The run closed July 9, 1938
- Opened
- November 2, 1937
- Closed
- July 9, 1938
- Performances
- 290
- Previews
- —
- Theatre
- Neil Simon Theatre
Of the 1,388 productions we hold that opened in the 1930s and record a performance count, this is the 52nd longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.
Who was in it70 named
Joseph Allen
Al Atkins
Jack Barnes
Virginia Berger
Sol Black
Robert Bleck
Jeanette Bradley
Charles Bywater
Cecil Carey
Don Carter
John Cherry
Ruth Clayton
Marie Louise Dana
Eleanor de Witt
Martin Fair
Bijou Fernandez
Len Frank
Kate Fredric
John Fulco
Ralph Glover
Ruth Gormley
Joseph Granville
Geraldine Hamilton
Edward Harrington
Robert Howard
Jay Hunter
Jack Kearney
Linda Kellogg
Georgette Lampsi
Jeanette Lee
Jack Leslie
Robert Less
Velma Lord
Lili Mann
William Marel
Irene Mcbride
Charles Mcloughlin
John Mcquade
Evelyn Mills
Jack Mills
Warren Mills
Marie Nash
Austra Neiman
Paul Parks
Erminie Randolph
Jack Reynolds
Jane Richardson
Tina Rigat
Margaret Sande
Patsy Schenk
Betty Schlaffer
Clarise Sitomer
Bob Spencer
Emily Stephenson
Georgie Tapps
Beau Tilden
Norman van Emburgh
Joe Verdi
Dorothy Waller
Jack Whitney
Herbert Wood
9 of these 70 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 61 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
- George S. Kaufman
- Choreographer
- Charles Weidman, Ned McGurn
- Producer
- Sam H. Harris
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
- was the most anxiously awaited theatrical event of the decade for two reasons: the central character was President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the part was being played by the legendary George M. Cohan, who was returning to the musical stage for the first time in ten years in the only song-and-dance show he ever appeared… Broadway Musicals Show By Show Seventh Edition Stanley Green Cary Ginell, p. 105
- ends with his final Broadway triumph in 1937 playing President Roosevelt in I’d Rather Be Right, the only musical in which he appeared that he did not write himself. Broadway Musicals Show By Show Seventh Edition Stanley Green Cary Ginell, p. 214
- In fact, three years before the creative crisis that led to Lady in the Dark, Kaufman and Hart had drafted the first act of a musical based on psychoanalysis starring Marlene Dietrich before settling on I’d Rather Be Right with Rodgers and Hart, and George M. Cohan as Franklin Roosevelt. Enchanted Evenings the Broadway Musical From Show Boat Block Geoffrey Oxford New, p. 172
- Sam H. Harris, who had earlier produced fifteen Cohan musicals, seven Berlin shows, the Gershwins’ Of Thee I Sing, Porter’s Jubilee, and Rodgers and Hart’s I’d Rather Be Right; Enchanted Evenings the Broadway Musical From Show Boat Block Geoffrey Oxford New, p. 651
- The decade saw the final musicals of Gershwin, Kern, Friml, and Youmans, but also offered Broadway’s first look at Arlen, Blitzstein, Lane, Loewe, Rome, and Weill. Note that I’d Rather Be Right offered an occasionally peppery but mostly avuncular Franklin D. Roosevelt, and its gentle ribbing couldn’t have riled. The Complete Book of 1930s Broadway Musicals Dietz Dan Rowman Littlefield Publis, p. 12
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 photograph of this staging. 48 of 13,459 productions hold one.
- No character names. We can say who was in the company and not who they played.
- No recording is held for I’d Rather Be Right at all.
- No show page for I’d Rather Be Right. The work is here as a title and a year, and nothing more has been gathered about it.
- Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.