's REALisM or RAcE 7
men's social groups-that ostensibly convene for target practice. These
social clubs were common in New York City in the nineteenth century
and originally formed because the military refused to allow immigrants
to enlist. In the play, both groups rent the same party hall for the same
night, and an attempted compromise leads to the chaotic climax of act
2-the collapse of the ceiling due to the weight of the Skidmore Guards
upstairs onto the Mulligan Guards downstairs. Were the two communities
not equal in footing, had the Irish, for instance, the power to oust the
(black) Skidmore Guards, the collapse of the hall's ceiling could not be
justified, for the tension that resulted in the Skidmores using the upstairs
space would not have existed. In this situation and throughout the series
the races are clearly delineated, but there is a shared bond that links the
groups together.
In her novel Oldtown Folks (1869), Harriet Beecher Stowe asserts
that the artist's task was to present real life dispassionately: "I have tried
to maintain the part simply of a sympathetic spectator. I propose neither
to teach nor preach through them, any farther than any spectator of life
is preached to by what he sees of the workings of human nature around
him."
3
Stowe's interpretation of the role of the artist was prevalent in a
country, newly defining itself as American. The untried reinvention of
what it meant to be a nation provided fertile ground for new definition
and expression in the arts. George Becker sees the United States at the
time as ripe for a new approach to representation:
The harsh conditions of pioneer life, the breath-taking
scale of the physical milieu, the violence of the Civil
War, and in the latter part of the century the cruel and
impersonal processes of industrialization and the melting
pot were new experiences which were not easily bent to
conventional formulas and demanded a new reading of
life, though, in all honesty, this was not often given.
4
This "new reading of life," specifically American life devoid of the
sensationalism of melodrama, was rare on the American stage before
Harrigan. Although the dramas produced in the United States in the mid-
nineteenth century were predominantly British imports, more and more
entertainment in the form of minstrel shows, comedies, and dramas were
finding their way to the stages of US cities.
3
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oldtown Folks (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869), iv:
4
George ]. Becker, ed., Documents of Modern Literary Realism (Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), 16.
EDWARD HA!uuGAN's R.E.AusM oF RAcE
The best way to understand these texts in their history
and as history is not to subject them to anachronistic
reading strategies culled from poststructural insights, but
to read along with them within the currents suggested by
the most salient and convincing historical accounts of
the period.
9
9
The only unifying factor in the various authors' approach to realism is the
personal attempt to convey art that whether consciously or not, reflected
an author's interpretation of actual life in a budding culture. This approach
only covers a fraction of Harrigan's realism, which ultimately depends
on his understanding of his subject matter combined with a thorough
knowledge of what his audience expected and accepted.
Howells continued to regard Harrigan as a forerunner in the new
"ism" of realism. A significant aspect of American theatrical realism was
developed following the excesses of the romanticism and melodrama that
flourished on the American stage in mid-nineteenth century. As audiences
demanded more and more elaborate stage spectacle, theatrical technology
advanced to create more accurate renderings of natural wonders from
lakes, ice flows, rivers, and mountains, to crowd-pleasing effects of trains
and floods. Verisimilitude sold tickets.
Harrigan applied this verisimilitude to his depictions of
character. However, when confronted with the question of whether he
would consider having African Americans perform the roles of African
Americans, Edward Harrigan responded, "Hardly, and there's a good
reason. A [N]egro cannot be natural on the stage. He exaggerates the
white man's impersonation of himself and thus becomes ridiculous."
10
Harrigan's response offers insights as to the nature of Harrigan's realism.
First of all, what does Harrigan mean by "natural"? According to the
final sentence of the quotation, un-natural includes an impersonation of
impersonation, in other words, the black version of the white version
of the black man. The triple remove from actual African Americans,
as implied by Harrigan's statement, is one step beyond acceptability
according to Harrigan's definition. Duplication of African American is
also not suitable to Harrigan's goals, as his desired portrayal of the Negro
is the "white man's impersonation" of black. Thus, his realism lies in the
realm of impersonation, not duplication. Impersonation implies comic
9
Stanley Corkin, Realism and the Birth of the Modern United States (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1996), 3.
10
N ew York Morning Telegraph, 21 June 1903, Townsend Walsh scrapbook of
Harrigan memorabilia, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library.
EowARD HAluuGAN's REAusM OF RAcE 11
to the storyline. The audience was expected to follow the characters from
one play to the next.
Developments such as marriages and changes of address or
career continued from one "episode" to the next. For instance, in the
Mulligan Silver Wedding (1881), the audience was assumed to remember
that at the end of the previous play, Mulligan Guard Nominee (1880), Dan
had been appointed alderman. This approach to dramaturgy wherein
plotlines are not resolved, but rather offer a "continuity of incidents" is
a characteristic of realism in which plays are not wrapped up tidily with
fortunate coincidences as in melodrama, but left open for continuation.
As in such sitcoms as Two and a Ha!f Men or 30 Rock, a well-defined
cache of characters is thrown into a conceivable yet comic situation within
the confines of a world with which the audience is familiar (despite its
being fictional). Thus, the author creates a realm that is governed by the
same rules as the non-fictional world in which people quarrel, the rules
of science apply (gravity, linearity, et al), misunderstandings abound, and
reconciliations take place, and melodramatic coincidences are absent.
Fiction resembles non-fiction, the characters act through motivations,
the locales are recognizable, but this is a created world nonetheless; not
photographic, but familiar. Harrigan believed his primary function was to
emotionally move those who would come to see his plays: "In this principle
of playmaking, or sketch-prolonging, we find reason for the character-
drawing which should be the one great aim of the dramatist. Laughter
and tears should be the component parts. The sunshine is not appreciated
without the shade."
12
The emotional connection with the audience is the
first duty of the dramatist in Harrigan's view. Harrigan's representation
of race hinged upon this connection. His black characters, despite the
fact that they were performed by white men in blackface, represented
African Americans, and this was understood by the viewer. Therefore,
the white man's impersonation of blackness was the desired effect, not
the exaggeration of that impersonation (as would occur with an African
American in that role), nor the duplication of blackness, but the accepted
version of blackness as portrayed traditionally by white performers.
Before the Mulligan Guard series became a city-wide
phenomenon, the audience was primarily Irish American. An illustration
in Frank Leslie's I/lustratedNewspaperof 17 January 1874 depicts Harrigan's
sketch of the Mulligan Guards Ball that would eventually develop into
the full-length piece. Behind the performers, the audience sits inches away
from the footlights. The image shows an all white/ all-male audience who
were probably all Irish as well. The illustration is of a performance of
12
Ibid.
EDwARD HARRIGAN's REALisM OF RAcE
13
was writing this simple rule became more than tradition, but indeed
the accepted truth. Unless it was an all-black production such as Out of
Bondage (1876), specialty performances featuring star players such as the
Hyers Sisters or an all-black company such as the African Company in the
early nineteenth century, black performers in black roles potentially broke
the fourth wall since the audience was unaccustomed to this practice.
Harrigan offered conventions of realism regarding his casting choices,
while meeting his audiences' expectations for how those roles must be
played.
While realism was adopted by the theatre, it did not lend itself to
all forms of drama. As Henry James points out in a review of Macbeth in
1875,
The truth is, no artist need expect to play parts demanding
style and elevation in this familiar juxtaposition and
alternation with the "realistic" drama of the period.
Realism is a very good thing, but it is like baking a pudding
in a porcelain dish; your pudding may be excellent but
your dish gets cracked.
15
Thus, realism was found in contemporary locales utilizing set pieces that
were drawn from the commonplace, not foisted upon classic plays or
fantastical settings, which by their very nature cannot incorporate realism.
In fact, stagecraft was the first aspect of drama designated as "realism," and
this was applied to the works of Augustin Daly (1838-1899),James Steele
Mackaye (1842-1894), David Belasco (1853-1931), Henry Irving (1838-
1905), and James Herne (1839-1901). Harrigan used stagecraft as a vehicle
for the realism of his dialogue and even more so, as an acceptable setting
for his characters. Harrigan's incorporation of a spectrum of communities
from the Five Points region of New York had not previously existed on
the American stage, and his depiction of the peoples and locale of this
area embodied the developing ideals of realism in terms of subject matter
and location. Harrigan's primary contribution to American stage realism
was his presumably racially and ethnically detailed character portrayals.
The editor's note, which provides an introduction to Harrigan's "Holding
the Mirror up to Nature" in Magazine in 1903, asserts:
Before [Harrigan's] adventure into dramatic
characterization, there had been upon the American stage
15
Henry James, The Scenic Art: Notes on Acting and the Drama 1872-1901, Allan
Wade, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1 948), 34.
EDWARD H AIUUGAN'S REALISM OF RACE
was in fact divided into two, "Celts" and "Goths," the
former, including the Irish, characterized by "Strong
passions and lively dispositions," the latter-the ancestral
line of Protestant Anglo-Americans-identified by a
manner "ingenious, but usually phlegmatic, and most
distinguished by patient, persevering industry."
17
15
Despite the color of their skin, the Irish were, to a great degree, no better
off than the African American in terms of their position as "other" within
American society. White, but not white, they held the least desirable jobs,
lived in the poorest neighborhoods, and were subject to the harshest
treatment as epitomized by the slogan, "No Irish need apply." New York
City had a population of just under a million people at the time of the
Mulligan Guard series. Nearly half that population was foreign born, two-
fifths of whom were Irish, and 150,000 were German. The census of 1880
lists 13,000 "colored" people living in New York City. Despite the vast
difference in numbers between the African American population and the
Irish American and German populations in New York City at the time of
these plays, the communities shared the same neighborhood, and despite
the difference in numbers, the African American population occupied a
great deal more stage time than the Germans. The Irish, as the people and
history of the author, received the bulk of the focus in the series.
All of the communities represented in the series were in conflict,
but intra-communal conflicts exist almost exclusively within the Irish
population of Mulligan Alley.
18
It is in the larger portrait of the three
primary communities where Harrigan's conflicts are more well-balanced
on a macro scale, "demonstrating the animosity between the Celtic,
Teutonic, and Ethiopian

While individuals within the same
community are in conflict with one another on a micro scale, we see this
occurring primarily with the Irish characters, predominantly within Dan
Mulligan's family.
Harrigan's plays offer a glimpse into the world of the multi-racial
downtown neighborhoods and the inter-community relationships in New
York City. They expose the racial perceptions of their era. For instance,
when Dan Mulligan is running for alderman in Mulligan Guard Nominee, he
is transparently racist when speaking with his fellow Irishmen, but relies
17
Dale Knobel, 'Y!.merica for the Amencans": The Nativist Movement in the United
States. (London: Prentice Hall, 1996), 85.
18
The only exception would be the comic conflict between Puter and Primrose,
whose pun laden arguments echo those of Tambo and Bones from blackface minstrelsy.
19
Boston Traveler, 24 March 1894, 16.
