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ORIG. DIE CUT SHAPE Broadway Tryout PROGRAM:  ED WYNN in HOORAY FOR WHAT! Image 1 of 4

Hooray For What!

Shows · Hooray For What!

Horticulturist Chuckles Wynn accidentally discovers a gas that not only kills fruit-eating insects but humans as well. Soon every nation has spies trying to steal the formula for warfare purposes. One spy gets a look at the formula reflected in a mirror so it is written down backwards and only produces a laughing gas.

Opened
1937
Performances
200
Type
Musical
Era
Early
Music: Harold ArlenLyrics: E. Y. HarburgBook: Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse

Productions1 on Broadway

1937 Winter Garden Original. December 1, 1937 · Vincente Minnelli, Howard Lindsay 200 performances

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

Licensing not confirmed

Rights We have not been able to confirm the publisher.

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 literature25 passages

Alton, Robert Anything Goes By Jupiter DuBarry Was a Lady Hooray for What! Leave It to Me! Life Begins at 8:40 Me and Juliet Panama Hattie Show Is On, The Too Many Girls Ziegfeld Follies book:broadway-musicals-show-by-show-seventh-edition-stanley-green-cary-ginell#p387

“Napoleon” commented on the ephemeral nature of life, and had first been heard as “Napoleon’s a Pastry” in the 1937 Broadway musical Hooray for What! where it was introduced by Jack Whiting and June Clyde. book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p664

In 1937 Ed Wynn moved in with a marvelous antiwar musical Hooray for What! by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse. book:at-this-theatre-100-years-of-broadway-shows-stories-and-botto-louis-viagas-rober#p64

Hooray for What! (12/1/37; 199 performances) was Harburg’s first book show, written in collaboration with Arlen. The show starred June Clyde, Vivian Vance, Jack Whiting, and Ed Wynn. Songs included “Down with Love,” “Moanin’ in the Mornin’,” and ‘In the Shade of the New Apple Tree.” book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p241

In 1937, Harburg tried to inject a warning about warmongering into Hooray for What!, but Ed Wynn and librettists Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse dampened the ardor and pulled the show back to farce and light comedy. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p40

Harold Arlen, who wrote blues and jazz-flavored music for many of the greatest torch songs in popular music, contributed to many Broadway revues in the 1930s before his first book show, Hooray for What!, in 1937. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p41

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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