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[0:00] David Armstrong: In 1919, two gifted young queer theater artists made their Broadway debuts and quickly established themselves as significant forces in the development of the Broadway musical. Their names are Hassard Short and John Murray Anderson, and even though they and their work are seldom acknowledged or remembered today, they are without a doubt two of the principal inventors of the singular art and craft of Broadway musical staging. Working as competitive colleagues and rivals, they were among the very first to discover and reveal to us the tremendous impact that dynamic musical staging can provide to a Broadway musical, and they were among the first to demonstrate how staging can often be of equal importance to a show's book, music, and lyrics.

Between them, John Murray Anderson and Hassard Short staged more than 70 Broadway musicals, and in the process they forged a path that a long line of remarkable and predominantly gay directors and choreographers have followed right up to today, including this past week's Tony Award nominees and Tony winners. Whether they know it or not, all of them stand on the shoulders of these forgotten giants, Hassard Short and John Murray Anderson.

[1:16] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and this episode is adapted from a section of my new upcoming book, Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical, which I'm happy to say will be released on July 24th and can be pre-ordered now everywhere books are sold. I covered Hassard Short briefly way back in Episode 5 of this podcast, but in the process of researching my book I had the opportunity to expand and deepen my knowledge of this key figure in the development of the Broadway musical, and add the equally formidable John Murray Anderson into the mix in the process. Before I jump into their stories, I think I should address exactly what we mean by the term musical staging.

In my view, this encompasses not only the dance elements of a show, but also includes the overall manner in which a musical number or an entire musical is put onto the stage, and the ways that it then moves and flows. At its best, great musical staging produces a thrillingly seamless integration of music, dance, story, sets, costumes, lighting, and performance.

[2:25] David Armstrong: Throughout a career spanning 30 years and 50 Broadway plays and musicals, director and designer Hassard Short was constantly in demand as one of the most acclaimed stagers of musical comedies and reviews. He was called a genius of stagecraft, and hailed as the master magician of Broadway. Among the many theatrical innovations that Short introduced was the traveling platform, which today in theater jargon we would call a wagon or a pallet. He also revolutionized Broadway lighting design by eliminating traditional footlights and replacing them with spotlights mounted on the front of the balcony, what we call the balcony rail, which is still standard practice today. Hassard Short was born in 1877 in Lincolnshire, England, where he ran away from home at 15 to pursue a life in the theater.

I have no evidence to back this up, but I can't help thinking that when a 15-year-old runs away from home, it might have had something to do with his homosexuality. His first stage appearance in London was in 1895, and by 1901 he had become so successful that producer Charles Froman brought him to New York, where he achieved great success as an actor portraying what he called silly-ass Englishmen. Apparently, he did this so effectively that those kinds of roles quickly became known as Hassard Short Parts.

[4:01] David Armstrong: Meanwhile, Short began staging special fundraising performances, and it was one of these, an all-star event in support of the Actors' Equity Union Strike of 1919 that very quickly led to his first directing job on Broadway. It was a play with music called Honeydew in 1920, which went on to run a very impressive 249 performances. As a result, Short soon became a much sought-after collaborator with Broadway's top talents, including Irving Berlin. During the 1920s, to name just a few of his many shows, Short staged three editions of Irving Berlin's Music Box Review in 1921, 22, and 23, as well as the 1925 smash hit Sonny, starring Marilyn Miller with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II.

That same year, he staged the Greenwich Village Follies of 1925, as well as a show titled Hassard Short's Ritz Review. Already the name Hassard Short was worthy of being part of the title of a show. His staging was often singled out by critics as being a significant factor in the success of these shows. As one critic put it, and I quote, "Given a song, be it ever so simple, Hassard Short does something more than simply stage it. He dramatizes it. Long after you think it is over, new gold curtains open to reveal new stage depths, new stairs, and new figures in towering costumes. Mr. Short is more or less of a pioneer in this particular field, and last night he produced at least four or five striking effects in this way."

[6:00] David Armstrong: In the book The Gay and Lesbian Theatrical Legacy, writer and friend of the pod Kevin Winkler tells us that from the beginning of his career, Short established complete directorial control over his productions, and was known for his time-efficient approach to rehearsals. As a staging director, he mounted the production numbers and routined the show, deciding the placement of all scenes, sketches, songs, and production numbers. His multifaceted contributions were reflected in his billing, which was usually a variation on staged and lighted by Hassard Short, but sometimes was much grander. For Franz Lehar's Frederica in 1937, his billing stretched to entire production, including setting, costumes, and lighting executed under the personal supervision of Mr. Short.

He was especially acclaimed for his staging of four spectacular reviews in the early 1930s. Three's A Crowd in 1930 featured what critics acclaimed as a breathtaking and apparently very sexy staging of the song Body and Soul.

[7:07] ♪ Musical number: "Body and Soul" — performed by Hassard Short ♪

[7:32] David Armstrong: He followed this up the next season with The Bandwagon, starring Fred and Adele Astaire, in which Short employed what was reportedly the first revolving stage. These were followed by two shows by Irving Berlin, Face the Music in 1932, and As Thousands Cheer in 1933, which included what critics called, quote, "masterpieces of lighting and color control," especially in regard to his staging of the first act finale, which introduced the song Easter Parade. Short's productions were as lavish and spectacular as any Ziegfeld follies, but were designed and executed with such impeccable taste and attention to detail that, as one critic wrote, they made Ziegfeld's extravaganzas seem old-fashioned and garish by comparison.