EDWARD HARRIGAN'S RE.'.LISM OF RACE 17
The Irish, as African Americans, were outsiders or "Others"
in nineteenth-century America. Prior to Harrigan's creations, the stage
Irishman was as stereotypical as the blackface minstrel. Political cartoons
of the period attest to the bestial, less-than-human depiction of the newly-
arrived Irishman. Maurice Bourgeois states in 1913 in regard to the stage
Irishman:
His face is one of simian bestiality with an expression of
diabolical archness written all over it. In his right hand he
brandishes a stout blackthorn or a sprig of a shillelagh.
For his main characteristics (if there be any such thing
as psychology in the stage Irishman) are his swagger, his
boisterousness, and his pugnacity.
22
Harrigan sought to banish these images of the Irish, replacing them with
a representation of the people he knew. Thus, his dramaturgy grew out of
his personal experience. Amy Kaplan states,
[Realism] also becomes a strategy for defining the social
position of the author. To call oneself a realist means to
make a claim not only for the cognitive value of fiction
but for one's own cultural authority both to possess and
to dispense access to the real.
23
Unlike Harrigan's portrayal of the Irish, the dominant model of the Irish
immigrant was as an outsider to an intimidating white population and
belonging to a separate race. The Irish were portrayed as belligerent,
uneducated, alcoholic, apelike invaders and were depicted as such in
literature, theatre, and newspapers of the day. As with many stereotypes
associated with African Americans, the famine-ravished Irish that appeared
in the United States was associated with a stereotype that was held as fact.
The stereotypes promulgated hatred and fear that seemed justified and
encouraged abuse. In other words, the negative characteristics attached to
the outsiders helped to maintain their "otherness."
Harrigan's understanding and interpretation of his own realism
centered on his attention to characterizations and their interactions. The
plots were simply the venues for these character collisions. For instance, the
plot of Mulligan Guard Picnic (1880) is merely the planning for and execution
22
Maurice Bourgeois, John Millington Synge and the Irish Theatre (New York:
Macmillan, 1913), 47.
23
Kaplan, The Social Construction of American REalism, 13.
E DWARD HA!uuGAN'S REALJSM OF RACE 19
sought above ali to make my plays like pages from actual life" and "I have
depicted some painful types, I am well aware, and some that may have
been rather shockingly realistic," he was either fooling himself to his own
effectiveness, or, as I suspect is the case, his words are not meant to be
taken literally. His plays never resemble "actual life" except in the rhythms
of speech, the detail of sets, costumes and props, and the consistency
of character. In order to measure whether or not some characters were
"shockingly realistic," one would have to have experienced their portrayal
in their original stage incarnations; however, theatre critics at the time
were not shocked by what they saw.
Again, the focus was on character. Whether it is the bickering
between Rebecca Allup and any number of characters, the schemes of the
Skidmores to thwart the Irish from riding on streetcars, or even the marital
spats between Dan Mulligan and his wife Cordelia, the entertainment
primarily emerged from the comedy of the characterizations. It was from
these "painful types" that Harrigan's reputation grew, both in the characters
as they existed on paper and more particularly as they were portrayed by
the outstanding team of actors who surrounded the playwright.
That the plays struck a chord with New York audiences is
illustrated by the long runs of the plays in the series. At a time when
a production was deemed successful with thirty to forty performances,
the Mulligan Guards plays ran from fifty-six performances (Mulligan
Guards a l ~ to 176 performances (Cordelia's Aspirations). The only close
competition in the day was the popular Pirates rf Penzance (1879) which ran
for seventy-six performances.
Characterization developed in dialogue, conflict, and setting as
well as in minutiae such as character gesture. Harrigan aimed for humor in
his character developments and plotlines, but these were (usualiy)
28
at the
expense of what might be observable in real life. He states:
What I insist upon in an actor, above everything else, is
entire naturalness. I cannot endure a distortion of the
actual character which I have studied in life and sought
to give in characteristic lines of the play. My slum and
beggar types, my tramps, are not the burlesque caricatures
that appeal to the mirth of spectators by absurd and
implausible exaggeration of rags or make-up.
29
28
There axe occasions when Harrigan blatandy retreats from what "might be
observable in real life," such as when an African American character, after having been hit,
gets a "white eye."
29
Haxrigan, "Holding a Mirror Up to Nature": 505.
EDWARD HA!uuGAN'S REAUSM OF RAcE 21
rarely satisfies me. I tear it up and begin again.
33
It is easy to accept Harrigan's analysis of his personal approach to play
structure. As many of his plots include chaotic incident that interrupts the
plot, particularly around the completion of acts, it appears that Harrigan
relied on these large comic effects to create dramatic conclusions to his
thin story lines. But unlike the sensationalism of melodrama, Harrigan's
events were specific to the locales and situations of his plays. These
events, such as the explosion that occurs onboard the ferry to Albany in
Mulligan Guards Nominee or even the appearance of the turkey-stealing-
giraffe who sticks his head through a window in Mulligan Guards Christmas
(1879), unlikely as they may seem, do not erase the realism, for as William
Demastes states, ~ audience may accept certain levels of theatricality
but still identify the work as fundamentally realistic"
34
as long as the author
remains true to his depiction of characterization and does not devolve
into melodramatic devices of coincidence, and unjustified actions.
In response to an accusation that his plays were merely prolonged
sketches, Harrigan asserted that his plays were rather, "a continuity of
incidents, with some simple reason for their dovetailing, and each link on
the string sustained by some natural motive that calls for the building of
the entire stage structure."
35
The "sketches" were simply glimpses into the
lives of the characters. Basically, as with all the other plays in the series,
the plot serves as a frame on which to hang the many comic encounters.
This is not a weakness in the playwright's ability, but rather it was his
intention to create snapshots that reflected his observations of New York.
"Each drama is a series of photographs of life today in the Empire City."
36
The metaphor of photography is often used in reviews of Harrigan's
work as well as Harrigan's own descriptions. Obviously, Harrigan is not
reproducing the observations he made of life in New York City, but
rather, in the tradition of the stilted, posed portraits of photographs of
the day, he offers glimpses of familial relationships in formalized settings.
Harrigan did not set out to be an innovator; rather, he was simply
writing what he knew. He realized and acknowledged that his work might
only be digestible on the local level. He never imagined himself to be
33
New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre CoUection, Locke Robinson
scrapbook #234, 97.
34
William Dcmastes, Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition (Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1996), xi.
35
Richard Moody, Ned Harrigan: From Cor/ear's Hook to Herald Square (Chicago:
Nelson HaU, 1980), 167.
36
lbid, 97.
EDWARD REALISM OF RACE 23
This quote is consistent with the apparent objective of Harrigan's
approach, the presentation of character in detailed realization, allowing
for characterization that transcends stereotypes. A rehearsal period to
"hammer it into shape" provided Harrigan with a directorial opportunity
to realize the vision in his head when he set out writing the piece.
With his core troupe of actors Harrigan was able to bring
his complicated world of diverse types to life. There is little record of
Harrigan's viewpoint on the various "races" found in his stage pieces,
but he was consistent in viewing each of the "types" as a race unto
themselves. ''With four races to handle-the Irish, Germans, Africans, and
Celestials
41
-my sketch was somewhat crowded at first; but it has come
out all right."
42
He incorporated these "races" for their entertainment
value, fleshing out stereotypes that preceded his work and imbuing them
with characterization that enhanced the storytelling. Stereotypes need no
definition whereas characterization contains specificity of motivation and
interrelationship with other characters. The difference lay in Harrigan's
individualizing his characters rather than slapping onto his characters pre-
existing behaviors dictated by the minstrel stage and low variety sketches.
For instance, rather than imitate the minstrel character John Chinaman
who was primarily a source of comedy solely through his pidgin English,
Harrigan's creation of Hog Eye had romantic interests (Rebecca),
defended himself against outrages (his struggles with Cordelia), and was
able to identify the Otherness of characters outside of his own minority.
In Mulligan's 5/ver Wedding, Hog Eye confronts Mrs. Dublin, putting her in
her place while defending his business of washing clothes:
MRS. DUBLIN: You come over here and undermine
me in my washing. Where I charge ten cents for a frilled
bosom, and five cents for a dickey, you charge three
cents; and the divil a button you lave on a shirt you moon
eyed rice destroying vampire.
HOG EYE: Chinaman washee welly cheapee. Ilish
woman washee halleeway or sidewalk, Chinaman washee
collar aller same new.
43
Harrigan reinvents the stereotypes, modifying them with each succeeding
play in the series to cater to the skills of the actor while developing that
41
Celestials refers to Chinese immigrants.
42
New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lock Robinson
scrapbook #236, 3.
43
Harrigan, Mulligan Silver Wedding, 122.
EDWARD liAruuGAN' S REALISM OF RACE
25
Clinton (an African American character) steals the caps from the guns of
the other Skidrnores in Mulligan Guard Christmas, his own group attacks
him. When the Mulligan Guards rush forward to join the melee, Dan
stops them: "Back, Mulligans, it's a family quarrel, let them fight it out, we
have their prizes."
47
Charles Witham's set designs, particularly the one for Mulligan
Alley, provided Harrigan the space in which his characters interacted
not as imitative of New York City, for the sets did not even attempt to
duplicate the dire poverty of the neighborhoods in which the plays are
supposed to take place, but rather a locale that suggested New York City.
Witham's sets were praised for their detail and naturalness, but more than
this the sets gave the characters a space to inhabit. Harrigan took an edited
version of an unwieldy world of "types" and culled from it a select cross-
section of characters housed by Witham's Mulligan Alley. An illustration
for Squatter's Sovereignty in the Library of Congress shows a three-
dimensional set for Mulligan Alley in which doors and windows are ajar
as action takes place all over the stage. In other words, the sets were not
merely backdrops, but functional spaces in which Harrigan's characters
interact in a plausible setting. It is within this frame that Harrigan threw his
characters into various situations such as the imprisonment of Skidmores
in the basement of one of the buildings, the laundry line struggle between
Hog Eye and Dublin, and the rally that Dan Mulligan conducts as he runs
for alderman. The format of a Harrigan Mulligan Guards play is simply
a situation and place providing a battleground on which his characters
bicker, miscommunicate, form allegiances, dissolve allegiances, and resolve
conflict.
In reference to Dan's Tribulations (1886), Howells writes, "The
illusion is so perfect that you lose the sense of being in the theatre, you
are out of that world of conventions and traditions in the presence of the
facts."
48
Howells recognizes that Harrigan breaks with the conventions
and traditions of the stage, creating an illusion that is self-contained; the
fictions that Harrigan presents are not the piecemeal efforts of variety
and minstrelsy, nor are they the spectacle-driven, coincidence-laden
melodramas that are transparent in their awkwardness. For Howells,
illusion was tied to the actualization of realism, but Howells's statement
is deceptive as the play that he observed did not in any way recreate New
York City on the stage, rather the illusion of the play was so engaging
47
The prizes refer to the marksman prizes the Skids have contributed. Ha.rrigan,
The Mulligan Guard Christmas: an Onj,inal Comic Plqy, 1879, Library of Congress Copyright
Office Drama Deposits Readers' Collection, box 14, 11.
48
Howells, Harper's Monthfy 73, 1886: 316.
