The Great American Musical Gershwin Musicals Hart, Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein Oklahoma! American Musicals post 1950s

Edna May in The Belle of New York

The first American musical, The Black Crook, opened in 1866 at Niblo’s Garden on Broadway. It was an extravaganza with lots of scene changes and big musical numbers including ‘The March of the Amazons’. It was a great success on Broadway and in London - the chorus girls scandalously revealing lots of leg may have helped.

In 1898 The Belle of New York became one of the first all-American musical smash hits to reach London.

Adele Astaire

However it was the Gershwin musicals of the 1920s that heralded a new era of the American popular musical in the UK and made stars of Fred and Adele Astaire. Over the next two decades, American composers contributed to many British revues and musicals – including George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter.

The Astaires in Lady Be Good