In search of inspiration and new ideas for their productions, Short often traveled to Europe with his close collaborators Moss Hart and Irving Berlin, who was accompanied by his family. Like all major celebrities of the period, their comings and goings were avidly covered by the press in the theater news and gossip columns of the day. But what reporters declined to mention, even though they most certainly were aware, was that Short was always accompanied by his life partner, William Billy Ladd, a slender, bleach-blonde former chorus boy who had performed in three musicals directed by Short.

[9:02] David Armstrong: So that's what you'll read in the book, but just yesterday, I discovered a clipping in the Miami Herald from December 21, 1935. It's a society gossip column by Dorothy Day titled Night and Day, which includes this item, quote, "Who do you suppose we saw yesterday hanging over the rail at Tropicale and needs no introduction when you mention the theater? None other than Hassard Short. And if Hassard picks horses like he stages musicals, why, he couldn't help but depart a winner. He and Billy Strongman, better known along the white way as Billy Ladd, will fly to Nassau on Sunday, where they've taken a home for the entire winter." So it seems the open secret of Billy Ladd and Hassard Short's relationship was even more open than I ever would have thought.

Hopefully, I'll be able to add this to a second edition of the book. Hassard Short was likely the model for the character Julian Marsh, the openly gay British Broadway director character in Bradford Rope's 1932 novel 42nd Street, from which both the 1933 film musical and the 1980 stage musical were adapted. And it's clear that Rope's used Billy Ladd as the inspiration for Billy Lawler, the character in the novel who is Marsh's bleach-blonde boyfriend. The homosexuality and relationship of these two characters is made abundantly clear in the novel, but any gay character traits were reduced to only a slight subtext in the film, and then only for the Marsh character, and then both characters were reconceived as decidedly heterosexual for the stage version.

Julian Marsh's first name, however, is undoubtedly an echo of Julian Mitchell, the straight WASP Broadway director who was a contemporary and rival of Hassard Short. As you may remember, author Maya Cantu, who was a guest on episodes 133, 134, and 135 of this podcast, discussing her terrific book, Grease Paint Puritan, Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes. And in that book, she suggests that yet another inspiration for Marsh was another early Broadway staging genius, showman John Murray Anderson. And we'll delve into his story right after this quick break.

[11:16] David Armstrong: I'd gladly surrender myself to you, body and soul.

[11:31] David Armstrong: In his 1954 autobiography titled Out Without My Rubbers, director, lyricist, book writer, designer, and producer John Murray Anderson described himself as a friendly rival of Hassard Short. And indeed, as mentioned earlier, they both made their Broadway staging debuts less than a year apart. Between 1919 and 1954, Anderson staged 31 Broadway reviews and musical comedies. He was born in Newfoundland, Canada in 1886, into an upper-middle-class family of Scottish English heritage. As a child, Anderson was sent to boarding school in Scotland where he fell in love with all manner of theater from Shakespeare to musical. After attending college in Switzerland, he moved to London to study theater, singing, and dance at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Anderson's move to New York luckily coincided with the ballroom dance craze of the 1910s, and he got his initial start in show business as a male taxi dancer at the fashionable theater district restaurant and cabaret, Bustanabes. In that era, taxi dancing was an often lucrative line of work for attractive, charming young men who could dance. But it came with a significant degree of scandal attached to it. Male taxi dancers were often derisively referred to as gigolos or tango pirates. And, perhaps because any man who made his living as a dancer and acquiesced to being rented by a woman, even if just for a dance, already had their masculinity called into question, many queer men seemed to have been drawn to this profession, including future silent film legend Rudolph Valentino and future Broadway and Hollywood star Clifton Webb.

[13:23] David Armstrong: Anderson's popularity as a taxi dancer launched him into teaching ballroom dance, and he soon became one of New York society's favorite dancing masters. Then, after teaming up with dancing partner Genevieve Lyon, the two of them set out to become a leading society dance team that could compete with superstars Vernon and Irene Castle. But, as Anderson later acknowledged, they never quite did, but probably ran them a close second. In 1914, at the height of their success, like many vaudeville and ballroom dance duos, Anderson and Lyon got married. Their career in marriage, however, would be tragically cut short when Genevieve contracted tuberculosis and died just two years later. Anderson lovingly took care of his wife to the end, but judging from his memoir, their marriage seems to have been a very affectionate professional relationship, rather than a love match. By 1918, Anderson was performing with a new dancing partner.

[14:23] David Armstrong: The following season, Anderson repeated all of those roles when he produced, directed, and co-wrote the book and many of the lyrics for the acclaimed revue "What's in a Name?" where his work drew the praise of New York Times theater critic Alexander Wolcott who wrote, "The ascendant star of John Murray Anderson shines exceedingly bright after the production last night of the successor to his Greenwich Village Follies. It is full of striving for new things marked in every episode with a determination not to imitate but rather to differ from the preceding 25 musical shows of the season. It is often surpassingly lovely to look upon. A stagecraft of considerable cunning, good taste, and real imagination rules over its preparation.