EnwARD H ARRJGAN's REALisM OF RAcE
with hose through the doors in B.L Firemen with extinguishers
squirt on Chinaman in window. 5
1
27
When buildings catch fire or a ceiling collapses raining bodies on those
below, one can see how these incidents reflect the severity of New York
tenement life without duplicating it exactly. Harrigan uses such moments
to provide spectacle that is not larger than life, but pulled from life. He
takes the wide swath of New York experiences and draws the "types"
and incidents that contribute to a cogent whole. Yes, the stage actions
and those who inhabit the works are harvested from real life, but they
are not meant to be reproductions of the non-fictional world. Rather,
Harrigan's world is a new reality; a reality that cannot be found on any of
the streets of New York, but at the same time is acceptable to those who
were watching the plays.
It is important to note when examining the accuracy of Harrigan's
New York that the city in the 1870s and 1880s was still relatively limited in
its scope of ethnicities, primarily those presented in Harrigan's plays: Irish,
African American, Dutch, Chinese, English, and Italian with a smattering
of other European nationalities mentioned. In an obituary for Harrigan in
the New York City Dramatic Mirror dated 14 June 1911 the unnamed author
notes,
When Harrigan transferred to the local stage the characters
of the Lower East Side and won a wider than a local
fame, New York was a city unlike the present metropolis.
The locale of Harrigan's plays was then a neighborhood
in which the more homely Irish and the [N]egroes, with
an admixture of Germans, furnished excitements of the
sort that gave color to his cruder drama. Now it is the
hive-like home of half a dozen contrasting nationalities,
at least one of which, with Yiddish for speech, has its
own theatres and drama, colored perhaps by local life
and conditions, yet in a manner exotic at that.
52
The portraits painted in the Mulligan Guards series were of the blue
collar New Yorkers, or as Howells poetically puts it, "Mr. Harrigan shows
us the street cleaners and contractors, the grocery men, the shysters,
the politicians, the washer-women, the servant girls, the truckmen, the
policemen, the risen Irishman and Irish woman of contemporary New
51
Harrigan, Mufligan Guard Chowder, 31.
52
New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Harrigan papers, box
9, folder 16, 44.
EDWARD HARRIGAN'S REAliSM OF RACE 29
makes no mistakes."
55
Davis's choice of the word "war" is apt since the
Irish and African American communities were in an unending battle for
jobs, housing, and acceptance in the American landscape. Whereas the
Laurents/Sondheim/Bernstein/Robbins 1957 musical West Side Story
portrayed a gritty New York in which two gangs of diverse backgrounds
fought for the same piece of inner-city turf in a stylized language of song,
contrived slang and ballet, Harrigan's opposing factions warred on a more
mundane level of day-to-day living. Unlike West Side Story, Harrigan's
songs, while character driven, never pretend to be anything other than
songs. They simply add more color to Harrigan's tapestry. In an obituary
for Harrigan in an unnamed newspaper clipping, the celebrated Harrigan
actress Annie Yeamans is quoted stating:
The only races in Manhattan were the white Americans
and the [N]egroes, the Irish, and a few Germans. The
Irish and the colored people used to fight-indeed they
did. They threw each other off street cars, and there was
never a chance for a row that both sides didn't make
the most of it. It was mostly pretty good-natured, too, I
think, and surely, when Harrigan wrote plays about their
fights, there was nothing but the best of good nature
there. 56
Yeamans's perspective is somewhat idealized. Indeed, in the flavor of
comedies of the time, the conflicts were for the most part "pretty good-
natured," but there is a lack of balance in the portrayals. The stage time
of the first three plays in the series is given to Mulligan and his family;
however, as the popularity of Allup grew, she eventually kept pace with
Dan Mulligan as far as her appearances in the later plays. As Howells
observes:
All the Irish aspects of life are treated affectionately by
this artist as we might expect from one of his name; but
the colored aspects do not fare so well under his touch.
Not all the Irish are good Irish, but all the colored people
are bad colored people. They are of the gloomy razor-
bearing variety; full of short-sighted lies and prompt
55
Richard Harding Davis, "American Playwrights on the American Drama"
Harper} Week{y 33 (2 February 1889): 210.
56
New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Locke Robinson
scrapbook #236, 125.
jOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO.1 (WINTER 2012)
WHAT PRICE GLORY?
THE SExuAL EcoNoMY oF ZIEGFELD's FoLLIES
Jennifer Jones Cavenaugh and Katherine Jones
The Roaring Twenties were very pleasant, if you did not
stop to think.
Billie Burke
1
The last known Ziegfeld Follies girl passed away on 11 May 2010 at the
age of 106. Doris Eaton Travis's death prompted a flurry of news stories
reminiscing about "those lace and chiffon visions of glamour who were as
much a part of the Jazz Age as Stutz Bearcats, the Charleston and F. Scott
Fitzgerald."
2
Theatre historians have dutifully paid homage to Ziegfeld
the Impresario whose lavish Follies dominated the Broadway revue at the
beginning of the century. In 1927, Ziegfeld press agent Will Page echoed
Ziegfeld's own claims to historical significance in his book Behind the Curtain
of the Broadwqy Beauty Trustwhen he wrote, "Many stars were discovered by
Ziegfeld, many beautiful productions were offered from year to year, and
the Folh.es, the first real offering of this type of gorgeous girl-and-music-
and-spectacle revue became so enormously popular that [Ziegfeld] called
it a 'National Institution."'
3
In her autobiography Midnight Frolic, former
Follies girl Marcelle Earle recalled:
Ever since my start in show business, I had heard
tales about the famous Follies girls and their millionaire
boyfriends. Their lifestyle was said to include Rolls
Royce cars, chinchilla and ermine wraps, jewels from
Tiffany and Cartier, champagne and lobster suppers
at Rectors' with hundred dollar bills under their plates
... . My dressing room friends and I were convinced that
for a show girl, getting into the Follies to be glorified by
Ziegfeld, represented the pinnacle of success.
4
1
Qtd. In Grant Hayter-Menzies, Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Billie
Burke (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2009), 105.
2
Douglas Martin, "The Choreography of Desire: Former Ziegfeld Follies Girl
Recalls the Glory Days," New York Times, 18 October 1996, B17.
3
Will Page, Behind the Curtain of the Broad1vqy Beauty Trust (New York: Edward A.
Miller Publishing, 1927), 18.
4
Marcelle Earle and Arthur Homme, Midnight Frolic: A Ziegfeld Girl's True Story
WHAT PRJCE GwRY? THE SExuAL EcoNOMY or ZIEGFELD's Fou..tcs
33
through various on- (and off-) stage practices as being sexually available
for the Follies'wealthy patrons. We will show that the girls were required by
Ziegfeld to maintain a lifestyle that most could not afford on their Follies
pay, and which they could only sustain by seeking additional financial
support, usually from wealthy men willing to trade money and gifts
for sex. We argue that Ziegfeld forged connections with powerful men
through the girls, and these men in turn helped to fund his productions
and divert public and political attention away from the fact that the Follies
violated underage workplace laws. Finally, we will dispute the claim that
being cast in the Follies was the golden opportunity that so many girls
believed it would be.
Though the Follies began in 1907, its lavishness and sensuality is
most often associated with the Jazz Age, the period between the end of
WWI and the onset of the Great Depression. New York City was the
beating heart of the Jazz Age, and it was a time and place of extravagant
consumption where those with money to burn could spend it in the
Runyon-esque playground that was Times Square. With its forty theaters,
Times Square by 1910 had become the center of New York City nightlife.
Here the wealthy could feed their desire for excess and exclusivity in after-
theatre pleasures at the lobster palaces and speakeasies, where champagne
flowed and where a beautiful woman became a compulsory adornment for
the wealthy man about town. The after-theatre supper was the preferred
rendezvous between the stage-door Johnny and the chorus girl. James
Traub describes the connection between the meal and the sexual exchange
in The Devil's PIC!)ground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square.
This late meal was widely known as the Bird and a Bottle,
the "bird" standing for both the meal and the young
lady. Chorus girl was, in fact, the principal dish served
at the lobster palaces, at least late at night. Many of the
restaurants kept rooms upstairs so that the gentlemen
need not suffer the inconvenience of a hotel. Murray's
Roman gardens, a palatial setting that would have made
Nero blush, offered 24 luxuriously furni shed and richly
appointed bachelor apartments.
9
Although all chorus women were subject to this discourse, the Follies girls
held the highest value in Broadway's sexual economy because Ziegfeld
assured his audience that they were the youngest, most beautiful, and most
sophisticated chorus girls on Broadway. Traub credits Ziegfeld's success
9
Traub, The e v z J ~ Pkryground, 29.
WHAT PRICE GLORY? T HE SEXUAL EcoNOMY OF Z IEGFELD's FoUJ.ES
35
the girls would take gifts that had been given to them by wealthy admirers
to a particular jeweler known for making expert imitations of real gems.
The jeweler's name was a well-kept secret in the dressing rooms; "[the
men] would be staggered to realize how many of their gifts were converted
into imitations and cash."
14
Many of the girls depended on offstage relationships to fund
the performance of sophistication that was necessary to maintain their
position in the Follies, and the first step in beginning an offstage relationship
actually occurred onstage in Ziegfeld's meticulously choreographed
chorus numbers. In The Ziegfeld Follies: A History in Song Anne Ommen van
der Merwe provides detailed descriptions of the sexually suggestive lyrics
and revealing costuming that were the cornerstones of Follies production
numbers. In what came to be a standard revue practice, the first Follies in
1907 included a Bathing Suit number called "On the Grand Old Sands"
featuring Florence Tempest and the "Bathing Girls." The lyrics to this
song, sung by the Bathing Girls, encouraged men to pursue them even if
they pretend to resist.
Where the waves kiss the shore
Kiss the girl you adore
And after you kiss her why kiss her some more.
"Oh please don't" and "Please stop" she'll demand
But "please don't" and "please stop"
Only means "Please don't stop"
On the Grand Old Sand.
15
This song encouraged men to be aggressive in their pursuit and seemed
to assure them that when a girl says no she really means yes. Known
as "flirtation songs," these chorus numbers featuring girls in revealing
costumes, promising men in the audience a good time, were a standard
element of the Follies shows.
16
In the 1908 Follies, Grace Leigh and members
of the chorus performed ''Take Me Round in a Taxicab" costumed as
taxis complete with "To Hire" signs and headlights strategically positioned
to light up at the end of the number.
17
The innuendo is clear: these girls
14
Paris Barry, Louise Brooks: a Biograpf?y (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000), 69.
15
Ann Ommen van der Merwe, Tbe Ziegfeld Follies: A History in Song (Lanham,
MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2009), 6.
16
Barbara Naomi Cohen-Stratyner, Ned W"D'burn and tbe Dance Routine: From
Vaudeville to the Ziegfeld Follies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 54.
17
Ommen van der Merwe, The Ziegfeld Follies: A History in Song, 20
WHAT PR1CE G LORY? THE SmwAL ECONOMY OF ZIEGFELD's FDUJES
The girls come absolutely within your grasp. You could
stretch forth your hand and seize 'em. Troops of 'em,
bevies of 'em, galaxies of 'em, hordes of 'em, masses
come prancing across a sort of peninsula separating stage
from auditorium. They wore full evening dress modern
style and slowly crossed the auditorium so you could see
how full the evening dress-wasn't.
