Painting by Sir W. Russell Flint, R.A., 1951, depicting Carol Raye as Phoebe Throssel, wth Bernard Clifton as the Recruiting Sergeant and Gretchen Franklin as Patty.
In 1950 English composer Harry Parr-Davies created a ravishing score for Dear Miss Phoebe, a musical version of James Barrie’s Regency period play Quality Street (1901), which had book and lyrics by former Ivor Novello collaborator Christopher Hassall. In fact the whole score seemed to frequently mirror Novello’s lush melodic style. Produced by Emile Littler, it was directed by Charles Hickman, choreographed by Freddie Carpenter, and featured Carol Raye as Phoebe and Peter Graves as Valentine Brown.
Young doctor Valentine Brown, the un-promised love of Phoebe Throssel goes off to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. On returning from duty he doesn’t recognise Phoebe now aged and wearing spinster clothes, so she dresses in a more youthful style and pretends to be an imaginary niece ‘Livvy.’ Valentine is attracted to her, but confesses his steadfast love for Phoebe. She reveals her false identity, he proposes to her and she accepts. Parr-Davies’ score is a delight with everything from the first act finale “Whisper While You Waltz”, through Phoebe’s “Living In A Dream”, to the second act duet “Spring Will Sing A Song For You” artfully constructed musical theatre ballads. Comedy was provided for the gossips of the street with “Livvy is Having One of her Turns,” and in the ballroom scene, “Wallflowers”, but the hit of the show, and the score, was Valentine and Phoebe’s first act duet sung prior to his departure to the front, “I Leave My Heart in an English Garden”. The song very quickly became popular, spawned many recordings, and was a concert platform staple for many years.
The musical opened in Birmingham, then toured through Bournemouth, Swindon, Folkestone, Southsea and Oxford before reaching the West End where it opened at the Phoenix Theatre, 13 October 1950. It played 283 performances before touring with Graves and Raye’s former understudy Jean Telfer in the principal roles.
Peter Pinne (extract from Harry Parr-Davies: A Biography - Part Two, published on the Overtures website on 2 July 2018)
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BIRMINGHAM PREMIERE
“Dear Miss Phoebe”
On July 31, at the Royal, Emile Littler presented a new musical play based on Sir James Barrie's "Quality Street,” with music by Harry Parr Davies. book and lyrics by Christopher Hassull and costumes by Dons Zinkeisen entitled “Dear Miss Phoebe”.
This is Barrie set to music—a great deal of Barrie and a small share of music—and let lovers of Barrie’s "Quality Street" be not prematurely alarmed at what may have happened to the author at the hands of Christopher Hassall, who has adapted the book and written the lyrics. For all but the devotees there is almost enough of Barrie, as the musical setting has a way of justifying the pretty sentiment that too often comes near to cloying. Here and there a fondly remembered scene seems briefer than of old, and with a little of its bloom rubbed off, but it retains, in essence, so much of the familiar enchantment. It is, in fact, better acted than sung, but the songs in themselves have a delicate sentiment, in keeping with the spirit of the play. A tune in two or three instances enhances the songs although often the music seems to obscure the voice line.
It is inevitable that the rhythm of the play and of Barrie's skilfully written scenes should be broken by a pause for a duet or a chorus, but there is compensation in the touch of unreality that gives the romance an elfin air. One is constrained to accept it by its abounding grace, its gentle humours, and its momentary touches of pathos that have an abiding truth. It would be wrong to imagine that it improves on "Quality Street”; it would be just as wrong to imagine that the adaptation destroys the original. It is a story re-told in good taste by one with an affection for the play who has captured its elusive spirit almost well enough to reproduce its effect in another medium.
The “Phoebe of the Ringlets" is played with exquisite charm by Carol Raye in all gentility and grace. Peter Graves makes Valentine Brown a gallant who would enchant the heart of more sophisticated maidens than Phoebe and Olga Lindo suggests the gentle romantic heart that beats in the breast of Susan Throssel as well as her capacity to share unaffectedly in another's happiness.
