DuBarry Was A Lady (1939)

Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Book by Herbert Fields and B.G. DeSylva

Directed & Choreographed by: Steve Zee
Musical Director: Randall Allen

Playbill Notes

DuBarry Was a Lady opened on December 6, 1939 and was the last full length musical of the 1930's.

Originally developed as a film property for Mae West, the show was reworked for the stage with Bert Lahr and Ethel Merman playing the lead roles. DuBarry was the third show Porter and Merman worked on together, and two more would follow in the 1940's.

Other notable players in the original cast were Betty Grable as Alice (making her Broadway debut) and Charles Walters (who later became a top director at M-G-M) as Harry.

The show's bawdy humor created some trouble during out-of-town tryout. In Boston, Porter was forced to rewrite the lyrics to "But In The Morning, No" to meet the city's Blue Laws. The original lyrics were reinstated for the Broadway run.

Said the New York Times: "A bright, bawdy, and utterly beguiling musical that sprinkles the glitter of Broadway onto 18th century France and ties the whole thing up with some of Cole Porter's best songs. Only vertans like Porter and Herbert Fields still know how to turn out a show like this, and its one of the best of its kind."

The 1942 movie version with Red Skeleton and Lucille Ball vaguely resembles the play, with almost the entire score replaced and the script radically revised.

Plot Summary

A washroom attendant, Louis Blore, has won a sweepstakes, and subsequently quits his job. He is in love with the nightclub singer May Daly, but she is in love with Alex Barton. Alex is the brother of her friend Alice, who is in love with Harry Norton. Meanwhile, Alex is unhappily married to Ann. Charley, Louis's replacement, suggests that Louis slip Alex a Mickey Finn. While trying to do so, Louis inadvertently drinks the Mickey Finn, falls asleep, and dreams he is King Louis XV of France, and that May is Madame du Barry. In his dream, Charley becomes the Dauphin (later Louis XVI) and Harry becomes the captain of the guard, with Ann as Du Barry's lady-in-waiting, and Alex as a peasant who wrote a rude song about The King and Du Barry (the title song: Du Barry Was A Lady). Eventually after various entanglements (including the Dauphin shooting the King in the posterior with a bow and arrow), Louis wakes up and realises that Alex is the man for May. He uses the last of his winnings to pay for Alex's divorce from Ann, and (with Charley having just quit his job) goes back to being a washroom attendant. (Wikipedia)