25
37
Comedian Will Rogers joked that it was his job to entertain the audience
while the girls changed costumes. "Somebody has to do something while
[the] girls change clothes even if they don't have much to change."
26
Ziegfeld asserted he loathed vulgarity and only produced what he
considered to be artistic visions of the female form, but he also claimed
to be the "first producer of nudity on the Broadway stage."
27
One of
Ziegfeld's most prominent collaborators was New York society artist
and designer Ben Ali Haggin, whose elaborately staged tableaux vivantes
featuring nude girls strategically draped with chiffon coverings became a
highly anticipated part of each year's new Follies. One Ziegfeld biographer
noted the Follies "in fact offered more female nudity than did burlesque
[but] did so with more finesse."
28
Will Rogers was less than enthusiastic
about the level of nudity in the Follies and had even threatened to quit
at one point if Ziegfeld didn't "fix the nudity."
29
In light of Rogers's
disapproval, the comedian's appearance in a 1916 Frolic sketch called ''A
Girl's Trousseau" might be read as more than a sight gag. In this number
a travelling salesman "showed the audience a series of drawings in which
the women wore progressively less lingerie,"
30
and as the salesman sang,
one by one a lovely girl wearing the pictured clothing stepped through
the canvas. "Before the nude model was to appear the audience eagerly
25
Unnamed critic qtd. in Ibid., 213.
26
Will Rogers qtd. in Ibid., 211.
27
"The Triumph of the Skirt" New York Times, 28 June 1926, 16.
28
Latham, 110. In later years (1926) when Ziegfeld briefly staged an anti-nudity
campaign, he lamented that his competitors had cheapened the display of naked women.
Ziegfeld insisted that "under the artistic hand of Ben Ali Haggin I was the first to present
his tableaux, a glorification of womanhood beautiful ... bringing the master's brush to
the human form in a gorgeous and resplendent setting. No immodesty was intended."
"Ziegfeld Fights Nudity on Stage" New York Times, 26 June 1926, 13.
29
Richard E. Ziegfeld and Paulette Ziegfeld, The Ziegfeld Touch: the Life and Times
of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1993), 121.
30
Ibid., 65.
WHAT PRJCE GLORY? THE SEXUAL ECONOMY OF ZIEGFELD's FOUJES
then, when the male is intent on his chaste and dewy-
eyed vision, he gratifies him on this plane by discreetly
disrobing his goddess.
35
39
The near nudity, and in some cases full nudity, of the "high school" aged
girls coupled with the lyrics of the flirtation songs, which assured sexual
fulfillment in return for money, provided both a verbal and non-verbal
promise of sexual gratification to those who could afford the price of
admission.
Though the jewels, make-up, and glamour coded the Follies girls
as respectable women of the upper class, the public exposure of their
bodies and suggestive lyrics marked them as sexually knowledgeable and
therefore sexually available to the upper class man. Sobel likened the Follies
to a university where young women were taught how to appeal to wealthy
men, and at times this skill seemed more important to Ziegfeld than the
girls' ability to sing or dance. He understood that cultivating beautiful girls
who could provide a pleasant diversion for wealthy men, on and offstage,
was very good for business. When asked how he picked the women for his
chorus Ziegfeld replied, "They must attract men. You cannot define the
quality. I would say it is a promise, a promise of romance and excitement-
all the things a man dreams about when he thinks of the word gir/."
36
Ziegfeld's use of the word girl here is interesting when looked at
in light of Sobel's "Follies as university" metaphor. By hiring very beautiful
but very young girls and then "training them to appeal to wealthy men,"
Ziegfeld could differentiate his girls from the experienced Broadway
chorus women who had the reputation of trading on their good looks for
money and jewels from wealthy suitors.
The early chorus women in burlesque wore tights and were quite
hefty; they were also hardened, mature women who were considered
wicked. Ziegfeld's chorus girls, in contrast, were young, attractive,
wholesome-looking girls. Although they were usually sixteen to twenty-
three years old, many were fourteen or fifteen years old.
37
Ziegfeld's girls promised "romance and excitement" but on the
men's terms. Their youth was the key. As Ziegfeld press agent Will Page
observed many men were drawn to the seeming innocence of the young
chorus girls, believing these girls had not yet been initiated into the ways
of the gold digger.
35
Edmund Wilson qtd. in Paris, Louise Brooks, 83.
36
Michael Lasser, "The Glorifier: Florenz Ziegfeld and the Creation of the
American Showgirl," American Scholar 63. 3 (1994): 444.
37
Ziegfeld and Ziegfeld, The Ziegftld Touch, 179.
WHAT PRicE GLORY? THE SE.XUAL EcoNoMY oF ZIEGFELD's FoUJES 41
date only young girls because those who are "old enough to know better"
will only be out for his money.
Though they act like little babies of two, take it from me
they can take it from you ....
When they're old enough to know better, it's better to
leave them alone.
When they start to put their hair in a crimp, they're
getting ready to crimp a poor pimp.
Never say too much in a letter, or tell all you know on
the phone ....
When they're old enough to know better, it's better to
leave them alone.
39
Ziegfeld displayed his girls in the glamorous clothes of fully sexualized
womanhood making them seem just old enough to be sexually available
but still young enough to be malleable. His constant emphasis on the
youth of his girls, combined with the illusion of class and the sexual
explicitness of their stage presence evokes a disturbing image of "Lolita"
to the modern eye. If youth implies virginity and sexual innocence, the
sexualized displays almost seem an invitation to the wealthy to fantasize
that the virgin wishes to be deflowered. Though there are plenty of songs
in the Follies warning men to be wary of gold diggers, we have found none
that caution them against seducing an underage girl.
40
Did Ziegfeld or his dance directors know that they were hiring
girls who were under the age of sixteen to perform in the Follies? They
certainly couldn't admit publically to breaking the law, but there is some
anecdotal evidence that indicates Ziegfeld and longtime dance director
Ned Wayburn did know that at least some of the girls they hired were too
young to be performing legally. Doris Eaton recalls the moment she was
hired to be a Ziegfeld girl:
I noticed [Ned Wayburn] eyeing me intensely and he
asked Pearl who I was. When he learned I was Pearl's
sister, he said, shaking his head in bewilderment, "I can't
believe it. She looks enough like my wife to be her twin
39
Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young, "When They're Old Enough to Know Better
(It's Better to Leave Them Alone)" (Emerson, 1919).
40
Some examples include: "My Litde Pet Chicken" (1914); "I Can Live Without
You" (1913); "The Modern Maiden's Prayer" (1919); "So Hard tO Keep Them When
They're Beautiful" (1920); "I Was a Floradora Baby" (1920).
WHAT PRICE G LORY? THE SEXUAL ECONOMY OF ZIEGFELD'S F OUJES 43
The Midnight Frolic was a sensual playground for the city's high
rollers. Eddie Cantor recalled the audience being "composed chiefly of
the Four Hundred who thought it banal to be amused and dared you to
do it. There were the Vanderbilts, the Harrimans, the Asters, and other
distinguished families of litde old New York."
44
The Frolic "gave Ziegfeld
direct, informal access to people who could back his shows,"
45
and here
he entertained some of the country's most powerful men, providing them
with good food, unlimited champagne and beautiful women who would
come right to their table.
More risque than the family style Follies downstairs, the
Frolic pushed the boundaries of nudity. One ticket holder
wrote on the cover of his program: "Recommended
for 1st and 2nd year studies in anatomy for medical
students." The Frolic became synonymous with Jazz Age
sexuality and sensuality ....
46
The Midnight Frolic featured some of the most sexualized numbers to be
found in any Ziegfeld production. A favorite of Ziegfeld's at the Frolic
was the Balloon Number in which girls would wear dresses covered with
multicolored balloons. As they danced from table to table, patrons could
pop the balloons on the dancers' garments with lit cigars.
47
Rosemarie
Tim berg, who was fourteen when she began working for Ziegfeld recalled
performing in the balloon number: "I remember how embarrassed I was. I
was always giggling, just like now. I was still underage."
48
One can imagine
the sudden "bang" as the balloon popped, followed by uproarious laughter.
A modern observer might be shocked to see a drunken man coming at
the body of a young girl with a lit cigar, but in Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic
this was considered all part of the fun. In another number, girls circulated
through the audience dressed as switchboards, and patrons sitting near
the dance floor could reach the girls' telephone wires and have a private
conversation. According to Marcelle Earle who danced in several Midnight
Frolics, many patrons took the opportunity to set up assignations with the
girls during certain interactive numbers. Earle recalled: "Girls, dressed as
44
Eddie Cantor and David Freedman, My Life is in Your Hands (New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1928), 153.
45
Ziegfeld and Ziegfeld, The Ziegfe/d Touch, 71.
46
Robert Hudovernik, ]a <:X Age Beauties: The Lost Collection of Ziegfeld Photographer
Alfred Chenry Johnston (New York: Universe, 2006), 27.
47
Earle and Homme, Midnight Frolic, 226.
48
"Timberg Alley."
WHAT PRICE Gw RY? THE SEx uAL EcoNOMY OF ZtEGFELD's Fou.;ES
it champagne or the girl? You glance up again and know
it is the girl.
50
45
In the 1916 Midnight Frolic, Frances White and the chorus girls sat on the
glass walkway above the audience's heads dangling a fishing line, singing
"Every Girl is Fishing," a song about all the ways a girl might fish for
"lobsters." This was a clear reference to the sexual and economic exchange
between a chorus girl and a wealthy admirer at the lobster palaces of
Times Square. If a wealthy patron did not catch such lyrical references
he simply had to look down at his menu. The cover of a Midnight Frolic
menu featured a restaurant with a sign reading ''A l'ecrevisse" or "at the
lobster's." For those not familiar with the French, the sign boasted a bright
red lobster, claws outstretched. Outside the building, five naked children
appear intoxicated; two boys cling to a girl who seems to be holding them
upright; another child with top hat and umbrella urinates against the side
of the building; and yet another stands crookedly in the doorway, as if
about to stumble out, his top hat askew on his tiny head. Two more girls
with dolled up hair hang out of the second story windows looking down
on the mischievous scene.
51
The after-theatre lobster palace suppers are
Figure 3: Margaret Morris, Kay Laurell and Florence Cripps on the glass walkway of
the Midnight Frolic in 1915. Unknown Artist. Midnight Frolic of 1915 keysheet 03-
30 from the Historical Ziegfeld website. http:/ /ziegfeldgrrl.multiply.com/photos/
album/418#photo=8 (accessed 5 June 2011).
50
Ada Patterson, "Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic," Harper's Bazaar, April 1915, 49.
51
Ziegfeld and Ziegfeld, The Ziegfold Touch, 195.
