As Thousands Cheer (1933)

October 20 - 30, 1994
New Conservatory Theatre

Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin
Sketches by Moss Hart

Directed by Jim Friedman and Cindy Goldfield
Musical Director: Peggy Gorham
Choreographer: Cindy Goldfield
 

Playbill Notes

Irvin Berlin was working in Hollywood when, on October 29, 1929, he heard that funny things were happening on Wall Street. By the end of the day he had lost his entire stock portfolio of $5,000,000. This did not put the most pleasant of caps on what had been a less than fulfilling tenure in the movie business.

By the height of the Great Depression, American's unemployment rate was 25%. A quarter of the banks had failed, the Net National Product had fallen by one-half, and three million people were on relief.

Herbert Hoover had been trounced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in November of 1932. March of 1933 signalled the beginning of some of the most bold and innovative social reforms ever instituted by an American government, or any government for that matter. The first one hundred days of the Roosevelt presidency established many of the programs and governmental changes that helped turn the American economy around.

By the time he returned to New York, Irving Berlin felt that his career was over. He was in his mid-forties and hadn't had a hit in what seemed like forever. Broadway musicals were hit as hard by the depression as everything else. Careers were destroyed and great producers like Florenz Ziegfeld and Charles Dillingham died broken men. The publishing houses of Tin Pan Alley were quickly being bought up by Hollywood, but Berlin refused to sell his company. This proved to be a wise decision, as it was the publishing business and theatre ownership that kept him solvent. It also helped that the Pulitzer Prize winning musical Of Thee I Sing was playing at his Music Box Theatre.

By 1932, Irving Berlin's fortune had changed. His songs "Say It Isn't So" and "How Deep is the Ocean" were hits. Face the Music his first collaboratin with Moss Hart and Hassard Short (co-director with George Kaufman) was also a success. By the time April of 1933 rolled around and he and Moss Hart had settled down to write As Thousands Cheer, Irving Berlin was back on top of the business.

As Thousands Cheer opened at the Music Box Theatre on September 30, 1933, to rave reviews. The newspaper-style format was hailed as innovative. Ethel Waters, Marilyn Miller, Clifton Webb, Helen Broderick, and Leslie Adams all showed their versatility by playing many of society's most visible personalities, from the Hoovers to Ghandi. But it was, in fact, the musical combination of librettist and composer that made the show work so well. Hart's satiric look at those about whom society most loved to gossip, juxtaposed with Berlin's songs, guided the audience through a journey of both escapism and self-examination. And those Irving Berlin songs showed a complexity and development not seen before. From "Easter Parade" to "Suppertime", Berlin's music gave the revue a wide emotional range.

As Thousands Cheer quickly entered theatre history books as one of the two greatest musical revues produced on Broadway (the other being The Bandwagon). Following a greatly altered 1935 London production (entitled Stop Press) the show disappeared. This is the first time As Thousands Cheer has been performed since its original Broadway run. While revues rarely stand the test of time (especially ones as topical as this) we think you will still recognize the situations and humor, and see that much of what Berlin and Hart were satirizing still applies today.

-- Greg MacKellan

Plot Summary

Each of the 21 scenes was preceded by a related newspaper headline, and the sketches poked fun a wide variety of subjects, including the marital woes of Barbara Hutton, Gandhi, and British royalty; the weather report was turned into a song ("Heat Wave"); President and Mrs. Hoover leaving the White House, with the President giving his cabinet a Bronx cheer; "Supper Time", an African-American woman's lament for her lynched husband, John D. Rockefeller refusing to accept Radio City Music Hall as a birthday gift; commercials interrupting the singing during a Metropolitan Opera broadcast; a hotel staff falling under the influence of Noël Coward; and a Supreme Court decision that says musicals cannot end with reprises, resulting in a new number, "Not For All The Rice In China", as a finale. (wikipedia)

Press Release

San Francisco (13 September 1994) -- Mrs. Herbert Hoover gleefully steals silver as she and the President leave the White House for the last time, and gospel preacher Amy Semple McPherson attempts to recruit Mahatma Gandhi for a vaudeville duet in Irving Berlin and Moss Hart's topical 1930's revue As Thousands Cheer, produced by 42nd Street Moon's Lost Musicals Series as a staged concert/reading, October 20 - 30 at the New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

Newspaper headlines of the day provided the material for Hart's sketches and for such Berlin songs as "Easter Parade", "How's Chances", "Suppertime", and the Carribbean flavored "Heat Wave". Not seen since 1935 when it made a brief and somewhat revised appearance in London as Stop Press, As Thousands Cheer was one of the two definitive Broadway revues of the 1930's, along with The Bandwagon. The original 1933 production was Broadway-great Marilyn Miller's last show before her untimely death, and was the first-ever Broadway show to star an African-American -- Jazz star Ethel Waters -- on stage in equal billing with Caucasians. Waters introduced "Suppertime", a heartbreaking song of a mother wondering how to tell her children that their father has been lynched. The song has since generally been interpreted as a less tragic "boy leaves girl" ballad. In her autobiography His Eye is on the Sparrow Waters said of "Suppertime," "If one song can tell the whole tragic history of a race -- 'Suppertime' was that song."

42nd Street Moon producers Greg MacKellan and Stephanie Rhoads obtained the rights to this premier revival of As Thousands Cheer after Tom Briggs of the Rogers and Hammerstein Organization (which now holds the rights to Irving Berlin's music) attended last year's Lost Musicals production of Peggy-Ann. Impressed by the production, Briggs suggested As Thousands Cheer for revival by 42nd Street Moon.

Lost Musicals regular Jim Friedman makes his 42nd Street Moon directorial debut, taking the helm of As Thousands Cheer after starring in the Lost Musicals production of Cole Porter's Something For the Boys in September. He also performed in Fifty Million Frenchmen and Dubarry Was a Lady with the Lost Musicals Series and has appeared with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, PCPA Theaterfest and Marin Theatre Company. Peggy Gorham provides musical direction and Cindy Goldfield choreographs.

Taking the Ethel Waters role in As Thousands Cheer is Andrea Brembry. Brembry starred as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill at Marin Theatre Co. and also appeared in Dream Girls and Shaking the Mess Out of Misery at TheatreWorks. Also starring in this revival are Marsha Mercant, Sarah Dacey-Charles and Judy Rae Whiting. Mercant performed with the Los Angeles company of Les Miserables and Cats and has been seen locally in CitiARTS and SJCLO productions. Dacey-Charles starred as Marion in the Mountain Play Music Man and performed in Marin Theatre Company's Side By Side By Sondheim, as well as in the Lost Musicals productions of Jubilee and Fifty Million Frenchmen. Whiting has appeared in over 35 musicals all over the Bay Area, including title roles in Mame and Hello Dolly.

Also appearing is Stephen Frugoli, who toured in the first national company of Les Miserables and won a Critics' Circle Award for his performance in the title role of Candide at CitiARTS; Mark Hurty, who recently appeared in Shenandoah at Woodminster and played James Day in Sweet Adeline and Monsieur Daudet in The Cat and the Fiddle for Lost Musicals; and Richard Pardini, a past company member of Beach Blanket Babylon in both San Francisco and Las Vegas, who also appeared in Something for the Boys.