High Button Shoes

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High Button Shoes
Music	Jule Styne
Lyrics	Sammy Cahn
Book	Stephen Longstreet George Abbott
Based upon	Novel by Stephen Longstreet The Sisters Liked Them Handsome
Productions	1947 Broadway 1948 West End 1956 Television 1982 Goodspeed Opera House 2007 Goodspeed Opera House

High Button Shoes is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by George Abbott and Stephen Longstreet. It was based on the novel The Sisters Liked Them Handsome by Stephen Longstreet. The show's book was originally by Longstreet, but it was extensively rewritten by Abbott, who also directed the original production.^[1]

1 Background
2 Productions
3 Plot synopsis
4 Songs
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Background

Many involved with High Button Shoes were Broadway first-timers or relatively unknown, except for the director, George Abbott. Styne, Cahn and Longstreet had worked in Hollywood, as had the producers Monte Proser and Joseph Kipness (who had also produced several short-lived Broadway shows) and Phil Silvers, who was known for his on-screen con-man persona. Nanette Fabray "stole" the earlier Bloomer Girl as a replacement, and "seized stardom" in High Button Shoes. The designers Oliver Smith and Miles White and choreographer Jerome Robbins "had already won their spurs." Rumors circulated that the book by Longstreet was "hopeless" and that Abbott and Silvers were "heavily rewriting" it. The Shuberts, involved because the show was to play in their theater, approved an increase in Abbott's percentage to include author's royalties.^[2]

[edit] Productions

High Button Shoes opened on Broadway at the New Century Theatre on October 9, 1947 and closed on July 2, 1949, running for 727 performances. It transferred to the Shubert Theatre and finally to The Broadway Theatre during the run. In addition to Silvers, as Harrison Floy, and Fabray (who was replaced by Joan Roberts in June 1948), the show featured Joey Faye. Abbott directed, and Jerome Robbins choreographed, winning the Tony Award.

A London production opened at the Hippodrome on December 22, 1948 and ran for 291 performances.

A television adaptation was broadcast live on November 24, 1956 on NBC with Nanette Fabray and Joey Faye repeating their original roles and Hal March as Harrison Floy.^[3]

The musical was revived at Goodspeed Opera House for two months in 1982.^[4] It was revived again by Goodspeed Musicals, opening on July 13, 2007, with a scheduled closing date of September 22, 2007.^[5]

[edit] Plot synopsis

In New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1913 the Longstreet family—Mama, Papa, Mama's younger sister, and her boyfriend Oggle—is affected when a con man, Harrison Floy, and his shill, Mr. Pontdue, come to town. Floy and Pontdue flee to Atlantic City with their ill-gotten profits but lose everything when Floy bets on the wrong football team.

The highlight of the show was a long (7-10-minute) ensemble dance number ("The Bathing Beauty Ballet") at the beginning of the second act, in which the con men Floy and Pontdue are pursued to the Atlantic City beach while carrying a satchel full of stolen money. During the course of the number, they tangle with a large number of people—including bathing beauties, lifeguards, other criminals, identical twins—and one gorilla. The climax occurs when the Keystone Cops arrive. Choreographer Jerome Robbins staged this number in the manner of a Mack Sennett silent slapstick film. It uses the music of "On A Sunday By the Sea", Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, and Offenbach's can-can from "Orpheus in the Underworld".

"This number was so basic to the show that deleting it would render the evening incoherent. It was a major evocation of a period, a tribute to silent-film comedy."^[6]