IMPERIAL THEATER 

In 1923 the New York Times reported that the new theatre being built at 249 West Forty-fifth Street by the Shuberts was the fiftieth playhouse that the theatrical brothers from Syracuse had built in the New York City area. Their latest theatre was the Imperial and it was obviously designed by Herbert J. Krapp as a musical comedy house, with a large seating capacity of 1,650 seats. The Imperial has been the Shuberts' pride since it opened, housing some of Broadway's most notable and successful musicals.

The theatre's opening show was a hit musical called "Mary Jane McKane," with Mary Hay in the title role and a jaunty score by Vincent Youmans. It opened on Christmas night 1923 and it ran for 151 performances. In September 1924 this theatre housed one of its most celebrated shows. It was the Rudolf Friml operetta "Rose Marie," with a book by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. According to Gerald Bordman in American Musical Theatre, this musical was "not only the biggest hit of the season, but the biggest grosser of the decade. " Mary Ellis played Rose-Marie, a singer in a hotel located in the Canadian Rockies, and Dennis King was Jim Kenyon, the man she loved, who was unjustly accused of murder. The score included the lilting title song, the sonorous "Indian Love Call, " and "The Song of the Mounties. " Rose-Marie ran for 581 performances on Broadway and there were four road companies touring America at the same time.

The Imperial's next show was a musical called "Sweetheart Time," with Eddie Buzzell and Mary Milburn, but it was only a moderate hit. The theatre's next bonanza occurred on November 8, 1926, with the opening of "Oh, Kay!" a musical with a score by George and Ira Gershwin and a book by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. Gertrude Lawrence was the star, and her singing of "Someone to Watch Over Me" to a rag doll is one of the musical theatre's most cherished moments. Victor Moore and Oscar Shaw were Lawrence's costars in this merry musical about Long Island bootleggers, and other hit tunes from the score were "Maybe," "Do Do Do," and "Clap Yo' Hands." When Ira Gershwin became ill during the creation of this hit, Howard Dietz wrote some of the lyrics for the show.

On September 19, 1928, another blockbuster came to this house: Sigmund Romberg's glorious operetta "The New Moon," with a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab. Set in New Orleans at the time of the French Revolution, the operetta was studded with such gems as "Wanting You,' "Lover, Come Back to Me," "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise," "Stouthearted Men," and "One Kiss." It was the only show of that season to run for over 500 performances.

A snappy World War I musical, "Sons o' Guns," starring Jack Donahue, Lily Damita, and William Frawley, exploded at the Imperial in November 1929 and, despite the stock market crash, spread mirth for 297 performances. Two hit songs--"Why?" and "Cross Your Fingers"--emerged from the lively score by J. Fred Coots, Arthur Swanstrom, and Benny Davis.

Highlights of the 1930s at the Imperial included Ed Wynn in his joyous vaudeville-type show "The Laugh Parade" (1931), in which he introduced some of his latest zany inventions and interrupted other people's acts with lisping comments; an elaborate revue, "Flying Colors" (1932), with modernistic sets by Norman Bel Geddes, hit songs by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz ("Louisiana Hayride," "Alone Together," "A Shine on Your Shoes"), and a dream cast comprised of Clifton Webb, Tamara Geva, Patsy Kelly, Charles Butterworth, Imogene Coca, Larry Adler, and Vilma and Buddy Ebsen; "Let 'Em Eat Cake" (1933), a sequel to "Of Thee I Sing" (by the same creators), which reunited William Gaxton, Victor Moore, and Lois Moran, the stars of the latter show, but which was not successful; Bob Hope, Harry Richman, Lillian Emerson, and "Prince" Michael Romanoff in a saucy musical, "Say When" (1934).

Despite the depression, some opening nights on Broadway were the pinnacle of glamour, and such was the case for the glittery opening of the Cole Porter/Moss Hart musical "Jubilee" on October 12, 1935. An opulent satire about the royal holiday of the king and queen of a mythical country (splendidly played by Mary Boland and Melville Cooper), the show drew a bejeweled audience who had heard that some of the characters depicted were really spoofs of Noel Coward, Johnny Weissmuller, Elsa Maxwell, and Britain's Royal Family. Burns Mantle of the Daily News gave the musical his rare four-star rating, and years afterward, two of its Porter songs became classics: "Begin the Beguine" and "Just One of Those Things."

