page_title: Jerome Kern
section_title: Princess Theatre musicals
hierarchical_section_title: Jerome Kern / Biography / Princess Theatre musicals
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Jerome Kern
context_page_description: Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.
  A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals.
context_section_description: Kern composed 16 Broadway scores between 1915 and 1920 and also contributed songs to the London hit Theodore & Co (1916; most of the songs are by the young Ivor Novello) and to revues like the Ziegfeld Follies.  The most notable of his scores were those for a series of shows written for the Princess Theatre, a small (299-seat) house built by Ray Comstock.  Theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury asked Kern and librettist Guy Bolton to create a series of intimate and low-budget, yet smart, musicals.
  The "Princess Theatre shows" were unique on Broadway not only for their small size, but their clever, coherent plots, integrated scores and naturalistic acting, which presented "a sharp contrast to the large-scale Ruritanian operettas then in vogue" or the star-studded revues and extravaganzas of producers like Florenz Ziegfeld.  Earlier musical comedy had often been thinly plotted, gaudy pieces, marked by the insertion of songs into their scores with little regard to the plot.  But Kern and Bolton followed the examples of Gilbert and Sullivan and French opéra bouffe in integrating song and story.  "These shows built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved.  ... The characters and situations were, within the limitations of musical comedy license, believable and the humor came from the situations or the nature of the characters.  Kern's exquisitely flowing melodies were employed to further the action or develop characterization."  The shows featured modern American settings and simple scene changes to suit the small theatre.
  The team's first Princess Theatre show was an adaptation of Paul Rubens' 1905 London show, Mr. Popple (of Ippleton), called Nobody Home (1915).  The piece ran for 135 performances and was a modest financial success.  However, it did little to fulfill the new team's mission to innovate, except that Kern's song, "The Magic Melody", was the first Broadway showtune with a basic jazz progression.  Kern and Bolton next created an original piece, Very Good Eddie, which was a surprise hit, running for 341 performances, with additional touring productions that went on into the 1918-19 season.  The British humorist, lyricist and librettist P. G. Wodehouse joined the Princess team in 1917, adding his skill as a lyricist to the succeeding shows. Oh, Boy! (1917) ran for an extraordinary 463 performances.  Other shows written for the theatre were Have a Heart (1917), Leave It to Jane (1917)  and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918).  The first opened at another theatre before Very Good Eddie closed.  The second played elsewhere during the long run of Oh Boy!  An anonymous admirer wrote a verse in their praise that begins:
  This is the trio of musical fame,
  
  Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.
  
  Better than anyone else you can name
  
  Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.
  In February 1918, Dorothy Parker wrote in Vanity Fair:
  Well, Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern have done it again. Every time these three gather together, the Princess Theatre is sold out for months in advance. You can get a seat for Oh, Lady! Lady!! somewhere around the middle of August for just about the price of one on the stock exchange. If you ask me, I will look you fearlessly in the eye and tell you in low, throbbing tones that it has it over any other musical comedy in town. But then Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern are my favorite indoor sport. I like the way they go about a musical comedy. ... I like the way the action slides casually into the songs. ... I like the deft rhyming of the song that is always sung in the last act by two comedians and a comedienne.  And oh, how I do like Jerome Kern's music.  And all these things are even more so in Oh, Lady! Lady!! than they were in Oh, Boy! 
  Oh, Lady! Lady!! was the last successful "Princess Theatre show".  Kern and Wodehouse disagreed over money, and the composer decided to move on to other projects.  Kern's importance to the partnership was illustrated by the fate of the last musical of the series, Oh, My Dear! (1918), to which he contributed only one song: "Go, Little Boat". The rest of the show
caption: Jerome Kern in 1918
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