Bernard Clifton and Gretchen Franklin, who conduct the love-affair between the maid and the sergeant so humorously, become the social world of Quality Street which Doris Zinkeisen has dressed so beautifully, and which counts among its members the gaily caparisoned George Radford, John Crocker, and Jean Telfer.
The Stage (London), Thursday, 3 August 1950, p.10
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Cast list for the Birmingham premiere
Programme page for the Birmingham premiere
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PHOENIX THEATRE
“Dear Miss Phoebe”
To take as material for a musical play a work so completely successful in its own kind as Barrie's Quality Street would seem, if not perilous, at least injudicious; and so in fact it turns out.
There is never any question, of course, who is still the senior partner; no one knows better than Mr. Christopher Hassall the value in charm, invention, humour, and sheer stage-craft of the playwright whose work he is called upon to adapt and treats with unfailing deference. The bother is that, really, the senior partner cannot be induced to collaborate. The more Barrie is left to tell his own story of his maiden ladies whom love passes by, but not for ever, the more of a jolt we feel on entering that other convention in which Mr. Hassall and Mr. Harry Parr Davies are at home. The songs are always workmanlike, sometimes ingeniously witty, the music melodiously romantic or melodiously merry, and in some other connexion would perhaps be wholly delightful. The fault is Barrie's if the most well-meant additions and embellishments appear by comparison rather coarse in texture.
These hard things said, it remains to remark on the liveliness and gaiety with which the piece is acted and mounted. Miss Carol Raye is the freshest and prettiest of young ladies condemned for 10 years to teach Latin and learn algebra in a dame's school. Miss Olga Undo is a deliriously incompetent Miss Susan, and Mr. Peter Graves carries off the songs and—as admirers of the ladies will always think—the questionable behaviour of the dashing V.B. Miss Moya Nugent, Miss Noel Dyson, and Miss Betty England are crisply amusing as three of the Argus eyes of Quality Street, and Miss Gretchen Franklin would be welcome anywhere as the formidable Patty. The dresses and scenery are charming, so charming that it is really curmudgeonly of Barrie not to collaborate.
The Times (London) Saturday, 14 October 1950, p.8
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Flyer for the London season
courtesy of Rex Bunnett
Flyer (reverse)
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THE PHOENIX
"DEAR MISS PHOEBE"
On October 13, Emile Littler presented here the musical play based on Sir James Barrie's "Quality Street," with music by Harry Parr Davies and book adapted and lyrics by Christopher Hassall, decorated by Doris Zinkeisen.
Defying superstition, Emile Littler chose not only a Friday, but also the thirteenth of the month, for his London presentation of this musical version of Barrie's lace-and-lavender comedy. He was rewarded by as enthusiastic a reception as any impresario could desire. In fact, this is an uncommonly handsome production, with an exceptionally good musical score. Some doubt may be expressed, in this writer's view, as to the wholly artificial mode of stage-speech that seems to be regarded as necessary when in the theatre we are taken back to the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. However, playgoers in general are not likely to forfeit on this account their enjoyment of a delightful work of genuine and sensitive art – true to the Barrie-and-Cranford spirit, but with a charm and grace of its own.
They will drop a tear for dear Miss Phoebe, whose soldier lover leaves his heart in an English garden – as a judiciously repeated song reminds us – when he marches off to the Napoleonic wars, and in turn leaves an arm on the field of battle. It will be remembered that when he comes back after Waterloo. Miss Phoebe, who has spent nine painful years as a schoolmistress, believes she can regain his love only by posing as her own niece. Meanwhile, the play takes a confessedly unrealistic turn. Indeed, the Waterloo Ball scene, with the youthfully disguised Phoebe dancing joyously as the belle of the occasion, assumes a strong resemblance to the Cinderella legend.
