Gypsy Jim; a play in three acts

[ex-Library of Congress (stamped "duplicate; exchanged" on the copyright page), with some deterioration to the spine ends, some black smudging at the top of the rear cover, small "Reserve Storage" stamp (lined through) on front cover and title page)]. (3 B&W photographs) An early (and obscure) dramatic effort by Hammerstein, about an idealistic millionaire who wants to use his fortune to help out people in distress, but in a way that disguises the fact that they're receiving charity. (Part of this scheme involves disguising himself as a gypsy, hence the title.) This was Hammerstein's first effort at a straight play after he had contributed to the books and lyrics of a string of moderately successful (but now utterly forgotten) musicals, many years before his hooking up with Richard Rodgers. In fact, his entire career as a non-musical playwright basically consisted of this play and one more, "New Toys," which followed almost immediately: "Gypsy Jim" had an anemic run of 48 performances in January-February 1924, and "New Toys" fared even worse, logging just 24 performances in February and March. Properly discouraged from additional efforts in that vein, he returned to the musical-comedy realm, which was obviously his true metier: his next two shows, "Rose-Marie" and "Sunny," each ran for over a year on Broadway, and he never looked back. (Maybe he just had the wrong collaborator in Mr. Gropper, who also co-authored "New Toys," and whose overall theatrical track record was, in a word, undistinguished.) The Broadway production of "Gypsy Jim," incidentally, was a vehicle for none other than Leo Carrillo, well-remembered for his role as The Cisco Kid's sidekick "Pancho" in the 1950s TV series. This play, for what it's worth, seems t be a bit of a rarity, with no copies detected in the online marketplace in May 2020; this was likely its only printing, and I can't imagine there was too much of a demand for it.

Product Info

Publisher: Samuel French

Year: (c.1927, 1922)

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

Seller Info

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