Harry B. Smith: Dean Of American Librettists (forgotten Stars Of The Musical Theatre)

Harry B. Smith was the most prolific writer of librettos for the American musical theatre in history, with nearly half of his 300 works actually opening in New York City. In addition, Smith was instrumental in adapting and popularizing foreign musicals in America, significantly influencing writing and composing styles of American shows. He worked with every major composer in America between 1880 and 1920, and consequently this examination of his work and process is highly instructive of the history of the American musical. Had Harry B. Smith written only the libretto for Reginald De Koven's most enduring operetta, Robin Hood (with its runaway hit, "Oh, Promise Me"), his claim to a place in music theatre history might be relegated to a footnote. But as the author of 300 libretti (123 of which actually opened on Broadway), including some 6,000 songs composed with some of the most notable composers of the day -- John Philip Sousa, Victor Herbert, Ludwig Englander, Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, and Walter Donaldson -- Smith remains the most prolific librettist in the American musical theatre. Between 1890 and 1930, his presence pervaded American operetta, musical comedy, and revue. This study of Smith's extraordinary career not only reveals the fascinating life of an ebullient workaholic but offers an important history of the American musical theater during its formative years.Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre They deserve better than to be forgotten.Those singing, dancing stars of the great nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century heydays of the musical theater, who folk of their own era thought would be remembered by generation after generation to come.Those playwrights, musicians, and songwriters whose works reached countless millions in their day -- works that seemed, then, as if they would live on, imperishable, till the end of time.But as the decades have gone past, memories of these once famous people and their works have paled away into forgetfulness, leaving them to become little more than a half-meaningless name on a page of a history book, or a snatch of an otherwise forgotten song that provokes a half-careless What is that? or Who wrote that? -- questions to which the answer wouldn't mean much anyhow.This series will do its best to bring some of these Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre back to the limelight in which they once bathed so liberally. Harry B. Smith was the most prolific writer for the American musical theatre in history, working with every major American composer between 1880 and 1920. This examination of his work is thus highly instructive of the history of the American musical.