In far more than a month of Sundays no one could wish for a prettier leading lady than Carol Raye. She looks almost too demurely charming as the school mistress of 30. Obviously any sensible man would need no special encouragement to renew his affectionate protestations, and it is difficult to understand why Captain Valentine Brown fails, or at least appears to fail, to recognise his former love. When the chance comes, Miss Raye dances with lively and modern high-stepping brilliance. She takes most acceptably her share in the many melodious musical numbers, including "English Garden,'' "Living a Dream" (sung solo), and a lilting waltz number, "Whisper While You Waltz." Harry Parr Davies's score is, indeed, one of the most attractive features of the evening, and he has received first-class co-operation from Christopher Hassall as lyricist. Peter Graves's Valentine Brown has a dignified manner just right for the period, and he sings well. Olga Lindo, that admirable comic actress, is the Miss Susan (Phoebe's sister) and Gretchen Franklin is in amusing form as the maid, Patty. The recruiting sergeant (Bernard Clifton) and Patty really constitute the traditional comic lovers of the stage, and their jolly musical numbers – "Cowslip Wine" and "Marry and Carry Me Home" – add to the evening's gaiety. Noel Dyson, Moya Nugent, and Betty England give of their best as the Throssel sisters' somewhat acidulated friends, and the remaining principals do loyally what is demanded of them. In the company are a number of happy-looking children, and the schoolroom scene provides another joyful anticipation of pantomime-time. Charles Hickman's direction of the play is marred only by his apparent insistence on the curious pronunciation that has been already noted. Freddie Carpenter’s arrangements of the dances reveal his customary accomplishment, and Doris Zinkeisen's decorations could hardly be more enchanting. Philip Martell skilfully directs the orchestra.
The Stage (London), Thursday, 19 October 1950, p.9
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The delightful scene where Miss Phoebe, disguised as her fictitious niece "Livvy," becomes the toast of all the gentlemen at the Waterloo Ball. “Miss Livvy" is proved to be an outrageous flirt, who teases Valentine mercilessly. In the picture she is singing the tuneful number, "I Can't Resist the Music."
The happy ending to the play when Valentine Brown makes it clear that he has never forgotten "Miss Phoebe of the ringlets." "Livvy" has had to be banished for ever, and Miss Phoebe and Valentine reaffirm their love by singing "Spring will Sing a Song."
(photos courtesy of Rex Bunnett)
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Walter Kollo
The original "Three Old Boxes"
The German operetta Drei alte Schachteln (“Three Old Boxes”) was not credited as being directly based on Quality Street, but even a cursory glance at the plot reveals that its inspiration was clearly that of the Barrie play, albeit with sufficient variations to apparently avoid a direct charge of plagiarism. Nor is there any evidence that Barrie was ever consulted about Drei alte Schachteln, (perhaps unsurprisingly given that it premiered in Berlin in the closing years of WW1); unlike George Bernard Shaw, whose permission was sought to use his play, Arms and the Man as the basis for the 1908 Oscar Straus operetta, Der tapfere Soldat ("The bold Soldier"), to which he consented on the condition that none of his dialogue nor character names be used in the production. (With typical Shavian wit he also added the proviso that the operetta be billed as “With Apologies to GEORGE BERNARD SHAW for an unauthorised Parody on one of his Comedies.” He also declined the offer of a share of the royalties in the resulting work, to his later chagrin when Der tapfere Soldat became an international success, especially in its English-language version as The Chocolate Soldier, which overshadowed his original play for many years to come.)
Drei alte Schachteln, with music by Walter Kollo, lyrics by “Rideamus” (alias Fritz Oliven) and a libretto by Herman Haller, premiered at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz in Berlin on 6 October 1917 and became a great success, with a run of over 450 performances, and one of Kollo’s most enduring stage works.
The operetta takes place in Potsdam at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Prologue is set in the Salon in the Krüger Villa, where the young Charlotte Krüger waits longingly for her lover, the trainee Klaus Kersting, who has announced that he will visit her today. She thinks he wants to propose to her, a proposal she has been waiting for for a long time. However, she is bitterly disappointed when Kersting finally arrives; his visit is solely for the purpose of saying goodbye to her. He has joined the army and will go off to war without her.
