Show Girl is a musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 that ran from Jul 2, 1929 to Oct 5, 1929 with a book by William Anthony McGuire

William Anthony McGuire

William Anthony McGuire was a playwright, theatre director, and producer and an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter. He won an Oscar for the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld....

, lyrics by Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....

 and Gus Kahn

Gus Kahn

Gustav Gerson Kahn was a musician, songwriter and lyricist.-Biography:Kahn was born in Koblenz, Germany in 1886. The family emigrated from there to the United States and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890...

, and music by George Gershwin

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

. Its heroine, aspiring Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 showgirl

Showgirl

A showgirl is a dancer or performer in a stage entertainment show. Showgirl is also often used as a term for a promotional model in trade fairs and car shows, etc...

 Dixie Dugan, was a character created by J. P. McEvoy and introduced in a novel first serial

Serial (literature)

In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...

ized in Liberty

Liberty (magazine)

Liberty magazine may refer to:* Liberty , a political magazine published from 1881 to 1908 by Benjamin Tucker* Liberty , a general-interest magazine published from 1924 to 1950...

and then published in book form by Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...

 in 1928.

The Broadway production was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld

Florenz Ziegfeld

Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...

, directed by McGuire, and choreographed by Bobby Connolly, with ballet

Ballet

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

 sequences, including one set to An American in Paris

An American in Paris

An American in Paris is a symphonic tone poem by the American composer George Gershwin, written in 1928. Inspired by the time Gershwin had spent in Paris, it evokes the sights and energy of the French capital in the 1920s. It is one of Gershwin's best-known compositions.Gershwin composed the piece...

, by Albertina Rasch

Albertina Rasch

Albertina Rasch was a naturalized American dancer and choreographer.-Early life:Born in Vienna in 1891 to a family of Polish Jewish descent, Rasch studied at the Vienna State Opera Ballet school and became leading ballerina at the New York Hippodrome in...

. Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

 conducted the orchestra. It opened on July 2, 1929 at the Ziegfeld Theatre and ran for 111 performances. The cast included Ruby Keeler

Ruby Keeler

Ruby Keeler, born Ethel Hilda Keeler, was an actress, singer, and dancer most famous for her on-screen coupling with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Brothers, particularly 42nd Street . From 1928 to 1940, she was married to singer Al Jolson...

 as Dixie, Jimmy Durante

Jimmy Durante

James Francis "Jimmy" Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s...

, Eddie Foy, Jr.

Eddie Foy, Jr.

Eddie Foy Jr. was an American character actor.Born Edwin Fitzgerald Jr. in New Rochelle, New York, the son of vaudevillian Eddie Foy and his third wife, Madeline Morando, he was one of the "Seven Little Foys" immortalized in the 1955 film of the same name...

, Frank McHugh

Frank McHugh

Francis Curray "Frank" McHugh was an American film and television actor.Born in Homestead, Pennsylvania, McHugh came from a theatrical family. His parents ran a stock theatre company and as a young child he performed on stage...

, and Nick Lucas

Nick Lucas

Nick Lucas born Dominic Nicholas Anthony Lucanese was an American singer and pioneer jazz guitarist, remembered as "the grandfather of the jazz guitar", whose peak of popularity lasted from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s.-Career:In 1922, at the age of 25, he gained renown with his hit renditions...

.

Keeler's husband Al Jolson

Al Jolson

Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....

 frequently sat in the audience and serenaded her with the show's closing number, "Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)," from his seat. The song was featured in the 1946 biopic

Biographical film

A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...

 The Jolson Story

The Jolson Story

The Jolson Story is a 1946 musical biography which purports to tell the life story of singer Al Jolson. It stars Larry Parks as Jolson, Evelyn Keyes as "Julie Benson" , William Demarest as his manager, Ludwig Donath and Tamara Shayne as his parents, and Scotty Beckett as the young Jolson.The...

.

Warner Brothers filmed this musical as Show Girl (1928) with Alice White as Dixie Dugan and then a sequel

Sequel

A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...

, Show Girl in Hollywood

Show Girl in Hollywood

__notoc__Show Girl In Hollywood is a musical comedy/drama film with Technicolor sequences, starring Alice White. It was adapted from the novel Hollywood Girl by J. P. McEvoy.The film only survives in black and white...

(1930) with White again starring as Dixie.

Song list

• Happy Birthday
• My Sunday Fella
• How Could I Forget?
• Can Broadway Do Without Me? (Music and lyrics by Jimmy Durante)
• Lolita (My Love)
• Do What You Do
• Spain
• One Man
• So Are You
• I Must Be Home by Twelve O'Clock
• Because They All Love You (Lyrics by Thomas Malie, music by J. Little)
• Who Will be With You When I Am Far Away? (Music and lyrics By W. H. Farrell)
• Black and White
• Jimmie, the Well-Dressed Man (Music and lyrics by Jimmy Durante)
• Harlem Serenade
• An American in Paris
• Home Blues
• Broadway, My Street (Lyrics by Sidney Skolsky, music by Jimmy Durante)
• (So) I Ups to Him (Music and lyrics by Jimmy Durante)
• Follow the Minstrel Band
• Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)
  Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)
  "Liza " is a song composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Gus Kahn. It was introduced in 1929 by Ruby Keeler in Florenz Ziegfeld's musical Show Girl. The stage performances were accompanied by the Duke Ellington Orchestra...