A Size Thirteen Collar: Musicals and PMC Class Consciousness

Abstract

On September 7, 1902, the New York Times pronounced the musical comedy dead on arrival. According to the article, “the general opinion was that in the not far distant future the musical comedy and its kin will be found among the ‘have beens’ so far as concerns New York. Nearly all agree that the cycle is dead” (“Musical Comedies’ Vogue Said to be On the Wane” 10).1 If the reports of the musical’s death were greatly exaggerated, the identity of musical comedy was rather up in the air. In the twentieth century’s first decade, the musical comedy was beset by, in Gerald Bordman’s words, “a blurring of definitions” (Bordman, American Musical Comedy 79). Audiences seeking musical entertainment on Broadway found themselves choosing between operettas, comic operas, musical comedies, musical plays, revues, and “French vaudevilles”, nomenclature employed by producers more for the sake of novelty than accurate description (Bordman, American Musical Comedy 78–80). Roughly speaking, Cohan and Victor Herbert set the tone of the early years of the century, Viennese operetta (and many imitations thereof) ruled Broadway from 1907 to 1914,2 and around 1915, the American musical would reach something close to maturity, at least temporarily, with the shows that would come to be named for the theatre where they were produced—“Princess” musicals.