Oh, Lady Be Good!

Written: 1924

Music by: George Gershwin

Words by: Ira Gershwin

Written for: Lady, Be Good
(show)

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As has been pointed out on the Cafe Songbook page for "Somebody Loves Me," 1924 was a pivotal year both for the Gershwin brothers as well as for Broadway itself. It was the year George ceased writing songs for revues and ventured completely into the realm of the book musical, what later became known as the musical comedy, the form that dominated American musical theater for the remainder of the century. It was also the year that George and Ira took up writing as a team on a permanent basis. These changes culminated in the writing of the score for the show Lady Be Good, which opened on Broadway at the Liberty Theater on December 1, 1924, a date by which some forty other musicals had also made an appearnace on the Great White (and unimaginably busy) Way.

Even though these changes were in many ways profound, the influence of the past was still deeply felt. This was evidenced by the fact that operetta, that throwback to the more romantic and sentimental tastes of the nineteenth century, was the musical type that still proved most popular, being led in 1924 by Rudolf Friml's Rose Marie and Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince. And even most of the shows with a more contemporary flavor still had books that were little more than vehicles to support the songs. These inlcuded productions with scores by the likes of Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. The Gershwins' Lady Be Good, the first full-fledged musical written by the team of George and Ira Gershwin, was one of the few shows, and certainly the most successful, that could claim to be on some level a modern musical comedy.

Even the book for Lady Be Good would be considered flimsy in comparison to later shows that featured songs that were truly integrated into their stories. Anyone who had magically returned from two decades later having seen Rodgers' and Hammerstein's Oklahoma to attend Lady Be Good would feel that the 1924 show was not much more than a revue. It's songs, great as some of them were (e.g. Oh, Lady Be Good, "Fascinating Rhythm," and for a while, "The Man I Love") were not much more than a means of providing opportunities for the performers to do their thing. The show featured four performers: comic Walter Catlett, Cliff Edwards (otherwise know as Ukelele Ike, an enormously popular vaudevillian), and, mirabile dictu, Fred and Adele Astaire, who were then relatively unknown. They were siter and brother in the show as well as in life and it was for them that the Gershwins were mainly creating their song and dance numbers. Fred and George had known each other since they were teenagers working at or hanging around the Tin Pan Alley music publishing house, Harms. As far back as that, they had dreamed out loud to each other about how great it would be when George created a show that would star Fred and his sister; and. although this was not the first time they had worked to together, Lady Be Good! was the show that truly made them, songwriter and performers alike, stars.

We now know how modern "Lady Be Good" really was, at least for its time, but apparently contemporary reviewers did not. Gershwin biographer Edward Jablonski captures the essence of what the critics missed:

Though several reviewers made note of the songs they made no mention of the innovative sound, the spare sinewy melodies, the definitely non-operetta rhythms, the wit of the lyrics. A score that scintillated and crackled with the unsentimental contemporaneity . . . of such songs as "Little Jazz Bird," "The Half of It, Dearie, Blues, and of course, "Oh, Lady Be Good" and "Fascinating Rhythm."

During the summer of 1924, George was in London in conjunction with the production of the show Primrose, for which he had written the score. While there he met with producer Alex Aarons, writer Guy Bolton and Fred Astaire about a show they would create on Broadway later that year, a show that at that point bore the title Black-Eyed Susan. On the steamship voyage back to New York, George met millionaire Otto Kahn whom he tried to interest in investing in the show. Reportedly when George played one of the songs then included in the score for Black-Eyed Susan, "The Man I Love," Kahn immediately put up $10,000; unaware, of course, that the song would eventually be cut from the show by co-producer Vinton Freedley who thought it slowed things down. Interestingly, as Howard Pollack informs us, the show Lady Be Good! was named for the song "Oh, Lady Be Good" and not the other way around. When back in New York, Aarons and Freedley heard George and Ira's song "Oh, Lady Be Good!" and liked it so much, they decided to switch out Black-Eyed Susan for Lady Be Good!

In the show the lady of "Oh, Lady Be Good" or for that matter of the show's title, is Susie Trevor (Adele Astaire) sister of Dick Trevor (Fred Astaire) an out-of-work .... The plot, which is too complicated and melodramatic to render, presents (and this isn't the half of it) a character named Jack who was supposedly murdered in Mexico but somehow shows up in New York to unexpectedly inherit a large estate. A Mexican shows up and claims a portion of the estate for his sister on the grounds that she married Jack in Mexico before he was supposedly murdered. Watty Watkins, the character played by Walter Catlett, who is Dick Trevor's lawyer, is hired by the Mexican to collect his sister's share of the money and so Catlett tries to get Susie Trevor (Adele Astaire) to impersonate the Mexican's sister to help in securing the money for is client. Whether or not Susie complies is the determining factor in whether or not the lady will be "good" or not. Catlett sings the title song to Susie (Adele) to get her to bey "good" to him. Susie at first declines the offer despite Catlett's lucrative offer and then changes her mind turning a yacht club party into chaos to conlcude the first act. Don't worry, everything works out and the truly good guys and gals (which include Fred and Adele's characters) get the inheritance and each other. A more complete summary is given by Howard Pollack in his George Gershwin biography (pp. 327-328, hard-cover Ed.).

As one can tell from the above partial synopsis of Lady Be Good!, it was not the story that made the show so memborable and important in the history of American musical theater. It was the songs. They with "their originality and excellence, their complexity and sophisctication in rhythm, haromony and lyric writing raised musical comdedy writing to new heights. . . ." Writing of the show's title song, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi comments how the Geshwin brothers had the "rare gift of being able to transfix in such a slender song as "Oh, Lady Be Good!" the timely yet timeless image of an era, poignant still." (See Kimball and Simon, The Gershwins, p. 39, hard-cover Ed.)

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