Shows · Where’s Charley?
Where’s Charley?
Opened 1948
792 performances
Musical, Golden Age
Where’s Charley? was based on Brandon Thomas’s durable 1892 London farce, Charley’s Aunt. The first Broadway book musical with a score by Frank Loesser (he wrote five shows in all), the musical is concerned with the madcap doings that result when Oxford undergraduates Charley Wykeham (Ray Bolger) and Jack Chesney (Byron Palmer) entertain their proper lady friends, Amy Spettigue (Allyn Ann McLerie) and Kitty Verdun (Doretta Morrow), in their rooms. To do so, Charley must also play chaperon by disguising himself as his own rich aunt “from Brazil where the nuts come from.” Transvestite misunderstanding results in complications when the “aunt” must flee the amorous advances of the girls’ money-hungry guardian, and when the real aunt makes an unexpected appearance. The show gave Ray Bolger his biggest hit, plus the nightly opportunity to lead the audience in joining him in singing “Once in Love With Amy.” Bolger brought the touring company back to Broadway in 1951 for 48 performances, and repeated his part in the 1952 movie version.
- Music
- Frank Loesser
- Lyrics
- Frank Loesser
- Book
- George Abbott
Productions3 on Broadway
Songs14 songs
The New Ashmoleon Marching Society and Students’ Conservatory Band, My Darling, My Darling, Make a Miracle, Lovelier Than Ever, Once in Love With Amy, At the Red Rose Cotillion, The Years before Us, Better Get out of Here, The New Ashmolean Marching Society and Students’ Conservatory Band, Serenade with Asides, The Woman in His Room, Pernambuco, Where’s Charley?, The Gossips
I found myself almost convinced that I was watching the immensely entertaining Morse in a revival of Charley’s Aunt [1892], or even Where’s Charley? [1948]. But it was merely Sugar.
More Opening Nights On Broadway Steven Suskin, p. 900Something wrong here? Correct a field or report the problem. Every change is recorded in public under the contributor licence.