Indeed, 'What's in a Name?' marks the most beautiful staging of a musical comedy New York has ever known." Similar reviews would follow Anderson throughout his long career. His next show was the 1920 edition of the Greenwich Village Follies starring drag sensation Burt Savoy. Then, after three more editions of this revue, Anderson and Hassard Short traded places. Short staged the Greenwich Village Follies of 1925, while Anderson staged the fourth and final edition of Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue, which had all previously been staged by Hassard Short. Among the musical comedies that Anderson staged and directed were Rogers and Hart's "Dearest Enemy," which had a book by Herbert Fields, and Anderson collaborated with Fields again the following season on "Hello Daddy," which featured a score by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh and choreography by Busby Berkeley.

By this point, like Hassard Short, Anderson was receiving billing such as "entire production under the supervision of John Murray Anderson." He had a lot of success with musical comedies, but revues and extravaganzas were his forte, and he memorably staged three late editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, as well as the massive Hippodrome production of the Rogers and Hart musical "Jumbo." In addition to his work on Broadway, Anderson staged seven seasons of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, four of Billy Rose's World's Fair Aquacades, and 24 elaborate nightclub shows, primarily at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe and Casa Manana nightclubs. He also conceived and directed the 1930 movie musical "King of Jazz," as well as the spectacular Aquacade sequences in the 1944 Esther Williams film "Bathing Beauty."

Anderson's memoir was written during the repressive 1950s, so it's not surprising that he makes no direct reference to his sexual orientation. Beyond his brief early marriage, he never mentions any kind of romantic relationship with either sex. However, it's clear that throughout his life he was at the center of a close circle of queer colleagues and friends, including the prolific Broadway set and costume designer Raoul Pendebois, producers St. Subert, Leonard Silman, and Harry Rigby, songwriters Robert Wright and George Forrest, and choreographers Donald Sadler and Robert Alton, who was said to be Anderson's protege. Both Hassard Short and John Murray Anderson's careers would continue into the 1950s, and both would achieve significant late-career success.

For Hassard Short, this included two wartime Cole Porter hits, "Something for the Boys" and "Mexican Hayride," both of which ran more than 400 performances, and the even more successful and much more innovative musicals "Lady in the Dark" and "Carmen Jones."

[20:10] David Armstrong: The billing for the 1941 Mosshart-Kurt Weill musical "Lady in the Dark" reads as follows. "Play staged by Mosshart, all musical sequences staged by Hassard Short, choreographed by Albertina Rosch," and Short was also credited with the production design and lighting design. "Lady in the Dark" was hailed as one of the most lavish plays ever produced on Broadway, and legend has it that it was the only show in Broadway history to have been entirely sold out at every single performance. Two years later he staged and designed the lighting for Oscar Hammerstein's "Carmen Jones." Critics hailed the show as a dazzling extravaganza, stunningly staged with a skill that does not falter by Hassard Short, who becomes more firmly entrenched as a master craftsman with his staging, lighting, and color schemes, which perfectly complemented some of the most riotously beautiful costumes ever seen on a Broadway stage.

Remarkably, during the final two years of John Murray Anderson's life, he staged two triumphant Broadway revues that were among the last of their kind. Leonard Sillman's "New Faces of 1952," which made stars of Eartha Kitt, Paul Lynde, and Alice Ghostley, and in 1953, a show titled "John Murray Anderson's Almanac," which starred Hermione Gingold and Harry Belafonte, who received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. The Daily Mirror described Anderson's final production as a glittering, tuneful, dazzling, and stunningly beautiful show, the laughter lusty and the applause deafening. Anderson died of a heart attack in 1954 at age 67, while his Almanac was still running on Broadway.

Hassard Short died two years later in the south of France, where he had retired in 1952, just a few days short of his 79th birthday. Today we talk about Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, Joshua Logan, Bob Fosse, Michael Kidd, Gower Champion, Harold Prince, and I would throw Joe Layton into that mix as being among the great legendary stagers of the Broadway musical during its golden age. But all of those significant artists grew up in a theatrical world in which Hassard Short and John Murray Anderson were the undisputed kings of Broadway staging, and all of them no doubt were influenced by this remarkable pair, and I have no doubt that we are still feeling the effects of their talent and genius today.

[22:48] ♪ Musical number ♪

[24:06] David Armstrong: If you love this podcast and want to delve even deeper into the world of Broadway musicals, I invite you to become a patron of Broadway Nation. For as little as $7 a month, you can receive exclusive access to never-before-heard, unedited versions of many of the interviews featured on this podcast. I often record twice as much conversation as ends up in the edited public episodes. And you also have the exclusive opportunity to hear additional in-depth conversations with my frequent co-host Albert Evans. And all patrons will receive special on-air shoutouts and acknowledgments of your vital support. To join, simply go to broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech. That's all one word, broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech. Or simply click the link in the show notes to this episode. Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Powell's Mocks for his help with editing this episode, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.