14 - ‘How great thy charm, thy sway how excellent!’ Tracing Gilbert and Sullivan's legacy in the American musical

Summary

Tracing artistic legacy and ancestry is always a complex affair, and must ultimately depend more on persuasive example and argument than on an abundance of hard evidence. In the case of Gilbert and Sullivan and the American musical, there can be no real question that the influence of the former on the latter was profound, especially with HMS Pinafore (1878) coming so soon after The Black Crook (1866). The huge success of HMS Pinafore and its successors in America – then and since, in adaptations and repertoire – provided both motive and opportunity. Moreover, there is ample testimony, especially from lyricists, regarding the formative impact of Gilbert and Sullivan on important contributors to the American musical. But a broadly based, direct connection is nevertheless hard to argue in the face of stark differences in sensibility. The earnest optimism and elaborate choreography and stage effects typical of the American musical from its late nineteenth-century origins through its twentieth-century maturity seem quite distinct from the wry topsy-turvydom of Gilbert and Sullivan, and the differences multiply quickly upon fuller consideration.

There are, to be sure, more than a few incontrovertible homages. George M. Cohan's ‘Captain of the ten day boat’ (Little Johnny Jones, 1904) is a direct parody of ‘Captain of the Pinafore’. George and Ira Gershwin's Strike Up the Band! (1927), Of Thee I Sing (1931; the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize) and the latter's sequel, Let ‘em Eat Cake (1933), follow the larger Savoy tradition in offering full-scale political satires that are both oblique and ridiculous enough in their particulars not to offend, with songs such as ‘The illegitimate daughter’ (from Of Thee I Sing) to reinforce the connection to Gilbert and Sullivan.