WHAT PRlCE GLORY? THE SEXUAL EcmmMY oF ZIEGFELD's FoUJES
lesson would start with a dinner for two, just before the
performance. The instructor would be a wealthy playboy
who would take the girl to a nightclub where she would
meet the playboy's friends .... This party would be the
first important one of her life, an occasion for which
she had no preparation, an experience too dazzling and
sudden. If people liked her manner her wisecracks, her
beauty, her clothes, she made the grade and received a
diploma: that is, more invitations to dinners and parties,
presents and jewelry, an apartment and occasionally an
offer of rnarriage.
57
47
Sobel reveals here that many of the young women carne to the Follies
with little understanding of the social expectations embedded in the job.
Though certainly some were drawn to the Follies because of the social
and financial opportunities employment with Ziegfeld offered, many were
not prepared for the lifestyle they were about to enter. Marcelle Earle,
who was actually married at the time she performed in the Frolic, often
stayed away from the after-show parties. "The girls were forever begging
me to come to parties given by these wealthy rnen."
58
Earlier in her career
she had tried to "broaden herself" by attending a few after-show parties,
but found she didn't enjoy them very much. ''All I ever got from the
experience was drinking, listening to dirty stories, and wrestling matches
with exuberant males who had one thing on their minds. I was always on
the defensive battling unwanted kisses and ernbraces."
59
The after-theatre
environment ran on alcohol and sex, and though the financial rewards
could be substantial, the girls were expected to give something in return.
Louise Brooks recalled that "at these parties we were not required, like
common whores, to go to bed with any man who asked us, but if we did
the profits were great, money, jewels, mink coats, a film job-name it."
60
Many girls met affluent men through their work in the Follies, but
some girls carne to the Follies already involved with a wealthy man. Most
girls who wanted to join the Follies had to attend mass auditions where as
many as 700 aspirants vied for forty positions.
61
Marcelle Earle wrote, "I
57
Sobel, Broadwqy Heartbeat, 137-38.
58
Earle and Homme, Midnight Frolic, 206.
59
lbid., 122.
60
Jerome Charyn, Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the ]a!(!{ Age, and the
Birth of Broadwqy (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 184.
61
Sobel, Broadwqy Heartbeat, 109-10.
WHAT PRICE GLORY? THE SEXUAL ECONOMY OF ZIEGFELD'S FOUJES 49
Women who had connections to wealthy men who might back Ziegfeld's
shows had a far better chance of making the cut when the time came to
fire the extra chorus gil:ls. Though part of the Ziegfeld mythology invests
him with an uncanny ability to cast the most beautiful women in America,
in some cases casting was an economic transaction and a way to raise
much needed funds.
Wealthy men may have provided an entree into the Follies for some
gil:ls, but in turn, the Follies girls were Ziegfeld's entree into the rarified
social circle of America's wealthiest men. Eddie Cantor wrote, "Flo always
had men of finance who helped him readily and lavishly."
69
Since the
girls were such a valuable commodity Ziegfeld strictly controlled access
to them. He insisted that all stage-door Johnnies be properly introduced
to the gil:ls either by himself or a member of his inner circle,
70
often at
intimate after-hours parties. I n 1917 he invited billionaire Jesse Livermore
(who was married at the time) to an after-theatre party at his apartment.
"J.L., I have someone you just have to meet. A little brunette that lights up
any room she's in. You need to meet her J.L. It must get boring making all
that money. You know, all work and no play .... I'm having a little soiree
at my apartment tonight. She'll be there. Will you be there, J.L.?"
71
Eddie
Cantor recalled that Ziegfeld "took [a] meticulous view of his girls' habits
and conduct," instructing them not to "get fat," "stay up late," or "go to
wild parties;"
72
unless of course, it was Ziegfeld throwing the party. Sobel
wrote, "(Ziegfeld] was the perpetual predatory male from caveman on. A
glimpse of a beautiful woman transfixed his attention: made him forget
home and family, stage emergency, signing a contract, or the income tax
man waiting in his office.'m Though Ziegfeld was both a producer and
consumer of Follz'es girls, he certainly understood that his entree into high
society depended on his ability to deliver these beautiful gil:ls to wealthy
men. America's millionaires became so accustomed to having access to
Follies girls, that when they retired to Palm Beach for the winter, Ziegfeld
brought the girls to them. In 1925 he staged a special version of the Follies
called Palm Beach Nights in a playhouse built especially for him by Paris
69
Eddie Cantor and David Freedman, The Great Glorifier (New York: Alfred H.
King, 1934), 35.
70
Marion Davies, The Times We Had: Life with William Randolph Hearst (T ndianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), 11.
71
Richard Smitten, The Amaifng Ufe of Jesse Livermore, Worlds Greatest S lock Trader:
Wall Street Legend, Greek Traget!J Llje: Secrets of Livermore's Techniques and Principles Never Before
Revealed! (Greenville, SC: Traders Press, 1999), 101-02.
72
Cantor and Freedman, The Great Glorifier, 64
73
Sobel, Broadwqy Heartbeat, 106.
WHAT PRICE GwRY? THE SExuAL EcoNOMY OF ZJEGFElll's FowES 51
pages with homages to the Follies girls and to Ziegfeld himself. Even when
other papers gave scant coverage to the Follies, Ziegfeld could always count
on Hearst to run featured stories about the girls, the stars, and Ziegfeld
himself. In a telegram to his press agent Bernard Sobel, Ziegfeld referenced
Hearst's promise to provide positive publicity in his publications: "GET
EVERY OUNCE OUT OF AMERICAN AND JOURNAL THEY
HAVE HEARSTS INSTRUCTIONS ITS UP TO YOU TO SUPPLY
WORTHWHILE MATERIAL THAT WILL FILL THE BALCONY"
79
In return, Ziegfeld could provide Hearst with a showcase for his mistress
Marion Davies and access to as many Follies girls as he could handle.
Hearst's penchant for beautiful women was well known, and he was one of
the few men Ziegfeld would allow backstage.
80
Joking about her roommate
Fritzi Laverne, Louise Brooks wrote that Fritzi "seduced more Follies girls
than Ziegfeld and William Randolph Hearst combined,"
81
implying that
the two men were the standard by which all other seducers were measured.
Enjoying unlimited access to the Follies girls, Hearst provided Ziegfeld
with a huge amount of free publicity in exchange for insider status at the
Follies. But he made his most tangible, and costly, investment in Ziegfeld
when he built him a theatre in 1927. The Ziegfeld Theatre, designed by
Joseph Urban and financed by Hearst and his favored editor and partner
in real estate Arthur Brisbane, was built on one of their choice properties
just south of Central Park. An added benefit for Ziegfeld was that the two
financiers allowed Ziegfeld to lease the theatre which allowed him to keep
the profits from the shows produced there including the groundbreaking
musical Showboat and the hugely popular Rio Rita.
Ziegfeld received considerable financial support as well as free
and positive press for over twenty years by facilitating relationships
between wealthy men and the girls who worked for him in the Follies.
Given that Ziegfeld's "ideal novice" was only sixteen years old, and a
significant number of his chorus girls were even younger than that, one
would assume that the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
King Features syndication service (organization that places featured articles or comics in
multiple papers at once), the International News Service, the American Week!Y (a syndicated
Sunday supplement), International Newsreel, and six magazines including Cosmopolitan,
Good Housekeeping, and Harper's Bazaar. "William Randolph Hearst Biography-life,
death, history, wife, school, mother, young, son, old, information, born." Encyclopedia of
World http:/ /www. notablebiographies.com/Gi-Hc/Hearst-William-Randolph
(accessed 25 April 2011).
79
Qtd. in Sobel, Broad11Jay Heartbeat, 104.
80
Ben Procter, William Randolph Hearst: The Later Years, 1911-1951 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 57.
81
Brooks, Ltlu in Holfywood, xxxvii.i.
WHAT PRICE GLORY? THE SEXUAL ECONOMY OF ZIEGFE!n's FoLUES 53
however, that he was a valued patron of the Follies who maintained a long-
time affair with Follies girl Betty Compton. If New York's most powerful
men were in front row seats enjoying themselves at the Frolic and the Follies,
one wonders how likely they would be to enforce the laws that forbade
the participation of children in "any theatrical exhibition ... any illegal,
indecent, or immoral exhibition or practice."
86
Who, if anyone, was looking out for these girls? Certainly the
common perception at the time, and in the historical record, is that they
were looking out for themselves. Their reputation as gold diggers is so
entrenched that many assume that all Follies girls went on to wealth and
fame. Ziegfeld certainly believed they did. Towards the end of his life
he wrote in a letter to Bernard Sobel, "For 25 years my girls have led
in fashion and in every walk of life, many of them have become great
moving picture stars, many have married successfully and many have gone
on the

Certainly some of the Follies girls parlayed relationships

into movie careers, money and even marriage. But most Follies girls only
enjoyed a fleeting success and quickly lost their value in Ziegfeld's sexual
economy. About half of the girls would only perform in one edition of
the Follies, and few lasted more than two seasons.
88
Both Doris Eaton Travis and Marcelle Earle had unusually long
careers in the FollieP while managing to focus on their dancing rather
than the get-it-while-you-can attitude to which they saw so many of their
fellow castmates succumb. Yet it is from their memoirs that we gain the
most insight into the problems faced by young women in the Follies and,
perhaps more importantly, after their time in the spotlight was over. The
sexual economy seemed to promise financial security and even marriage
in exchange for sex, but Travis thought that many of the girls became
involved with men who had very little interest in their long-term welfare.
86
Ibid., 65.
87
Correspondence between Ziegfeld and Sobel on F Ziegfeld, Ziegfeld Theatre
stationary (24 July no year indicated), Ziegfeld Correspondence folder of B21 Billie Burke
Collection, Folder 37, NYPLPA, Special Collections, (accessed 1 July 2010).
88
Data gathered from the Internet Broadway Database, established by the
Research Department of The Broadway League in a search for women who had performed
in any edition of the Follies or Frolic. IBDB was built using official playbills from Broadway
shows; however, it is important to note that generally only the opening night programs are
referenced in IBDB, so we are aware that there are a number of girls who are not listed in
the database due to cast changes during the run of any given Ziegfeld revue, or perhaps,
they were left out completely due to playbill practices of the time which often included
only principal performers in the official program.
89
Travis performed in the Ziegfeld shows from 1918 until 1920, and Earle
performed in five Ziegfeld revues between 1915 and 1923.
WHAT PRJCE G LORY? THE SexuAL E coNOMY oF ZlEGFELD's FoLLIES 55
But life is not that way, and the party often ends in sadness."
96
Ziegfeld's choreographer Ned Wayburn often reminded the girls
that it was a short step from the Follies to the gutter. Marcella Earle recalled
one rehearsal when he yelled at the girls who had gotten "swell headed"
from all the attention: "'The people with the brains are sitting on that side
of the footlights,' he bellowed-a wave of his arm indicating seats in the
orchestra section-'don't take your selves too seriously. Some of you will
wind up with a tin cup in your hands.' Then he would glare at the whole
company, reserving an extra cold stare for certain gin soaked beauties."