Another memorable musical followed "Jubilee" into the Imperial. It was the Rodgers/Hart/George Abbott spoof of the Russian ballet craze and it was appropriately called "On Your Toes." It starred Ray Bolger, Tamara Geva, Luella Gear, and Monty Woolley, and it broke the mold of American musical comedies by using two extended George Balanchine ballets as an integral part of the plot. One of these, "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," is the only ballet score from a musical to become popular, and the ballet itself has become part of the repertory of the New York City Ballet.

The battle of the Hamlets raged on Broadway in the fall of 1936. John Gielgud opened first as the "Melancholy Dane" at the Empire Theatre in October and triumphed. Leslie Howard played the same part at the Imperial in November and came in a poor second. Howard's last Broadway play had been "The Petrified Forest." When reviewing Howard's Hamlet, critic Robert Benchley wrote in The New Yorker that it was "the petrified Hamlet." Gielgud's production ran For 132 performances: Howard's only 39.

The Shuberts brought an elaborate operetta, "Frederika," to the Imperial in February 1937, but even though it had lilting music by Franz Lehar, it ran for only ninety-four performances. The excellent cast included Dennis King, Ernest Truex, Helen Gleason, and Edith King, but as Brooks Atkinson noted in the Times, operetta was passe on Broadway. At the end of 1937, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz arrived with a glossy musical about a bigamist who had one wife in London and another in Paris. "Between the Devil" starred three bright British stars, Jack Buchanan, Evelyn Laye, and Adele Dixon, and featured dancers Vilma Ebsen and Charles Walters, but the bigamy theme was distasteful to some and the musical called it quits after ninety-three perfor-mances.

The Cole Porter show "Leave It to Me," which sailed smartly into the Imperial in the fall of 1938, starred Victor Moore, William Gaxton, Sophie Tucker, and Tamara, but it made Broadway history by introducing a Texas singer named Mary Martin doing a polite strip tease in a Siberian railway station while singing "My Heart Belongs To Daddy." The musical, based on Sam and Bella Spewack's play "Clear All Wires," was a huge hit and featured some Porter winners, such as "Get Out of Town" and "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love." One of the chorus boys was named Gene Kelly.

The last musical of the 1930s at this theatre was also a hit. Rodgers and Hart and George Marion, Jr., collaborated on a college campus show, "Too Many Girls," that took place at Pottawatomie in New Mexico, where the female students wore "beanies" if they were virgins. The only hatless female onstage was Mary Jane Walsh, who played a divorcee. George Abbott directed the show with lightning speed; Robert Alton was highly praised for his swirling dances; and Eddie Bracken, Richard Kollmar, Marcy Wescott, Hal Le Roy, Desi Arnaz and Ms. Walsh sang and danced such Rodgers and Hart delights as "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," "I'd Like to Recognize the Tune," and "Give It Back to the Indians." One of the chorus boys with a few speaking lines was a newcomer named Van Johnson.

Smash hit musicals continued to populate the Imperial in the 1940s. Irving Berlin and Morrie Ryskind rang the bell with "Louisiana Purchase," a political musical set in New Orleans, starring Victor Moore, William Gaxton, Vera Zorina, and Irene Bordoni. George Balanchine provided the choreography and Mr. Berlin some fetching songs, such as "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow," the title song, and some spirited numbers for Carol Bruce. It ran for 444 performances.

Cole Porter returned to the Imperial in 1941 with a rousing wartime musical, "Let's Face It." Based on the hit 1920s comedy "Cradle Snatchers," the show focused on three married women (Eve Arden, Edith Meiser, and Vivian Vance) who took up with young soldiers to get even with their philandering husbands. One of the soldiers was Danny Kaye, who stopped the show with specialty numbers, some written by his wife, Sylvia Fine. Porter provided such hits as "Everything I Love," "Farming," "Let's Not Talk About Love," "Ace in the Hole," and "I Hate You Darling."

