Theatre Register

Herbert Reynolds

Shows · Herbert Reynolds

Lyricist 1867–1933

Michael Elder Rourke (14 July 1867 – 26 August 1933), who assumed the pen name Herbert Reynolds in 1913, was an Irish-American lyricist. Reynolds wrote the lyrics to Jerome Kern's first big hit, "They Didn't Believe Me", interpolated into the 1914 American version of The Girl from Utah, produced by Charles Frohman. The show had a successful run of 140 performances at the Knickerbocker Theatre, opening on August 14, 1914. Frohman had hired the young Kern to write five new songs for the score together with Reynolds to strengthen what he felt was a weak first act. Julia Sanderson and Donald Brian starred in the production. With Harold Atteridge he co-wrote the lyrics to The Peasant Girl (1914).…

Also credited on4 works

Rock-a-Bye Baby
The Blue Paradise
The Girl From Utah
Very Good Eddie

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature4 passages

  • Some old melodies were refitted with new lyrics. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” became “When This Lousy War is Over.” The lovely Jerome Kern and Herbert Reynolds song “They Didn’t Believe Me” instead started, “And when they ask us how dangerous it was, oh, we’ll never tell them.”ebooks/Filichia, Peter/Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks - Peter Filichia.txt
  • Songs: “Same Sort of Girl”; “They Didn’t Believe Me” (lyric: Herbert Reynolds); “Gilbert the Filbert” (Herman Finck - Arthur Wimperis); “Why Don’t They Dance the Polka?”; “The Land of Let’s Pretend”ebooks/Green, Stanley/Broadway Musicals, Show By Show - Seventh Edition - Stanley Green & Cary Ginell.txt
  • Songs: “Some Sort of Somebody” (lyric: Elsie Janis); “Isn’t It Great to Be Married?”; “On the Shore at Le Lei WI” (music with Henry Kailimai; lyric: Herbert Reynolds); “Thirteen Collar”; “Babes in the Wood” (lyric with Kern); “Old Boy Neutral”; “Nodding Roses” (lyric with Reynolds)ebooks/Green, Stanley/Broadway Musicals, Show By Show - Seventh Edition - Stanley Green & Cary Ginell.txt
  • Except, if you look at the sheet music, the lyric by Herbert Reynolds (the pseudonym for a ho-hum Englishman, M. E. Rourke) reads …ebooks/Steyn, Mark/Broadway Babies Say Goodnight_ Musicals Then and Now - Mark Steyn.txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Any staging. This name appears in no production cast list we hold — 1,877 of 7,139 people are in that position, most of them writers, composers and designers rather than performers.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — lyricist — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

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