Present Arms, 1928

Lyrics by Lorenz Hart
Music by Richard Rodgers
Produced by Lew Fields
Book by Herbert Fields
Directed by Alexander Leftwich
Choreoghraphy Busby Berkeley
Starring: Charles King, Flora Le Brenton and Busby Berkeley
It ran for ???


 Overview   

Herb Fields's "new" idea was to use the marines instead of the of the navy, this time making the hero, Chick, a tough guy rather than the shy sailor of Hit the Deck. The setting would now be Honolulu, and the Plot would have something to do with Chick' s courtship of the English Lady Delphine, who is also being courted by a rich German, Ludwig von Richter. Buck private Chick promotes himself to captain to impress Delphine, is exposed and disgraced, but redeems himself in a yacht disaster.

Pop Fields liked it enough to agree to produce, and again brought in Alexander Leftwich to direct and Roy Webb as musical director. The hero's role went again to Charles King. Buzz Berkeley not only handled the choreography but tried out for, and got, the featured part of Chick's sergeant, Douglas Atwell. The part of Delphine went to Flora LeBreton, a winsome English blonde, and the second female lead to another English import, Joyce Barbour .

One Of the show's better ideas (no prizes for guessing whose) was to assemble, instead of the usual line of winsome chorus boys, the burliest and most butch group of singers and dancers ever seen on-stage. Just reading the lyric of "A Kiss For Cinderella" one of the ensemble numbers, gives a clear picture of what raucous fun they had on-stage. The trouble was they acted like genuine marines in real life, too, and on the final Saturday night of the Wilmington tryouts, April 28, they embarked on a memorable pub crawl which ended with an uproarious bread-roll fight in the lobby that nearly got them thrown out of their hotel.

Rodgers and Hart produced an almost completely fresh score for the show. One of the songs, "I Love You More Than Yesterday" was inspired by a line from Goethe. The number they put their money on was the lilting "Do I Hear You Saying 'I Love You'? " It was sung in the first scene, reprised in the third, played during intermission, and formed part of the finale. As it turned out, the public preferred "You Took Advantage Of Me"

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Present Arms film version