The enormous success of the operetta "Rosalinda" (1943), Max Reinhardt's version of Die Flederrnaus, caused it to be moved to the Imperial from the Forty-fourth Street Theatre. Starring Dorothy Sarnoff and Oscar Karlweis, the comic show also featured Shelley Winters and ran for 520 performances.

Mary Martin, who made her debut as an unknown at the Imperial in "Leave It to Me," returned as a star in "One Touch of Venus" (1943), a musical fantasy with a haunting score by Kurt Weill and a witty book by S.J. Perelman and Ogden Nash. Ms. Martin played a statue of Venus that comes to life and is pursued by an art gallery owner (John Boles) and a barber (Kenny Baker). Ms. Martin scored a triumph singing "Speak Low," "I'm a Stranger Here Myself, " and "That's Him." Paula Lawrence sang the amusing title song and "Very, Very, Very." The show had a smashing run of 567 performances, but not all at the Imperial.

Another successful musical moved to the Imperial from the Winter Garden. It was the "Ziegfeld Follies of 1943" and it starred Milton Berle (who stuck his two cents into everybody's act), the film beauty Ilona Massey, Arthur Treacher, and Jack Cole. The critics praised Berle's highjinks, and this Follies still holds the record--553 performances--for the longest run of any "Ziegfeld Follies" ever produced.

On May 16, 1946, one of the Imperial's hallmark shows arrived. Ethel Merman opened in Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun" and made it one of her most memorable portraits. Jerome Kern was slated to write the score for this show, but he died before he could start it. His successor, Berlin, wrote what many consider his greatest score, with such hits as "They Say It's Wonderful," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "The Girl That I Marry," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," "I Got the Sun in the Morning," and many others. Few Broadway musicals have produced as many song hits as this one. It was Merman's longest-running show: 1,147 performances.

The last two shows at the Imperial during the 1940s were minor successes. A revue called "Along Fifth Avenue" moved from the Broadhurst and starred Nancy Walker, Jackie Gleason, Carol Bruce, and Hank Ladd, but it lasted only seven months. Irving Berlin's "Miss Liberty" had a book by Robert E. Sherwood and starred Eddie Albert, Mary McCarthy, and Allyn McLerie, but the critics felt that the project fell flat. It managed to run for 308 performances.

During the 1950s, musicals continued to be the major fare at this theatre. In 1950 there was a successful revival of "Peter Pan," with new music by Leonard Bernstein. Jean Arthur made a perfect Peter, and Boris Karloff doubled as Mr. Darling and the evil Captain Hook. This was followed by Ethel Merman in another Irving Berlin winner," Call Me Madam," in which she played a Pearl Mesta-type character. Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse wrote the amusing book, Paul Lukas was Ms. Merman's romantic costar; and Merman and a newcomer, Russell Nype, stopped the show with their singing of the contrapuntal melody "You're Just in Love." It ran for 644 performances. In June 1952 "Wish You Were Here," a fair musical version of Arthur Kober's delightful play Having Wonderful Time, opened and managed to run for 598 performances, mainly because Eddie Fisher (who was not in the show) recorded the title song and it became a Hit Parade favorite. The show also had a real pool onstage, which garnered much publicity. In December 1953 one of Broadway's last opulent revues-John Murray Anderson's Almanac--arrived, with Hermione Gingold, Billy De Wolfe, Harry Belafonte, Polly Bergen, Orson Bean, Kay Medford, and Carleton Carpenter, but despite some funny sketches and good songs it was a financial failure, proving that TV was killing the revue form on Broadway.

Cole Porter's last musical, "Silk Stockings," a musical version of Garbo's famous film "Ninotchka," was a hit in 1955 with Don Ameche, Hildegarde Neff, and Gretchen Wyler; Frank Loesser was acclaimed for his opera "The Most Happy Fella" (1956), based on Sidney Howard's play "They Knew What They Wanted;" Lena Horne was a popular success in the Harold Arlen/E.Y. Harburg musical "Jamaica" (1957), with Ricardo Montalban; Dolores Gray and Andy Griffith had a hit in "Destry Rides Again"(1959), a musical version of the James Stewart/Marlene Dietrich film, aided by dazzling Michael Kidd choreography, although a feud between Ms. Gray and Mr. Kidd made all the newspapers.

