Theatre Register
The Belle of New York, Good News & Rich, Young & Pretty

Good News!

Shows · Good News!

The fifth longest running musical of the Twenties, Good News! was the firtst of a quartet of breezy, youthful DeSylva, Brown and Henderson musical comedies that capitalized on popular sports, fads, occupations, and innovations. (The others: Hold Everything!, Flying High, and Follow Thru.) In this caper about America’s flaming youth, the setting is Tait College, where students spend their time dancing “The Varsity Dra…

Opened
1927
Performances
551
Type
Musical
Era
Early
Music: Ray HendersonLyrics: B. G. DeSylva & Lew BrownBook: Laurence Schwab & B. G. DeSylva

Productions2 on Broadway

1927 46th Street Theatre Original. September 6, 1927 · Edgar MacGregor 551 performances
1974 St James Theatre Revival. December 23, 1974 · Donald Saddler 16 performances

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

Licensing 3 entries

US Concord Theatricals Tams-Witmark available
US Concord Theatricals Concord Theatricals 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 literature10 passages

After collaborating on musical comedies about football (Good News!)and boxing (Hold Everything!), DeSylva, Brown and Henderson followed up with Follow Thru, which was about golf. book:broadway-musicals-show-by-show-green-stanley-green-kay-5th-ed-rev-and-updated-by#p91

GOOD NEWS! was a mindless football musical in the LEAVE IT TO JANE [Kern: August 28, 1917] tradition; “The Best Things In Life Are Free” and “The Varsity Drag” were hits in the DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson tradition. book:show-tunes-1905-1985-the-songs-shows-and-careers-of-steven-suskin-1st-ed-new-yor#p567

Consider the fate of the four musical comedies of the 1920s to receive over five hundred performances, Sally (1920), Shuffle Along (1921), Sunny (1925) and Good News! (1927). book:cambridge-companion-to-the-musical-cambridge-companions-to-music-the-the-cambrid#p155

The fourth hit musical comedy of the 1920s, Good News! (lyrics by DeSylva and Brown, music by Henderson), alone managed to have a future on the wicked stage, albeit radically transformed. Thus the 1974 revival altered the setting, plot and book, raided other DeSylva book:cambridge-companion-to-the-musical-cambridge-companions-to-music-the-the-cambrid#p156

Good News! provides a useful starting point to introduce another lasting legacy of 1920s and 30s musical comedies: films. book:cambridge-companion-to-the-musical-cambridge-companions-to-music-the-the-cambrid#p157

Imagine, say, Alfred Drake in Good News! , Barbara Cook in Leave It To Me! This new kind of musical star might take a showy role or blend into an ensemble, as Cook did in Bock and Harnick’s She Loves Me (1963), albeit as the show’s pivotal character. book:anything-goes-a-history-of-american-musical-theatre-ethan-mordden#p275

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

Something wrong here? Correct a field or report the problem. Every change is recorded in public under the contributor licence.