Rose-Marie - Productions and Adaptations

Productions and Adaptations

Stage versions

Rose-Marie premiered on September 2, 1924 at the Imperial Theatre in New York City, running for 557 performances. Direction was by Paul Dickey and choreography was by Dave Bennett. The orchestrations were by Robert Russell Bennett. Costumes were designed by Charles LeMaire, and settings were by Gates and Morange. It had a brief revival on Broadway in 1927.

It was then produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London in 1925, enjoying another extraordinary run of 581 performances. The original West End production had a chorus of eighty. It was London's most successful Broadway show after World War I until it was surpassed by Oklahoma!. In Paris, Rose-Marie ran for an unprecedented 1,250 performances.

A touring company premiered the work in Canada on January 12, 1925 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. Other Canadian productions were given by the Variétés lyriques in 1937 and another in 1945, in French, and by Theatre Under the Stars in 1940, Melody Fair in 1951, and the Eaton Operatic Society in 1959. In recent decades, it has been produced by the Light Opera of Manhattan several times in the 1970s and 1980s, the Shaw Festival in Canada (1981), Light Opera Works of Illinois (1987), and Ohio Light Opera in 2003.

Film versions

The show has been filmed three times, including once in 1928 in the silent era. Joan Crawford starred in this version, alongside James Murray. The best known film version was released in 1936, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Although the plot was changed, and most of the songs were dropped, it was a huge success and became MacDonald and Eddy's best-known film. In 1954, MGM produced an Eastmancolor version in Cinemascope, which more closely followed the original plot, but it still dropped most of Friml's songs. This version starred Ann Blyth, Howard Keel and Fernando Lamas, with Bert Lahr and Marjorie Main as comic relief. It was choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

Little Mary Sunshine

Rose-Marie is the main (but not the only) target of the satirical musical Little Mary Sunshine, which parodies elements of the plot as well as the style of several of the songs. In particular, the song "Colorado Love Call" from Little Mary Sunshine is a parody of "Indian Love Call" from Rose-Marie.