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Description:
Playbill For The WInter Garden Theatre-April 26,1942-"Sons O' Fun"-6 1/2" X 9 1/2"-39 pages-theatre program. This vintage Playbill features the 1942 Musical Comedy-"Sons O' Fun" starring Ole Olsen,Chic Johnson and Carmen Miranda.These stars are featured on the front cover and their bios are included in "Who's Who In The Cast".Olsen and Johnson were zany comedians of vaudeville. radio, the Broadway stage, motion pictures, and television. Their shows were well known for their crazy blackout gags and orchestrated mayhem ("anything can happen, and it probably will"). Their most famous concept, Hellzapoppin', has become show-business shorthand for free-wheeling, anything-goes comedy; it enjoyed a lengthy run on Broadway and even spawned a movie version.Ole Olsen (1892-1963) and Chic Johnson (1891-1962) were musical entertainers: Olsen played the violin and Johnson played ragtime piano. They met in 1914, when Olsen hired Johnson to replace the pianist in his quartet. Ole and Chic hit it off immediately, and joined forces for a vaudeville act. No joke was too old, no song too corny for Ole and Chic, and the two engaging comics became a minor sensation in the midwest. They soon became an early and regular attraction on radio, which enlarged their audience, and this in turn led to appearances in early-talkie movies for Warner Bros., and two more minor features for Republic Pictures. Olsen and Johnson continued their stage and radio work. In 1938 they mounted their own revue, Hellzapoppin'. Sophisticated Broadway audiences were unprepared for such a shambles: stray props came out of nowhere; comic characters were planted in the audience and disrupted the action; Olsen and Johnson dashed on and off the stage in crazy costumes and indulged in cheerfully earthy humor; chorus girls lost their skirts, and vaudeville acts did their trick specialties. The show never played the same way twice. On some nights, songs would be pre-empted by jokes, and on others, jokes would interrupt the songs. In 1941 Universal Pictures bravely decided to commit Hellzapoppin' to film, with plenty of crazy and sometimes innovative gags. A cab driver literally goes to hell, with Olsen and Johnson as his reluctant passengers. A serious song by Robert Paige and Jane Frazee is interrupted when a title card crashes on the screen, advising one Stinky Miller to go home. Man-chasing Martha Raye pursues Mischa Auer, who finds himself suddenly stripped down to his underwear and running a mock track meet. The film goes out of frame, and Olsen and Johnson try to correct the problem themselves. Despite Universal's insistence on a then-customary romance and a "serious plot," somewhat diluting the Olsen and Johnson onslaught, Hellzapoppin' is still fresh and funny today. Unfortunately it's rather hard to find; copyright issues involving the original stage production have forced the film version out of general circulation.The Playbill has been autographed on the front cover by Ole Olsen with a fountain pen in blue,Chic Johnson with a fountain pen in brown and Carmen Miranda with a fountain pen in red.....................BOTH PLAYBILL AND AUTOGRAPHS ARE IN VERY GOOD CONDITION........
| Status: For Sale |
Reference#: ololechjocam |
| Condition:
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Year:
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