Depression Era Miracles (1930-1939)

Keeping Broadway Alive

The Shuberts, Lee and Jacob
The Shubert Theatre – 1913, 44th Street
The Ambassador – 1921 – 49th Street
The Barrymore -
The Belasco – 1907, 44th Street
The Jacobs Theatre (Originally the Royale Theatre) 1927, 45th Street
The Booth – 1913, 45th Street
The Broadway Theatre 1930, 1681 Broadway
The Broadhurst Theatre 1917, 44th Street
The Cort Theatre – 1912, 48th Street
The Schoenfeld Theatre (formerly the Plymouth) 1918, 45th Street
The Golden Theatre (formally known as the Masque Theatre) 1927, 45th Street
The Imperial Theatre 1923, 45th Street
The Longacre Theatre 1913, 48th Street
The Lyceum Theatre 1903 (Oldest continually used theatre in NYC), 45th Street
The Majestic Theatre 1927, 44th Street
The Music Box Theatre 1921, 45th Street
The Winter Garden Theatre 1911, 1634 Broadway
Eubie Blake (1887 – 1983) – Shuffle Along
Shuffle Along
The Gershwins – George and Ira
The Gershwins – George and Ira

•15 Broadway Shows

George White's Scandals (1920–1924), featuring, at one point, the 1922 one-act opera Blue Monday)
Lady, Be Good (1924)
Tip-Toes (1925)
Tell Me More! (1925)
Oh, Kay! (1926)
Strike Up the Band (1927)
Funny Face (1927)
Rosalie (1928)
Treasure Girl (1928)
Show Girl (1929)
Girl Crazy (1930)
Porgy and Bess (1935)
Of Thee I Sing (1931) First musical to have it’s Libretto published, the first Broadway musical of the 1930’s to
last more than 400 performances and the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize but only for Book and Lyrics,
George (Composer) was given a Pulitzer posthumously in 1998
Pardon My English (1933)
Let 'Em Eat Cake (1933)
Crazy for You (1992), a revised version of Girl Crazy, written and compiled without the participation of either
George or Ira Gershwin.
Nice Work If You Can Get It (2012), a musical with a score by George and Ira Gershwin
An American in Paris, a new musical on Broadway (2015)
Porgy and Bess
Cole Porter
• Cole Porter – First Broadway composer to write both the music and lyrics for
his shows.
• 25 Broadway Shows
• 800 Songs
• Music and Lyrics for 12 films
• Hits include Anything Goes, Can Can and Kiss Me Kate – first show ever to win a Tony Award for Best
Musical
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
• Collaborated on 28 stage musicals from 1919 – 1943
• Wrote 500 songs, Hart (the Lyrics, after the music was already
written), Rodgers the Music
• Greatest hits were A Connecticut Yankee (1927), Jumbo (1935), On
Your Toes (1936), Babes In Arms (1937), The Boys from Syracuse
(1938), Pal Joey (1940)
• Lorenz suffered from depression, alcoholism and loathed his body,
standing under 5’ tall, considering himself a freak. Was a closeted
homosexual and pursued a secretive and tormented sexual life style.
He was known to disappear for days on end, during which times he
was typically in a serious alcoholic haze.
Lorenz Hart
• Final Years
In 1943, on the opening night of a revival of A Connecticut Yankee, Hart
crashed his own show without a ticket, causing such a public spectacle
in his drunken stupor that he was removed from the theater. Days after
the scene, Hart was discovered lying in a street gutter unconscious and
developed pneumonia. He died from complications of his illness on
November 22, 1943, in New York City. Though Lorenz Hart dealt with
many demons during his lifetime, his legacy leaves behind some of the
most haunting and timeless songs in music theatre history.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Rodgers and Hammerstein
• First collaboration was a musical version of Green Grow the Lilacs, originally titled
Away We Go. Later became Oklahoma!
• This partnership allowed both Rodgers and Hammerstein to follow their preferred
writing methods: Hammerstein preferred to write a complete lyric before it was
set to music, and Rodgers preferred to set completed lyrics to music, unlike his
collaboration with Hart.
• First musical composers that had three shows running on Broadway at the same
time, a record which wasn’t broken till Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Created a string of popular musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, initiating what is
considered the "golden age" of musical theatre. Five of their Broadway shows,
Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music, were
outstanding successes, as was the television broadcast of Cinderella.
• They garnered thirty-four Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, the Pulitzer
Prize, and two Grammy Awards.
• Their musical theatre writing partnership has been called the greatest of the 20th
century.[3]