97
In many cases he was right. Late nights and alcohol abuse took their toll
on many of the girls' physical, as well as mental, health; this had a direct
impact on their careers as Marcella Earle explained:
In all my years in the Follies one thing I could never
understand was why-with youth, health and beauty-
did some of these girls need to drink to the point of
total drunkenness. There were many fine girls in the
Follies who helped support their families. They were the
ones that lasted. The Broadway butterflies could not live
their moth and flame existence without paying for it with
faded looks, ruined health and diminished mentality. To
remain in the Follies one had to safeguard one's looks.
98
Mary Nolan, known as Imogene Wilson during her time as one of the
most applauded Follies girls, had her battles with alcoholism and mental
health. After the Follies, her stage and movie career was rocked by debt,
psychiatric problems, and scandal. Eventually, she found work as a nurse
for the poor in New York City, living in seven-dollars-a-week housing until
her death in 1948
99
after two failed suicide attempts.
100
Peggy Shannon,
who was fifteen when she joined the Follies, died allegedly from liver
96
Travis, The Dqys We Danced, 176.
97
Earle and Homme, Midnight Frolic, 24 5.
98
Ibid., 213.
99
Katherine Donovan, "Tragic Ex-Star Mary Nolan Finds Peace as Angel of
Mercy," Boston Sundqy Advertiser Pictorial Revie1J1, 23 April 1944. Clippings, NYPLPA, Special
Collections, (accessed 30 June 2010).
100
"Mary Nolan Dies; Once B'way Star Hollywood" (31 October 1948). Mary
Nolan Clippings, NYPLPA, Special Collections, (accessed 30 June 2010). Some of the
Follies girls who succeeded in committing suicide include: Jenny Dolly (age 49), Peggy
Davis (age 37), Lupe (age 36), Allyn King (age 29), Helen Lee Worthing (age 43), Thelma
Todd (age 43) and Olive Thomas (age 26).
WHAT PRJCE GLORY? T HE SEXUAL EcoNOMY OF ZIEGFELD'S FOLUES
A theatrical producer can't be bothered about the little
people. He must be ruthless. If he stopped to be humane
about dismissals, substitutions, cutting out numbers,
retaining songs and the multiple details that represent
the aims, ambitions and accomplishments of the many
people who make up his shows, he would be lost.
107
57
Promising glory, Ziegfeld enticed numerous underage girls into a lifestyle
they couldn't sustain, profited financially and sexually from their "work"
for him, and then discarded them when they were no longer considered
"fresh." Whatever beauty and creativity the Follies spectacles produced,
and however valuable those spectacles were to the development of
American musical theatre, the hard truth is that Ziegfeld constructed
a sexual economy that systematically devoured young women. And, as
Sobel's quote shows, both Ziegfeld and his cronies knew what they were
doing and chose not to care. Writing about the meteoric rise and fall for
most Follies girls in an article entitled 'Where do Chorus Girls Go? What
Do They Do Then?" Sobel concluded:
They are famous, even though they do little more than
make the background decorative. But they should worry.
They have the power, the glamour, and the success.
When they enter a restaurant, all eyes turn their way.
When they cross Park Avenue traffic stops. They are
admired, marveled over, dined and wined. But the very
next day they are gone, gone forever. What becomes of
them? Who knows?
108
An unspoken "who cares?" lingers at the end of that quote. In her
autobiography The Ziegfeld's daughter Patricia recalled her
first trip backstage with her father:
I looked around. A man in overalls was carrying a
ladder through the stage door. One of the musicians,
thoughtfully picking his nose, was studying the notices
tacked on the bulletin board. A chorus girl was perched
on a high stool, mending a run in her tights. Under the
naked overhead bulb her rouged face looked exhausted.
107
Sobel, Broad/llqy Heartbeat, 204.
108
Bernard Sobel, "Where Do Chorus Girls Go? What Do They Do Then?"
Undated clipping from NYPLPA file on Chorus Girls.
J OURNAL OF AMERlCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO. 1 {WINTER 2012)
SEX AND THE SINGING GAL (OF A CERTAIN AGE)
Alisa Roost
When Susan Boyle walked onto the stage of Britain's Got Talent, the popular
UK variety show, she seemed included only to be mocked. The cameras
panned the audience, showing younger audience members rolling their
eyes. Despite the fact that Boyle was younger than the main judge Simon
Cowell, she represented the familiar older, frumpy lady reinforced by grey
hair and laugh lines around her eyes that are often markers of women
being "of a certain age." The show interspersed pre-recorded clips of
her admitting to living alone with her cat and never having been kissed,
embodying the stereotype of a lonely spinster cat lady. When Cowell
rolled his eyes after Boyle owned her forty-seven years, she rotated her
hips and proclaimed, "That's just one side of me!"
1
As judge Piers Morgan
later noted, "Everyone was laughing at you," presumably because "older"
(un)sexy women are often considered inherently risible. But then Boyle
belted "I Dreamed a Dream." Slipping out of her Scottish accent, the
frumpy woman channeled the strength of a Broadway diva, demonstrating
the trajectory of "an escape from an oppressive life into magic ... the
diva fight s for liberation from stasis in a grim everyday world."
2
One of
the hosts pointed at the camera and confronted the viewer, "You didn't
expect that, did you?" challenging the audience assumptions that the
producers had assiduously exploited. As Amanda Holden, the only female
judge, commented, "Everybody was against you." The generally acerbic
Simon Cowell was surprisingly self-deferential with his ironic statement:
"I knew the minute you walked out on that stage that we were going to
hear something extraordinary, and I was right."
Boyle personified strength and dignity, and she clearly hit a
nerve- YouTube videos of that clip have been watched over one hundred
million times. As Tina Brown noted, Boyle resonated particularly with
"Invisible Women: the unbeautiful fort year-olds who don't rate a second
look and never get a chance to make their point in the meeting. There are
so many aging women who feel dissed by popular culture and employers
alike."
3
Boyle developed an international following, with particularly
1
Susan Boyle on r i t a i n ~ Got Talent, video clip, 11 April 2009, http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk (accessed 15 November 2011).
2
John M. Clum, Somethingfor the Bqys: Musical Theater and Gqy Culture (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1999), 168.
3
Tina Brown, "Boyle and the Invisible Woman," The Dai!J Beast, 20 April2009.
SEX AND THE SINGING GAL (OF A CERTAIN AGE) 61
the characters and the audience alike. Broadway musicals also presented
unconventional leading ladies who broke many societal rules. Broadway
musical gals, created by mostly male Jewish and often closeted gay writers,
allowed women more independence, both financially and emotionally, at
least within the confines of the stage.
7
Sometimes they met a man who
lived up to their ideals; sometimes they remained uninterested in men.
Regardless, they often bucked convention and demanded the opportunity
to define their own roles. From World War II until men started writing
musicals featuring gay characters in the 1980s, Broadway musicals almost
always allowed the heroines happy endings, despite their rejection of
heteronormative narratives. The representations of strong women in
Broadway musicals who are older than the typical romantic ingenue,
whether as character roles or leading ladies, is an unsung aspect of this
theatrical golden age.
This is all the more surprising given how few women "of a
certain age" thrive in most commercial plays and how disrespectful United
States society is to them. Sarastro banishing the Queen of the Night in The
Magjc Flute in 1791 seems symbolic; subsequent theatre in Europe and the
United States featured relatively few older women.
8
Tina Howe's Women in
Flames (2003) features a sexy older woman in the theatre, and it remains
unproduced. With no few precedents of sexually confident, older women
in theatre, she believes the topic scared producers:
We continue to wait for courageous producers to allow
the "mature" woman on stage. A woman who's lived,
a woman who's suffered .... We can die of lingering
illnesses, henpeck our put-upon husbands and drive our
children crazy, but live out our erotic fantasies? "Look
out, here come those black widow spiders!"
9
7
Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, George and Ira Gershwin,
Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart,Jerry Herman, Jerome Kern, Alan J. Lerner, Frederick
Lowe, Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, and Yip Harburg were all Jewish. Cole
Porter is the only major musical theatre writer before Andrew Lloyd Webber who is not
Jewish. Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart clearly had some homosexual relationships. Stephen
Sondheim and Jerry Herman have come out as gay; several people claimed Bernstein
was bisexual and some rumors persist about several other of the writers. Michael John
La Chi usa is openly gay also.
8
Beginning with Ibsen there are, of course, some great women's parts. These,
however, tend to be leading women who are suffering from the patriarchal system and not
wiser women supporting parts.
9
Tina Howe, "Women in Flames," American Theatre, April 2003, http://www.rcg.
org/publications/at/2003/flames.cfm. (accessed 1 March 2011).
SEX AND THE SINGING GAL (OF A CERT.\IN AGE) 63
women far more agency.
14
Musical theatre both values the relationships
and agency of younger women, and has been an unlikely haven for older,
multi-dimensional women, which this article seeks to explore.
On one level, these characters can be read as areimagined "spinster"
stereotype, allowing women in musicals to put a career ahead of getting
married when they are younger, grow older, and remain sexual beings with
dignity and charisma. On another level, these characters allowed gay male
audience members to empathize with a strong character who is attracted
to men but not limited by that trait. They allowed both women and gay
men in the audience to celebrate an inner power and demand recognition
with integrity and dignity. These characters are perhaps stronger in part
because some gay writers empathize with female characters as they create
them. When gay men, who are well represented among musical creators,
became more open about their sexuality in the 1970s, the presence of
female characters who challenge social expectations began to wane on
Broadway.
When Oklahoma! debuted in 1943, the show fundamentally
redefined American musical theatre in many ways.
15
Less discussed has
been its introduction of an older woman as the wise ballast of the show.
From 1907 to 1931, women on Broadway were largely defined by their
roles in the Ziegfeld Follies, where they were primarily beautiful objects
or occasionally sassy comics. Earlier female musical theatre characters
were like many heroines on stage and in movies: young, sweet, attractive,
innocent, and yearning for "Someone to Watch Over Me" or "The
Man I Love," as the Gershwins portrayed them. The older women were
predominantly meddling mothers or incompetent unmarried aunts. The
Merry Widow (1905) did feature a romantically available widow, but Mizzi
Gunther originated the part at the age of twenty-six. She is a tragic,
beautiful young widow, not an older woman. Eventually the show became
known more for the lingerie inspired by the show than for women having
power when they were older. Leave It to Jane (1917) by Guy Bolton, P.G.
Wodehouse, and Jerome Kern, one of the vaunted "Princess Musical"
shows, is typical of the time; the plot revolves around the title character, a
pretty, clever daughter of a college president, and whom all the men adore,
but she uses her intelligence only to capture the heart of a football star so
14
Ibid., 7-8.
15
See Paul Filmer, Val Rimmer, and Dave Walsh "Oklahoma!: Ideology and
Politics in the Vernacular Tradition of the American Musical," Popular Music, 18.3 (Oct.,
1999): 381-95. See also Timothy P. Donovan, "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin': The Musical,
Oklahoma! and the Popular Mind in 1943," Journal of Popular Culture, 8.3 (Winter, 1974):
4 77-88. Also Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jew; and the Broadwqy Mu;ica/ (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2004).
