History
The revue was a successor to the creators' Face the Music and was Marilyn Miller's last stage appearance before her death. It was also the first Broadway show to give an African-American star Ethel Waters equal billing with whites.
Moss Hart said that he and Irving Berlin did not want to write the typical revue with "blackout sketches" and musical numbers, and they had the idea of doing a topical revue "right off the front pages of the newspapers." Berlin deferred his own fees as composer, lyricist, and theater owner, keeping the cost of the show to a "restrained" $96,000.
Read more about this topic: As Thousands Cheer
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“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)