May 11, 2006
Of Thee I Sing—Encore Posted by John Steele Gordon at 02:15 PM EST Fred Schwarz makes wicked fun of a less than ept critic over at the New York Sun regarding his article on the 1931 Gershwin musical Of Thee I Sing.
I’m all for making fun of critics, especially those who can’t tell the difference between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. But I wonder if that one was confusing—or more precisely, conflating—Of Thee I Sing with another 1930s musical spoof about Washington politics, Rodgers and Hart’s I’d Rather Be Right, which opened in 1937, starring George M. Cohan as President Roosevelt. (You can see James Cagney playing Cohan playing Roosevelt in the 1942 biopic of Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy.)
By the way, Of Thee I Sing was the first Broadway musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. But the prize was awarded only to George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin’s contribution to the show’s success (merely the music) was ignored.
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