AN IMMIGRANT ARTFORM
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The first theatrical artists to create the “embryonic versions” of a musical are:
Harrigan & Hart - Irish American duo
Weber & Fields - Polish/Jewish American duo
Williams & Walker - African American duo*
George M. Cohan - Irish American
Victor Herbert - Irish born, German taught
*will teach later
HARRIGAN & HART
“Harrigan also laid the groundwork for what would become American musical comedy, particularly in his use of songs to advance the stage action.”
New York Times
While Gilbert and Sullivan were a famous writing team for comedic operas, musical theatre had its own comedic team. This team was comprised of Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart. They were a duo primarily known for their many musical comedies. Hart performed while Harrigan wrote the book and lyrics (and occasionally performed as well). They also frequently enlisted the help of David Braham to write the music. Many of their shows were comedies involving immigrants and middle and working class people. This made Harrigan and Hart’s shows especially popular with people in this demographic, who were happy that they, “gave comedic voice to the experience of immigrant and working-class New Yorkers of the Gilded Age.”
Listen to “Mulligan’s Guard” by Harrigan & Hart in full
Weber & Fields
The grandaddy of all two-man vaudeville comedy teams, Weber and Fields are the direct progenitors of Gallagher and Shean, Smith and Dale, the Marx Brothers, and Ted Healy and his Stooges, among countless others. The fact that their influence can be traced to so many (and such diverse) acts gives a strong indication of the complexity of their appeal.
Weber & Field’s Music Hall
Weber and Fields’ Music Hall, designed by architect William A. Swasey and located at 216 W. 44th Street, was established in 1912. Established by the Shuberts, the theatre was named after the comedic duo Weber and Fields. When Weber and Fields split up a year later, the theatre was renamed the 44th Street Theatre. It presented Al Jolson in Big Boy, Song of the Flame by George Gershwin, then the Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers. Weber and Fields’ Music Hall changed its names nine times, but was perhaps best known as the Nora Bayes Theatre, after the popular musical actress. The building was later purchased by the New York Times, and the former Weber and Fields' Theatre was torn down in 1945.
George M. Cohan
George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878 – November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.
Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s and continuing to perform as a headline artist until 1940.
Known in the decade before World War I as "the man who owned Broadway", he is considered the father of American musical comedy.[2] His life and music were depicted in the Oscar-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and the 1968 musical George M!. A statue of Cohan in Times Square, New York City, commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre.
Wrote 20 musicals & 500 songs
“Which is why Cohan's statue — the only public statue of a theater performer in all of Manhattan — has stood for decades at the center of Times Square, forever giving Broadway his regards.”
Victor Herbert
He was also a contributor to the Ziegfeld Follies every year from 1917 to 1924.
He was also prominent among the Tin Pan Alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music.
Wikopedia