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Watch Your Step

Watch Your Step

Shows · Watch Your Step

The millionaire Ebeneezer Hardacre (Harry Kelly) bequeaths a fortune on any of his male relatives who has never been in love, engaged, or married. What followed was a series of episodes about relatives trying to get the money but falling for the charms of women.

Opened
1914
Performances
175
Type
Musical
Era
Early
Music: Irving BerlinLyrics: Irving BerlinBook: Harry B. Smith

Productions1 on Broadway

1914 New Amsterdam Theatre Original. December 8, 1914 · R. H. Burnside 175 performances

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

Licensing not confirmed

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In the literature32 passages

In 1911, at the age of 23, Irving Berlin had the entire country ragtime crazy with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Three years later, he wrote his first Broadway score (out of a total of 21) which was the first to feature ragtime. book:broadway-musicals-show-by-show-green-stanley-green-kay-5th-ed-rev-and-updated-by#p44

There was also a curious interpolation from the Irving Berlin songbook, as the revue included “Office Hours,” which was the opening number from his 1914 Broadway musical Watch Your Step . book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p641

Berlin saw his first full Broadway score presented. The show was Watch Your Step and presented the song “Play a Simple Melody.” book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p88

In songs that ranged throughout his career, most famously “Play a Simple Melody” from Watch Your Step (1914), “You’re Just in Love” from Call Me Madam (1950), and his final hurrah as a composer, “An Old-Fashioned Wedding” from the 1966 revival of Annie Get Your Gun book:enchanted-evenings-the-broadway-musical-from-show-boat-block-geoffrey-oxford-new#p292

A follow-up to WATCH YOUR STEP [December 8, 1914], not quite as successful but with a more satisfying score—including Berlin’s jaunty I Love a Piano. book:show-tunes-the-songs-shows-and-careers-of-broadway-s-suskin-steven-suskin-steven#p71

Watch Your Step (1914), for example, managed to do this so well that critics were totally confused by the piece at the premiere. One called it "glorified vaudeville," another a "musical extravaganza," while the New York Times, which began by considering it a revue, finally conceded "so many things have been called musi… book:showtime-a-history-of-the-broadway-musical-theatre-larry-stempel#p158

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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