#phildelphia

PHILLY ROYALTY

1931

The Gang’s All Here is a 1931 musical comedy with music by Louis E. Gensler, book by Russel Crouse, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Morrie Ryskind, with lyrics by Owen Murphy and Robert A. Simon. It was directed by Frank McCoy and staged by Oscar Hammerstein II.

The plot concerned a war between bootleggers in 1931 Atlantic City NJ, with the second act set mainly in Nantucket RI.  

Note: The musical is not related to the popular song “Hail! Hail! The Gang’s All Here” nor the 1943 film starring Carmen Miranda and Alice Faye. 

The musical had its out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia, where they realized it was in trouble and called in Oscar Hammerstein as play doctor. Although Hammerstein had no hopes for The Gang’s All Here, he couldn’t say no to his colleagues and agreed to go to Philadelphia to see what he could do to improve the musical.  

After the Philadelphia tryout at the Shubert, Ruby Keeler (possibly sensing she was in a turkey) departed the cast and was replaced with Gina Malo. Keeler went to Hollywood where she thrived. 

After Philadelphia, the show made a short stop at the Shubert in Newark, New Jersey (above) before heading to Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, opening February 18, 1931 and lasting just 23 performances. 

One of the unique song titles was “By Special Permission of the Copyright Owner, I Love You”.  

Every time a radio is playing, they're saying  "And next you will hear us play  Something with the publisher's okay"  Listening to this great announcer trilling  This thrilling new text, told me what to do Try this very notion out on you...  I asked your Father, he said "Okay!"  I asked your Mother, she said "Hooray!"  By special permission of the copyright owner I love you!

Vaudeville sensation Ted Healy headlined. He is largely remember as the man responsible for “The Three Stooges”.  Just prior to this musical, Healy and the original stooges parted ways over a dispute, and Healy replaced them with three other ‘stooges’, who also appeared with him in his next musical, Billy Rose’s Crazy Quilt (May 1931). 

The reviews were mostly negative. Brooks Atkinson said that “seldom has a lavish musical struggled so clumsily to reconcile a satiric book with the antics of clowns. Despite feverish re-working, the show was a hurly-burly of disjoined scenes.”   Dorothy Parker said that the show was “fantastically confused and preposterously elongated” and “dragged on beyond midnight.”  

George Jean Nathan said the musical needed “a carload of blue pencils” and Arthur Ruhl said that it was “excessively long-winded, labored and dull.”

The show ended abruptly, with patrons arriving to be told the show had prematurely ended its run. 

Set drawing for the first scene of Act One of The Gang’s All Here.  It was designed by Henry Dreyfuss. It is unclear how this ties into the scene description in the program of “On the Boardwalk at Atlantic City”.  But the drawing is dated February 14, 1931, just four days before the show’s Broadway opening, and well past the preview period. In addition to re-writes, it is likely that scenic changes were also made. 

If anything good came from the musical, it seems that one of the character names - Winterbottom - was recycled into the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Of Thee I Sing (coincidentally also set in Atlantic City) which opened just a few months later. In it, there the President was named Wintergreen and the Vice President Throttlebottom. The common thread was book writer Morrie Ryskind created both shows. 

ATLANTIC CITY

In 1931, the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Atlantic City was marking its first decade, and was already known for it’s superior service and accommodation. In 1921, another musical was set at the Ritz titled Ritz Carlton Nights. That one, however, unlike The Gang’s All Here, actually originated in Atlantic City.  

Peacock Alley was not located at the Ritz, but at the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel. It was so named because it was the connecting hallway between the conjoined Marlborough and Blenheim hotels, and allowed guests to “peacock” (strut in their finery) for the perusal of other guests. 

Interestingly, when the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” (which also concerned bootleggers during prohibition), showed the Ritz, it was actually modeled on the Marlborough-Blenheim’s more exotic exterior, not the actual Ritz’s boxy frame. 

Cherry Street Pier. Philadelphia, PA.

ISO 1000 | 250mm | f/6.3 | 1/8000 sec