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Fifty Million Frenchmen

Shows · Fifty Million Frenchmen

Noted for his throbbing, minor-key melodies and his worldly, highly polished lyrics, Cole Porter was responsible for the scores of 23 Broadway musicals. His first hit — dubbed “A Musical Comedy Tour of Paris” — was a carefree tale concerning wealthy Peter Forbes (William Gaxton) who has a wager with a friend that he and Looloo Carroll (Genevieve Tobin) will be betrothed within a month.

Opened
1929
Performances
254
Type
Musical
Era
Early
Music: Cole PorterLyrics: Cole PorterBook: Herbert Fields

Productions1 on Broadway

1929 Lyric Theatre Original. November 27, 1929 · Monty Woolley 254 performances

Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.

Licensing 2 entries

US Concord Theatricals Tams-Witmark available
UK Concord Theatricals Tams-Witmark available

Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.

In the literature29 passages

The first stage production at the Broadway Theatre (on 53rd Street), The New Yorkers was something of a forerunner of Pal Joey in its amoral characters, cynical outlook, and flashy nightclub atmosphere. Just as Cole Porter and Herbert Fields’ previous Fifty Million Frenchmen had offered a musical tour of Paris, so the… book:broadway-musicals-show-by-show-green-stanley-green-kay-5th-ed-rev-and-updated-by#p98

COle Porter’s Fifty Million Frenchmen (11/27/29; 254 performances) was the theater’s last success, opening at the dawn of the Depression and during Prohibition. Among its songs were “You Do Something to Me” and “You’ve Got That Thing.” book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p346

'You Do Something to Me' in Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), and “Love for Sale” in The New Yorkers (1930), and “Night and Day” in Gay Divorce (1932). book:enchanted-evenings-the-broadway-musical-from-show-boat-block-geoffrey-oxford-new#p70

Film adaptations of Something for the Boys and Mexican Hayride contained no songs by Porter; Paris and Fifty Million Frenchmen confined Porter’s music to background noise; Let’s Face It offered two songs; Dubarry Was a Lady, three; and Panama Hattie, four. book:enchanted-evenings-the-broadway-musical-from-show-boat-block-geoffrey-oxford-new#p239

“Let’s Step Out” (Bonnie/Chorus) (introduced in Fifty Million Frenchmen by Evelyn Hoey and Gertrude McDonald [November 27, 1929]) book:enchanted-evenings-the-broadway-musical-from-show-boat-block-geoffrey-oxford-new#p585

5 November: Fifty Million Frenchmen, the first major hit with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, premieres at the Lyric Theater and plays for 254 performances. book:historical-dictionary-of-the-broadway-musical-volume-22-william-a-everett-paul-r#p20

Passages naming this show, found by keyword across 178 books. Where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.

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