Gay Divorce

Infobox Musical
name= Gay Divorce
subtitle=


caption=
music= Cole Porter
lyrics= Cole Porter
book= Dwight Taylor
Adapted by:
Kenneth Webb
Samuel Hoffenstein
basis= An unproduced play by
J. Hartley Manners
productions= 1932 Broadway
1933 West End
1934 Film
awards=

"Gay Divorce" (1932) is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and book by Kenneth Webb and Samuel Hoffenstein. It was Fred Astaire's last Broadway show and featured the hit "Night and Day" in which Astaire danced with co-star Claire Luce.

It was made into a Hollywood musical film by RKO Radio Pictures in 1934, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and renamed "The Gay Divorcee".

Plot

Guy Holden (Astaire), an American writer traveling in England, falls madly in love with a woman named Mimi (Luce), who disappears after their first encounter. To take his mind off his lost love, his friend Teddy Egbert, a British attorney, takes him to Brighton Beach, where Egbert has arranged for a "paid corespondent" to assist his client in obtaining a divorce from her boring, aging, geologist husband. What Holden does not know is that the client is none other than Mimi, who in turn mistakes him -- because he is too ashamed of his occupation to say what it is, namely pseudonymously writing cheap "bodice ripper" romance novels -- for the paid co-respondent.

At the end, when her husband appears, he is unconvinced by the faked adultery -- but is then unwittingly revealed, by the waiter at the resort, to have been genuinely adulterous himself.

ongs

;Act I
* After You, Who?
* Why Marry Them?
* Salt Air
* I Still Love the Red, White and Blue
* After You, Who? (Reprise)
* Night and Day
* How's Your Romance?;Act II
* What Will Become of Our England?
* I've Got You on My Mind
* Mr. and Mrs. Fitch
* You're in Love

Broadway production

The show opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on November 29, 1932 and transferred to the Shubert Theatre on January 16, 1933 for a total run of 248 performances. It was directed by Howard Lindsay.

Cast:

*Fred Astaire "as Guy Holden"
*Claire Luce "as Mimi"
*Luella Gear "as Hortense"
*G. P. Huntley Jr "as Teddy"
*Betty Starbuck "as Barbara Wray"
*Erik Rhodes "as Tonetti"
*Eric Blore "as Waiter"
*Roland Bottomley "as Pratt"

London production

The show opened at the Palace Theatre on November 2, 1933 and ran for 180 performances. It was directed by Felix Edwardes and starred the original leads of Fred Astaire and Claire Luce. They were joined by Olive Blakeney as Gertrude Howard, Claud Allister as Teddy, Joan Gardner as Barbara Wray, Erik Rhodes as Tonetti, Eric Blore as Waiter, and Fred Hearne as Octavius Mann.

External links

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