Mr George Jean Nathan presents Author:George Jean Nathan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE AMERICAN MUSIC SHOW WERE one asked to point to the man whose name, above every other, stands for the typical native music show libretto, the finger quite ... more »patently would steer for Mr. Harry B. Smith. Aside from the physiological extravaganzas of Mr. Ziegfeld and the umbilicular exposes purveyed at the ffijpjffr,Garden, soothing forms of diversion both of them by virtue of the circumstance that libretto is almost entirely omitted in their fabrication, the garnished brain children of Mr. Smith may be accepted by the student as a fair gauge of the American tune stage. In an effort, therefore, to plumb the mien of the average local libretto, with its physical embellishments and salads, I took my person not long ago to a Smith fruit called by the name of " Molly O " and deposited it in attendance upon the work. A perusal of the playbill revealed the tidings that, in the geniture of this particular libretto, Mr. Harry B. Smith had enjoyed the assistance of Mr. Robert B. Smith, a gentleman also an obese figure in the fashioning of the native gag-book. But let us not delay; let us hoist the curtain and measure the Smith labours as, from curtain rise to curtain fall, they spirtied into the aural cavity — and with the elements in the Smith libretto let us consider also, by way of appreciating the staging of a libretto at the hands of the probably not untypical Mr. George Marion, the manner in which such elements are, on the average, boiled into the finished whole designated generally as musical comedy. At rise, discovered: "The O'Malley Villa, Newport," with a view of the Bay of Naples on the back-drop. Enter Freddy Sands, denominated on the bill of the play as " a little brother of the rich." A modish Newporter, Freddy. And thus, therefore, he to a lady of fashion standing near...« less