SEx AND THE SINGING GAL (oF A CERTAIN A GE) 65
serving as a model for breaking societal rules, Vera serves as a reminder
of what befalls women who disrupt gender roles. After Vera's warning,
Linda, the younger, purer woman, avoids Joey, to whom she was sexually
attracted; maintaining her purity requires denying her sexuality.
Lacfy in the Dark is an unusually complex piece for 1941. Liza, the
protagonist, is an incredibly competent, successful woman who runs her
own thriving beauty magazine while refusing to adhere to conventional
standards of beauty. She is happily involved with a married man, and seems
pleased that she has a lover without having to marry. Despite her apparent
contentment, she loses her temper more and more (in ways inappropriate
for anyone, regardless of gender) and has difficulty making up her mind,
so she tries psychoanalysis. All the musical sequences are manifestations
of her dreams, retold in the analyst's office. The only exception is a simple
song she knew from childhood with lyrics she can't entirely remember.
For the majority of the musical, Lacfy in the Dark comes across as
quite progressive regarding gender. Liza founded a beauty magazine which
she has been running for a decade, but despite regulating beauty choices
for other women, she is austere in her own dress and makes tough choices
as she manages both her business and her life. She maintains her power
throughout much of the show, rejecting a marriage proposal from her
lover and asserting her leadership over a male employee who challenges
her. In the denouement, however, Liza realizes that her rejection of
traditional gender roles is what has caused her emotional difficulties. In
her big number "The Saga of Jenny," she explores the problems of a
decisive woman. She then declines a marriage proposal from a movie star
who dares to show vulnerability, and she agrees to co-run the magazine
with the employee, leaving the impression that she will probably let him
take over in the future. Presumably, this man will put her in her place both
romantically and professionally, and she will be much happier than if she
persisted in making her own way in the world.
19
Despite the ending, Lacfy
in the Dark is one of only a very few instances of characters creating lives
outside of traditional gender roles in the days before Oklahoma!.
While the Depression had wrought record unemployment, US
19
Some scholars read the ending differently. Larry Stempel, for example, argues:
"Liza was finaUy able co fit the pieces of her life cogether and take control again. She
would not give up aU she had achieved professionaUy, but she would now share her power
as a woman and an editor with the one man in her life she had come to see as her equaL"
Showtime:A History of York: Norton, 2010), 298. However,
in the show, Liza and the male employee agree that two bosses wouldn't work. She then
says: "I might even step aside after a while if you didn't get too drunk with power." She
then proceeds to do everything he says without offering any suggestions of her own. Moss
Hart with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and music by Kurt Weill, Lady in the Dark York:
Random House, 1941), 180.
SEX AND THE S!KGING G AL (OF A CERTAIN A GE)
Most notes,
A mythic time when nobody was "better than anybody
else," when the health of the nation depended on the
people's acceptance of one another, Rodgers and
Hammerstein constructed a new idea of what America
should be-an idea that entailed openness to ethnic
outsiders.
22
67
The other central motif, however, is the importance of strong women
working in and out of the home and running society. Oklahoma/'s profound
influence on the development of musical theatre fundamentally changed
how people viewed and wrote musical theatre, at least until the Beatles
appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; Broadway musicals remained strongly
influenced by World War II-era social mores, including the expectation that
capable, strong women working outside the home helped communities
thrive.
On first glance Oklahoma! is an unlikely model for better
representations of women on Broadway. The main conceit of Oklahoma!
focuses on who will take the sweet orphan farm-girl Laurey to the dance:
Jud, a "bullet-colored" hired hand with a dark worldview who continually
demonstrates his willingness to break with societal norms in violent ways,
or Curly, a cowboy full of sunny optimism, joy in nature, and a willingness
to adhere to societal expectations. It should be no surprise that the man
who sings "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" and joins in paeans to the
land of Oklahoma succeeds over the man who sings "Lonely Room,"
likes pornography, and "compares his creepy sexual behavior to that of
mice and spiders."
23
However, Jud is only a foil for Curly and Laurey's
destined romance. While Oklahoma! has been interpreted many ways, it
is possible to view (synecdochially represented by the "brand-new state"
of Oklahoma) Curly and Laurey as manifestations of the strong, young
nation filled with optimism and promise while, as Gerald Mast argues,Jud
reflects the threat of something darker from Eastern Europe or Japan.
Nevertheless, Oklahoma! established two important precedents
for representations of gender on the musical stage. As Stacy Wolf notes, it
Ships Rise at Pearl Harbor; Miracle in Salvage Cuts Loss to 3," New York Times, 3 May 1943,
Al. After having many pans salvaged, the USS Oklahoma eventually sank in 1947. See Jeff
Phister, Battleship Oklahoma BB-37 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008).
22
Most, Making Americans, 1 07.
23
Gerald Mast, Can't Help Singing: The American Musical 011 Stage and Screen
(Woodstock: o,erlook Press, 1987), 209.
SEX AND THE SI NGING GAL (OF A CERTAIN A GE) 69
for a few months and featuring a handful of songs that became standards
while the show itself was soon forgotten, Oklahoma! ran for over 2,000
performances, toured the nation, was produced in London, sold the entire
score as a cast album, and eventually became a successful film that closely
followed the theatrical production. Oklahoma! garnered critical praise and
lucrative commercial success, inspiring many shows to follow suit. New
musicals didn't just draw on structural and stylistic conventions that made
Oklahoma! different, they also imitated other elements. Musicals moved
away from contemporary, urban settings and became rooted in a rural past.
Dream ballets became more common. Older women as commentators
were also prevelant.
Bloomer Girl opened a year after Oklahoma! in 1944.
26
A show
about the women's rights movement at the onset of the Civil War and the
supposedly intense collaboration between early feminists and abolitionists,
"Bloomer Girl interweaves issues of black and female equality and war and
peace with the vicissitudes of courtship and pre-Civil War Politics."
27
The show argues that the United States is a great country because of its
commitment to equal rights for all its citizens, a goal the creators perhaps
viewed as more utopian than historical. Despite the rousing "It Was Good
Enough for Grandma (But It Ain't Good Enough for Us)" that the young
women sing as they demand greater political rights, the show also features
a strong older woman, Dolly Bloomer (based on the historic Amelia
Bloomer), who is again the aunt of the leading lady. Her niece Evelina
(invented for the show) is clearly influenced by her activist aunt. Both aunt
and niece advocate for equal rights for women and African Americans.
Evelina subjugates her romance to political concerns, requiring her beau
to free his slave as a condition of courtship. She removes her hoopskirts at
her father's fashion show to introduce practical bloomers and to instigate
a political demonstration as her activist colleagues protest hoopskirts. The
bloomer girls also work on the Underground Railroad, getting arrested for
their commitment to equal rights for all. Bloomer Girl focuses on fashion,
both the constricting and liberating elements, while allowing the director
to showcase some gorgeous hoopskirts. The show makes it very clear that
bloomers offered freedom from the physical limitations of hoopskirts
and the constraints of femininity marked by the objectifying male gaze.
The show is also about different groups coming together and valuing
26
Book by Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Yip Harburg, and music by
Harold Arlen, Bloomer Gir4 1944. In 2000, I directed and produced an off-Broadway revival
of Bloomer Girl at the Theatre at St. Clement's.
27
Harold Meyerson and Ernie Harburg, Who Put the Roinbow in the Wizard of Oz?
Yip Harburg, J.;jricist (Ann Arbor: University of l\1ichigan Press, 1993), 187.
SEX AND THE SINGI NG GAL (OF A CERTAIN A GE) 71
of women who defied stereotypical roles. In the movies, Katharine
Hepburn continually pushed expectations as she got older and continued
making romantic comedies, but her success did not open more doors in
Hollywood. On Broadway, however, characters like the worldly Madam in
House of Flowers (1954), the Old Woman in Candide (1956) who is a wise foil
to the naive Pangloss, or the practical and no-nonsense Mrs. Pearce in My
Fair Lacfy (1956) provided good parts and also allowed a little more variety
in representations of women. And Rodgers and Hammerstein continued
to create excellent women's roles.
In The King and I (1951), Anna, the lead, is an older, wise, widowed
schoolteacher. Anna is not a romantic interest, although "Shall We Dance"
certainly yields subtextual possibilities. Rather, she teaches not only the
children (a very traditional enterprise for a widow) but also the king's
many wives and, more subtly, the king himself. Anna also benefits from
the guidance of Lady Thiang, the king's oldest wife. While the orientalism
of the piece is troubling to modern sensibilities, Anna is a strong woman,
who bucks social norms. She may be prim, but she also becomes quickly
comfortable with scantily-clothed men when disembarking her ship. While
she teaches the people in Siam, she is eager to learn from them as well, as
evidenced by "Getting to Know You."
The Sound of Music (1959) revolves around the high-spirited novice,
Maria, the abbey's "problem," who is sent off to be a governess to a rigid,
wealthy man's children after the death of their mother. She transforms
the household, teaching the children to sing and play and the father to
be emotionally open. During that process, Maria and the widower fall in
love-much to Maria's confusion. The Mother Abbess thereby continues
in the tradition of a wiser, older woman, and she is given one of the
most powerful songs in the show, one destined to be sung at graduation
ceremonies for decades to follow: "Climb Ev'ry Mountain." Not only
does the abbess teach Maria to follow her dreams, she is also actively
involved in helping the family escape the Nazis. (The movie includes a
scene of the nuns stealing the Nazis' sparkplugs, a nice touch showing
the older, wiser women are not only brave and moral, but also know how
to disassemble an engine.) The show's original production starred Mary
Martin as Maria and opened a month before her forty-sixth birthday, while
Patricia Neway played the Mother Abbess when she was only forty. For the
movie, twenty-nine year-old Julie Andrews played Maria. Older actresses
had more opportunities on Broadway than on the screen (in part because
age doesn't read as clearly on the stage as it does on film).
The year 1959 also saw the debut of one of the most iconic
characters in the entire Broadway canon: Mama Rose in Gypsy. While Rose
could be described as amoral, she is a vastly complex woman who exploits
SEX AND THE SINGING G.'U. (OF A CERTAIN AGE) 73
also began to welcome older women to the stage; instead of actresses in
their thirties or forties, producers finally cast some women who might be
eligible for Social Security. Composer and lyricist Jerry Herman created
complex and rich female characters, especially in Hello Dol!y! (1964), Mame
(1966), and Dear World (1969). As Stacy Wolf notes, Herman elevates the
wise, older woman from supporting actor to star.
34
Hello Dol!y! and Mame
"both feature a strong, singular, middle aged woman; both female leads
are controlling, verbal, irresistible and clever."
35
In fact, all three shows
feature "a middle-aged woman whose quirky eccentricity and financial
independence" win her freedom and "offer bold solo numbers and rich
characters for middle-aged women."
36
All three have male characters
representing traditional, conservative capitalism who must be changed
(Hello Doi!J1, tricked (Mame) , or eliminated (Dear Worla) giving the wise,
older women power to shape the world into a more loving place.
Hello Dol!y! features an older widow who dearly loves her deceased
husband and seemingly defers to him while trying to start living again.
