![]() For all his star power, Jolson suffered from terrible first-night nerves and at the Winter Garden large buckets were placed in both wings in case he needed to bolt for the side and throw up. The man crooning the tune was Al Jolson, and the song, according to America's newspaper of record, was "Rock-a-Bye You Baby with a Dixie Melody". Somewhere behind him a plot about Baghdad and the Arabian Nights and an heiress with a choice of suitors was waiting to resume, but out in the orchestra seats nobody missed it. That happened when the porter wrapped up the intro, clasped his white-gloved hands together, and swung into the chorus: Pace the Times man, the show wasn't really started, not yet, not quite. Your little rolling stone that rolled away And, having landed with his killer sweater-knitting gag, the porter in blackface and white gloves bounded down the ramp, got down on one knee, and sang an introductory verse: That didn't have much to do with the plot, either: The sets were lavish and exotic - "the Island of Eternal Youth", "the Cabin of the Good Ship Whale", "the Grotto of the Valley of Diamonds" - but the ramp was bare. The Shubert brothers had installed a ramp at the Winter Garden, which extended from the stage deep into the audience. ![]() But hey, you don't want to overthink these things. informed the audience that he had been looking for barbed wire so he could knit the Kaiser a sweater, and the show really was started.īecause how else would you start a show about Sinbad the sailor in old Baghdad? Kaiser gags don't really make a lot of sense, especially in a show about Mesopotamia, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, which was on the same side as the Kaiser in the Great War. The New York Times drama critic loved it: Except that amidst the machinations is a colored porter played by a white man in blackface. This plot has a certain logic, at least in musical comedy terms. The next thing you know, we're transported to old Baghdad to meet various characters from the Arabian Nights. The story, by Harold Atteridge, opened at a Long Island country club, where the heiress Nan van Decker is being wooed by rival suitors and consults a crystal ball on the matter. So February 14th was an evening of the usual first-night tensions. A century ago on Broadway, Sinbad didn't have quite the advantages Saddam did - the ability to torture hostile critics to death, etc. ![]() It was set in Baghdad, and indeed was one of the most successful musicals ever set in Iraq until Saddam Hussein's musical (seriously - adapted from his novel Zabibah and the King), which was the non-surprise hit of the 2001 Baghdad theatre season. One hundred Valentine Days ago, on February 14th 1918, a new Shubert Brothers production opened at the Winter Garden in New York. On the other hand, if your idea of an iconic love song is one not about a mere sweetheart but about childhood and Dixie and mammy's arms and the Swanee river, then you're in luck. We have a choice of musical diversions for you this weekend: please check out the pre-Valentine edition of The Mark Steyn Weekend Show, which among other delights features Mark's compatriot, the great singer-pianist Carol Welsman, offering a brace of truly classic love songs. ![]()
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