The run closed June 23, 1928
- Opened
- November 22, 1927
- Closed
- June 23, 1928
- Performances
- 244
- Previews
- —
- Theatre
- Neil Simon Theatre
Of the 2,148 productions we hold that opened in the 1920s and record a performance count, this is the 165th longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.
Other stagings of Funny Face 1 more that season
| 1928 | Shaftesbury Theatre Transfer |
Who was in it72 named
Adele Astaire
Kay Annis
Winifred Beck
Marcia Bell
Vera Berg
Edwin Bidwell
Mildred Brower
Dowell Brown
Jean Carroll
Helen Clare
Austin Clark
Arthur Craig
Norman Curtis
Peggy Daubert
Dorothy Dawn
Eugene Day
Ann Ecklund
Adelyn Endore
Jack Fraley
Elsie Frank
Sherry Gale
Bob Gebhardt
Gloria Glennon
Ona Hamilton
Earl Hampton
Edwin Hodge
Thomas Hodges
Alma Hookey
Paul Jensen
Richard Keith
Adrienne Lampel
Helen Leslie
W L Mack
Ted Maclean
Lionel Maclyn
Frances Markey
Maxine Marshall
Tom Martin
Pauline Mason
Ethel Maye
Estelle Mercier
Gordon Merrick
Lillian Michel
Walter Munroe
Jo Navarro
Elsie Neal
Richard Neely
Marie Otto
Ruth Penery
Boo Phelps
Edwin Preble
Peggy Quinn
Fritz Reinhard
Rita Romero
Ruth Sato
Marshall Scott
Marjorie Seltzer
Bobby Shutta
Sam Simpson
Ray Stilley
Marion Tierney
Billie Walker
Walter Wandell
Polly Williams
8 of these 72 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 64 are set from the identifier in the cast list, which is a slug of the name — so hyphens and full stops are lost and a few come out wrong. We hold nothing else about them. Nobody here is matched to a character: the cast list records who was in the company and not what they played.
Creative team
- Director
- Edgar MacGregor
- Choreographer
- Bobby Connolly
- Producer
- Alex A. Aarons & Vinton Freedley
A producer is one string on this record, however many people or companies it names. Directors and choreographers are held both as text and as identifiers; where an identifier exists the name links to a page.
Around this production
George and Ira had worked on Broadway’s 1927 Funny Face.
Speaker not recorded. The Melody Lingers On the Great Songwriters and Their Movie Hemming Roy New York, p. 77- what was originally announced as a revival of the Gershwins’ 1927 musical Funny Face. By the time the show opened in New York, however, it had a completely new story, at least four directors, a score with only six of the original 12 songs (augmented by 11 other Gershwin standards), and it was now called My One and Only… Broadway Musicals Show By Show Green Stanley Green Kay 5th Ed Rev and Updated By, p. 288
- Funny Face was the opening attraction of the new Alvin Theater (see Nem SIMON THEATER). Woollcott enthused, “I do not know whether George Gershwin was born into this world to write rhythms for Fred Astaire’s feet or whether Fred Astaire was born into this world to show how the Gershwin music should be danced.” Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 57
- It would be fun to hear Funny Face, with all those wonderful Gershwin standards, and well worth it to put up with a few creaks of the book—for these shows, like the classic silent films of Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Buster Keaton, are part of our cultural heritage. Broadway Musicals the 101 Greatest Shows of All Time Bloom Ken 1949 Vlastnik Fra, p. 126
- Film adaptations such as The Gay Divorcée, On the Town, and Funny Face may be worthy exponents of the film genre, but students of musical theater should know that these films only imp Enchanted Evenings the Broadway Musical From Show Boat Block Geoffrey Oxford New, p. 195
- Funny Face (1957), with Astaire reprising his original stage role thirty years later, satisfies as a film musical, but with only five songs from the original, “Clap Yo’ Hands” from another show, three interpolated song numbers by Roger Edens and Leonard Gershe, and a new scenario and script, it falls far short as a rel… Enchanted Evenings the Broadway Musical From Show Boat Block Geoffrey Oxford New, p. 239
Passages naming this production, found by keyword across 178 books. Where it turns up in the literature, not curated notes about it.
What this page does not know
- No character names. We can say who was in the company and not who they played.
- No recording is held for Funny Face at all.
- Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.