Margrit Bollmann as Charlotte & Paul Roettges as Klaus
Ingeborg Hanzen as Ursula & Traute Rose as Auguste
The First Act opens in the Salon ten long years later. Klaus Kersting has made a career in the army and returns from the war as a captain. With him is his friend Cornelius Hasenpfeffer, who still holds the same rank as he did at the beginning of the war: Sergeant. Together they visit the villa of the two sisters Charlotte and Ursula Krüger. Auguste, the cook, also lives in their house and before the war, she had promised to marry Cornelius.
Margrit Bollmann, Willi Fösterling as Cornelius & Traute Rose
Traute Rose, Ingeborg Hanzen & Margrit Bollmann
Strangely enough, Klaus is surprised that his Charlotte is no longer as young and agile as she was when he last saw her. And Cornelius feels the same when he looks at his fiancée; the years of hardship and work have left their mark on both of them. However, the two sisters and their housekeeper are aware of what is going through the men's minds. So they turn the soldiers down after they have been invited by them to the regimental ball that is to take place the next day. But as soon as the “three old bags” are among themselves again, they decide to attend the ball, just to spite everyone.
The Second Act takes place in the Ballroom in the Regimental Casino, where the festive ball has begun. An elegantly gowned young lady attracts Kersting's interest, and that is her intention. The lady is none other than Charlotte Krüger. Using all the finesse of feminine art, she has managed to look several years younger. Klaus asks her to dance. When he asks her about the "resemblance" to Charlotte, the lady pretends to be her niece "Dörthe", who arrived in Potsdam only yesterday evening to visit her aunts. "Dörthe" knows how to stir up the emotions of the "strange" man. But when he asks her for a kiss, she lets him know that she only came here to find a young man who suits her and not an old cracker like him. Kersting resigns himself and falls into melancholy.
Paul Roettges & Margrit Bollmann as Charlotte (alias Dörthe)
Meanwhile, Cornelius turns out to be a real womaniser, so his fiancée decides to keep a close eye on him in case the marriage he has long promised should eventuate.
The Third Act takes place back at the Krüger Villa on the following day, where Klaus and Cornelius arrive again in the salon of the "three old bags". While talking to Charlotte, Kersting soon realises that she has completely misled him yesterday, because the two Krüger sisters don't have a niece at all. But his heart is once again set on Charlotte. When the two hear that the cook Auguste and her Cornelius are already making wedding plans, they too consider when the best time would be to get married. Only Ursula, the older of the two sisters, is left behind once again.
Traute Rose & Willi Fösterling
Margrit Bollmann & Paul Roettges
Cast photos by Gerd Weiss of the 1954 German revival
(Baden-Württemberg State Archives)
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The parallels between Drei alte Schachteln and Quality Street were made much more apparent when both were subsequently used as the basis for the Broadway operetta Phoebe of Quality Street, with the libretto and lyrics adapted by Edward Delaney Dunn to more accurately reflect the plot of Barrie’s original play, set to Kollo’s music from the Berlin production.
The resulting stage show premiered at the Shubert Theatre in New York under the auspices of producers, Lee and J.J. Shubert on 9 May 1921 starring British musical comedy actress (and acclaimed pantomime ‘principal boy’), Dorothy Ward as Phoebe Throssel, Jessamine Newcombe as Susan Throssel, Warren Proctor as Valentine Brown and Shaun Glenville (Ward’s husband—also an accomplished panto. ‘dame’) in the featured comedy role of Sergeant Terrence O’Toole (expanded from the character of the Recruiting Sergeant in Barrie’s play), under the musical direction of Max Steiner, but only managed a measly run of 16 performances, before closing on 21 May.
Dorothy Ward (c.1921)
Warren Proctor as Valentine Brown
photo by Edward Thayer Monroe
Critical reaction to the operetta was mixed. The New York Times renowned theatre critic, Alexander Woollcott penned the following appraisal.
