The Drama Nerds Database
High Button Shoes

High Button Shoes

Shows · High Button Shoes

High Button Shoes is a 1947 musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by George Abbott and Stephen Longstreet. It was based on the semi-autobiographical 1946 novel The Sisters Liked Them Handsome by Stephen Longstreet.

Opened
1947
Performances
727
Type
Musical
Era
Golden Age
Music: Jule StyneLyrics: Sammy CahnBook: Stephen Longstreet (George Abbott, Phil Silvers uncredited)

Productions2 on Broadway

1947 New Century Theatre Original. October 9, 1947 · George Abbott 727 performances
1948 Transfer Theatre unknown. December 22, 1948

Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.

Recordings 1 album held

Licensing 2 entries

US Concord Theatricals Tams-Witmark available
UK Concord Theatricals Tams-Witmark available

Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.

49 passages naming High Button Shoes, found by keyword across 178 books. It's where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.

'Everything's Coming Up Roses' was a revised version of 'Betwixt and Between' (lyric by Sammy Cahn) which Styne and Cahn had written for their 1947 Broadway musical High Button Shoes. book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p800

High Button Shoes (10/ 9/47; 727 performances), again introduced a new composer and lyricist to Broadway. JuLE StyNE and Sammy Cahn provided the songs for the Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray show. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p26

The team had much better luck with their next attempt, High Button Shoes (10/9/47; 727 performances). This time they got their man, Phil Silvers, and he and Nanette Fabray opened the show at the Century Theater. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p538

After several flops, Fabray achieved great attention replacing Celeste Holm soon after the opening of Bloomer Girl, and became a star (at the ripe old age of twenty-five) as the leading lady of High Button Shoes, singing the standard of the show, “Papa, Won’t You Dance With Me?” book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p57

This was Fosse’s major choreographic set piece, his version of Jerome Robbins’s “Keystone Kop Bailet” from High Button Shoes, complete with a game of musical chairs, multiple entrances, exits, and an absurdist gorilla. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p83

Rising to the top of the ballet world with Fancy Free (1944), he was pivotal in turning the piece about three gobs on a twenty-four hour leave into the first rate musical comedy On the Town. Major hits followed, including 1947’s High Button Shoes (where his Mack Sennett-inspired bathing beauty ballet became an instant… book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p172

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