During the 1960s, the Imperial housed some very long running musicals. Ethel Merman in her triumphant "Gypsy" moved here from the Broadway Theatre in 1960 and was followed by David Merrick's smash "Carnival" (1961), a musical adapted from the film Lili, starring Jerry Orbach and Anna Maria Alberghetti, with excellent choreography and staging by Gower Champion. The British import, Lionel Bart's "Oliver!," based on Dickens's Oliver Twist, starred Clive Revill and Georgia Brown and had two song hits: "As Long As He Needs Me" and "Consider Yourself." It played at the Imperial for eighteen months.

On September 22, 1964, "Fiddler on the Roof" opened and stayed at this theatre for over two years before moving to the Majestic. The multi-award-winning musical, written by Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick, was based on Sholem Aleichem's tales and starred Zero Mostel in his greatest performance.

Another landmark musical "Cabaret," came to the Imperial from the Broadhurst Theatre and continued for a year and half in 1967-68. Kander and Ebb, who wrote the memorable score for Cabaret, also wrote the score for the next Imperial tenant, "Zorba" (1968-69), a musical based on the film Zorba the Greek, but the stage version did not have the distinction of the film and it ran for a moderately successful nine months. "Minnie's Boys," a musical about the Marx Brothers, had a short run in 1970. Richard Rodgers also had a minor success with his musical "Two by Two" (1970), a biblical story about Noah and his family based on Clifford Odets's play The Flowering Peach. It starred Danny Kaye as Noah, and the comic took to ad-libbing during the show's run, which some in the audience found unprofessional. Two revivals--"On the Town" (1971) and "Lost in the Stars" (1972)--struck out before the next gold mine arrived at this theatre.

On October 23, 1972, "Pippin" opened, and it stayed for over four years, making it the Imperial's longest-running show to date. With a score by Stephen Schwartz, this musical about Charlemagne was triggered to success by Bob Fosse's inventive choreography, by Ben Vereen's animated dancing, and by one of the most successful TV commercials ever produced for a Broadway show. It achieved a run of 1,944 performances.

Drama returned to the Imperial with a revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Anna Christie" (1977), starring Liv Ullmann, and Victor Borge returned in a short run of his show "Comedy with Music" (1977). Two Neil Simon shows next occupied the Imperial and both were long-running hits. Chapter Two (1977), a drama about Mr. Simon's personal experience in losing his first wife to cancer, starred Judd Hirsch, Anita Gillette, and Cliff Gorman and ran for 857 performances, the longest-running drama in this theatre's history. The other Simon show, "They're Playing Our Song" (1979), was a musical written with Marvin Hamlisch, about a songwriter (Robert Klein) and his kooky romance with his lyricist (Lucie Arnaz). This ran for a hefty 1,082 performances.

In 1981, Michael Bennett's blockbuster musical "Dreamgirls" opened here and stayed until 1985. With a score by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen and a book by Eyen, the musical about a singing trio patterened after The Supremes, won six Tony Awards, including best actor and actress in a musical: Ben Harney and Jennifer Holliday. In 1985, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (later shortened to Drood) by Rupert Holmes, a musical first done by the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, transferred here and promptly won Five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Holmes), Best Original Score (Holmes), Best Leading Actor in a Musical (George Rose) and Best Direction of a Musical (Winford Leach). It played here until May, 1987.

The British hit "Chess" opened here in 1988 in a revised version, but the Tim Rice musical did not repeat its London success in New York. Jerome Robbin's "Broadway" came next, a compilation of musical numbers from Robbins' musicals and won Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Actor in a Musical (Jason Alexander), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Scott Wise), Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Debbie Shapiro), Best Direction of a Musical (Jerome Robbins), and Best Lighting Designer (Jennifer Tipton). In 1990, "Les Miserables" moved here from the Broadway Theatre and continued its long run here.

The Imperial, which was completely refurbished by the Shubert Organization a few years ago, is one of the finest musical comedy houses ever built and has been one of Broadway's most consistently successful houses since it opened.