"On the one hand, she behaves as if she needs a man to give her power to
make a new life; on the other hand, she is clearly the master of her own
future.'m At the top of the show, Dolly is a matchmaker (and specialist of
nearly everything) determined to marry a rather obnoxious, parsimonious
man for his money, which she wants to spread throughout the community.
She could be a sad and lonely character, but instead she is joyous even
in her plan to marry for money. The quid pro quo seems just, for the man
makes clear that "marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's
a householder!"
38
His patriarchal expectations comically highlight the
impossible demands on women; he wants a dainty, fragile woman to fix
the plumbing, shoe the horse, and clean the stable.
39
Dolly is no dainty,
fragile lady; she could shoe a horse, probably break a foal, and is clearly
beloved by all. As Bruce Kirle notes, "producer David Merrick and
director-choreographer Gower Champion kept altering the text and score
to suit each new Dolly" giving different actresses more physical comedy,
dance, or permission to ad-lib, which allowed each Dolly to be unique,
l4Wolf, 76.
35
lbid., 72.
36
lbid., 73.
17
Ibid., 74.
38
Book by Michael Stewart, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, Hello, Dolfy! (New
York: DBS Publications, 1964), 5.
39
lbid., 14-15.
SEX AND THE SINGING GAL (OF A CERTAIN AGE) 75
of a woman's freedom,"
44
Fraulein Schneider represents older women's
survival. The fact that Lotte Lenya had escaped Hitler's Germany with her
husband composer Kurt Weill, imbued her performance with recognition
of survival and history. The musical, which focuses on life in Berlin as
Hitler gained power, greatly expanded the part of the wiser, older woman
and even gave her a romantic interest. Her song "So What?" serves as the
musicals "I Want" song and sets her up as a wise and practical woman
giving advice-in this case, to focus on the things that matter. However,
she also highlights "what many understand to have been key to the Nazis'
success: a general cynical indifference among many constituencies that
would eventually allow the Third Reich to expand its influence."
45
She
has two songs with her Jewish suitor. She ultimately rejects him because
conditions are getting so bad for Jews in Germany and, in the same
structural position as Nettie in Carouse4 sings "What Would You Do?"
about halfway through the second act, highlighting the general helplessness
of the situation. The older woman giving advice has embraced cynicism
and complacency, moving from not being afraid of a storm to giving up
principled resistance to survive the storm. By this point, the function of
the wiser, older woman is well-established and thus when Schneider doesn't
have the wisdom or strength to stand up to the Nazis, the failure of her
character to take a meaningful stand is more powerful than it would for
other characters. "Fraulein Schneider asserts a cynical pragmatism that will
enable her to survive the Third Reich by renouncing her love for a Jew,"
46
but the cost of such survival is high. Audiences were accustomed to older
women being wise and serving as the moral compass; her failure to take
any meaningful stand against injustice underscores the hopelessness of
the situation.
The pattern of older women with great songs or roles continued
intermittently in the 1970s. Stephen Sondheim created several complex
women. In Compatry (1970) , Joanne is clearly a watcher and social
commentator.
47
She has enough perspective to comment on all around
her, including her own foibles. Her "critique of a bourgeois, disconnected
society ... attack the expectations that organize" the society of Compatry
and thus her voice is "ultimately as important as Robert as the 'voice' of
44
Wolf, 72.
45
Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of N ational Identity
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 244.
46
Geoffrey Block, "Is Life a Cabaret? Cabaret and Its Sources in Reality and the
Imagination." Studies in Musical Theatre, 5.2 (2011): 177.
47
Book by George Furth, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Company, 1970.
S EX AND THE SINGING G AL (OF A (ERTAJN AGE) 77
but she now wants to settle down. Unfortunately, Fredrik has already
settled down with an eighteen-year-old bride, who is still a virgin after
eleven months of marriage. Fredrik loves his young wife when his eyes
are closed, but when his eyes are open, he sees how much his relationship
with Desiree makes more sense. The show allows the generationally
appropriate couples to align, allowing Desiree to have a career, a child, and
wait for the husband until she is emotionally ready. Additionally, Desiree's
mother, Madame Armfeldt, is not necessarily wise (in fact, she seems less
wise than Desiree), but she is a watcher, commenting on society with the
best jokes; she knows she is old and knows too much. Madame Armfeldt
has been played on Broadway by women in their seventies or eighties.
None of this means that Broadway is a feminist institution overall.
"Chorus Girls" (who are really women- no one calls the actual female
children in Bii!J Elliot "Chorus Girls'') are still strongly judged on the basis
of "tits and ass," as A Chorus Line (1975) famously put it. Broadway has
certainly had its fair share of evil, greedy, self-centered older women and
stupid ingenues. Starting in the late 1970s and continuing through to the
present, there have been fewer strong, outspoken, older female characters.
In 1981, March of the Falsettos opened off-Broadway, and in 1983,
La Cage Aux Folies opened on Broadway. 5
3
Gay men, who continued to
make major contributions to the majority of the musicals, started to be
more public with their sexuality, even in highly commercial endeavors.
Broadway musicals have since started to rely on traditional stereotypes
about women. Interestingly, after Jerry Herman became more public
about his homosexuality, he wrote only one major new musical, La Cage
Aux Folies. Albin has many of the qualities that are usually given to female
characters. He doesn't fit in, and people around him don't recognize his
full potential. When he sings "I Am What I Am" as the act 1 finale, he
is in the tradition of "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music,
"Before the Parade Passes By" from Hello, Doi!J!, and "Don't Rain on My
Parade" from Fun'!) Girl (1964).
Whil.e there continue to be some older female characters who
are not defined as wife or mother, more and more they are presented
as amoral or serve as cautionary warnings. Sweenry Todd (1979) includes
Mrs. Lovett and the Beggar Woman, but Mrs. Lovett is cheerfully amoral
and defined by her adoration of Sweeney, her immorality, and her greed.
She is maternal with Tobias, but she is willing to sacrifice him for her
scheme with Todd. The Beggar Woman is defined only as a crazy lady
until the denouement when she is revealed as Sweeney's presumed-dead
53
William Finn, March of the Falsettos, 1981. Book by Harvey Fierstein, music and
lyrics by Jerry Herman, LA Cage Aux Folies, 1983.
SE.x AND n iE SINGING GAL (oF A C ERTAIN AGE) 79
her. While clearly defined as a maid and a mother, she bristles with rage
at the limits society has placed on her while simultaneously loving her
children. Eschewing a traditional "I Want" song, Caroline sings as work
consumes her, harmonizing with the appliances and radio.
So entrenched is Caroline in the necessary mundane details of
labor, both emotional and physical, that at first she can't muster the energy
to take up the musical and physical space of a solo number. On the other
hand, she is the source of power that brings the appliances to life and
Noah to the basement.
54
In her eleven o'clock number "Lot's Wife," the pain and rage
that Caroline has suppressed throughout the show comes to the surface.
Caroline is a complex character who breaks stereotypes of the mammy
and older woman and doesn't fit into any neat categories. 5
5
Indeed, while
Caroline seems mired in stasis, she has ful1illed one of the only feasible
desires she expresses: "Gonna pass me a law that my heathen daughter
don't never get hurt nor learn to mind me, nor learn to mind nobody cept
herself."
56
By the end of the show, her daughter has become a vibrant,
politically engaged woman, who "finds power in being the daughter of a
maid."
57
While Caroline is a complex and passionate woman whose role as
a mother is only one part of her characterization, more and more female
characters in the 1990s became defined as mothers. Mamma Mia (London
1999, Broadway 2001), written by Catherine Johnson, broke some of
the stereotypes of mothers as it celebrated a mother and her friends as
engaged and sexual. In 2005, The Light in the Piazza focuses on the mother
of a developmentally disabled young woman, who is a complex character,
but rarely steps out of her proscribed role.
58
Lynn Ahrens, one of the
only women writing lyrics, wrote Ragtime in 2000 with only one major
female character named simply "Mother" (per the original novel) . Bzl!J
Elliot (London 2005, Broadway 2008) has a well-developed middle-aged
female character, the ballet teacher, who serves as a surrogate mother
for Billy. Billy's grandmother notably refuses to sentimentalize the past
or forgive the wrongs of her dead abusive husband. If she had life to do
>wolf, 178.
ss See Aaron C. Thomas, "Engaging and Icon: Caroline, or Change and the Poli tics
of Representation," Studies in Musical Theatre 4.2 (201 0): 199-210.
56
Book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, music by Jeanine Tesori, Caroline, or Change
(New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004), 45.
57
Wolf, 180.
sa Music and lyrics by Adam Guttel, book by Craig Lucas, A Light in the i a ~ a
2005.
SEX AND THE SINGING GAL (OF II CERTAIN AGE) 81
as Stacy Wolf notes, often diminished the power of women. Since mega-
musicals have faded in popularity, no one form has dominated Broadway.
Parodic musicals (like Urinetown [2001], Avenue Q (2003], [title of show]
(2008], and Spamalot [2005]), jukebox musicals, and remakes of movies
seem to dominate Broadway, and none of those forms consistently offer
strong women's parts. Furthermore, women remain under-represented as
writers, directors, and producers. I t seems stronger, older women are now
represented primarily in revivals.
83
CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Aman, PhD received his doctor of philosophy in theatre from
the CUNY Graduate Center in 2009. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree
in Dramaturgy from Brooklyn College. He is a playwright and lyricist in
addition to being an Associate Professor at The College of Westchester.
He taught interdisciplinary studies for seven years at John Jay College
of Criminal Justice. His musical Let Me Sing which explores the history
of musical theatre was produced at the George Street Playhouse and
Charlotte Repertory Theatre.
Jennifer Jones Cavenaugh holds the Winifred Warden Endowed Chair
of Theater and Dance at Rollins College and serves as the Associate Dean
of Arts and Sciences. Her book Medea's Daughters: Forming and Performing
Women Who Kill was published in 2003 by Ohio State University Press.
She has published articles in theatre journals such as Modern Drama, New
England Journal of Theater, Theater Notebook, Theater History Studies and
American Drama, and has chapters in several anthologies including Passing
Performances: Queer Readings of Leading PIC!Jers in American Theater Hzstory and
Women in American Musical Theatre. Dr. Cavenaugh is a member of Actor's
Equity and has performed and directed for over twenty years.
Katherine Jones is a Winter Park, Florida native and is a graduate of
Rollins College. During her time there, she acquired a BA in theatre arts
with an emphasis in theatre studies and also participated in the Student-
Faculty Collaborative Scholarship Program. Before publication, she
presented findings from that program at the Song, Stage, and Screen V
conference in Winchester, England. Since then, her professional interests
lie in marketing and development for non-profit arts organizations.
Alisa Roost is an assistant professor of Humanities at Hostos Community
College in the South Bronx. She holds a PhD in theatre from the Graduate
Center at City University of New York. A long-time aficionado of
political satire in American musical theatre, she directed and produced off-
Broadway revivals of Flahoolf!Y and Bloomer GirL She is currently working
on an analysis of universality and Broadway musicals. She has previously
published articles in Theatre Topics and ]ADT.
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