Barrie With Frills
“Quality Street” the frail and rather peaked little comedy which was the least of all the Barrie plays that used to bring Maude Adams to the Empire, has undergone some strange and unanticipated renovations in order to fit it twenty years later for the uses of the Shubert Theatre in the Spring of 1921. There it appeared last evening under the name of "Phoebe of Quality Street," a light opera of sorts, sometimes good to look at and nearly always pleasing to hear. Its earnest efforts to go further and be amusing are not strikingly successful
Since Barrie finished with it, “Quality Street” has acquired a Viennese score or at least some music by the Viennese composer, Walter Kollo, that is uncommonly engaging and this happens to be pretty well sung throughout. Then it has been braced up by the enlistment of an Irish recruiting sergeant, coming green and racy from some peat-bog of vaudeville, bringing his jokes with him. These did not convulse last nights' audience, not even that quaint little Barriesque whimsy which consists of the Irish cook asking him if Miss Phoebe's young man had had previous military experience and the doughty 1810 sergeant replying that once he had been half-shot.
But most striking of all the play's acquisitions is Dorothy Ward, whose selection as Phoebe is surely the most astonishing bit of casting that the current season has witnessed. She is a handsome and buxom young English woman, who looks like Mrs. Clare Sheridan, with just a dash of Margot Kelly. Such fame as she may have acquired at home has not been sufficiently reverberant for the echoes of it to reach these shores, so that the interest was all the keener and the anticipation all the more lively when the propagandists, in beating the drum in front of the Shubert, announced to all and sundry that here was "England's greatest Comedienne.”
Under the handicap of that announcement, which naturally emphasized the fact that she was showing not a glimmer of the comedienne's art, poor Miss Ward had to face her first American audience. Her considerable assets of voice and vitality—she has a good deal of both—were overlooked in this audience's wide-eyed surprise at her playing a dainty Barrie operetta in the frenzied manner usually reserved for the mad scenes of Italian opera. If this is Miss Ward's idea of Phoebe Throssel, we should like, as the saying goes, to see her play Ophelia.
But she does sing the songs prettily and has an able partner for the purpose in Warren Proctor, who was last heard on the same stage as the thing of shreds and patches in "The Mikado." Then the Glorias enliven the second act with a sort of minuet and so it goes.
The New York Times, 10 May 1921, p.27
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While Woollcott’s fellow habitues of the Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker and Heywood Broun were far less charitable. Parker opined in Ainslee's that: "They have brought over from England a lady named Dorothy Ward to play the title role of Phoebe in Quality Street and, considering what a first-class passage costs these days, it seems really staggering to think of the money that could have been saved by the simple means of letting her stay happily at home." While Broun wrote in the New York Tribune that a recent film version of Barrie's 1902 play The Admirable Crichton (i.e. Cecil B. DeMille’s Male and Female starring Gloria Swanson in 1919), was "bad enough” but it didn't begin "to approach the devastation" wrought by Phoebe of Quality Street. If Barrie ever saw the musical, Broun asserted, he wouldn't recognise it "as any child of his," not even as a "distant niece."
And a further selection of negative reviews contributed to the show’s death knell, including that in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which was headlined "Poor J.M. Barrie Gets Very Badly Treated," below which the reviewer went on to suggest that had Barrie seen the musical "he would have wept." While Edward Delaney Dunn was charged with doing his "worst" with the adaptation, and "worst than that" was Ward, who had apparently "spent the years of her life collecting all the affectations in the world" and thus acted the role "to death." And what she didn't do to the original play, the "hackneyed" Glenville did the rest with "a method as old as the hills and almost as old as Mr. Dunn's jokes."
The few positive reviews that the show garnered included that in the New York Evening World by Charles Darnton, who found Ward "charming" and "thoroughly winsome," and noted that Kollo's score was "charming" and possessed of an "irresistible swing." Glenville, however, was "burdened by jokes that must have come over with Columbus." While Jolo in Variety said the musical was "an occasion for joy and thankfulness" with a story "far removed from the imbecilic plots" that prevailed on Broadway, and Kollo's score was "legitimate" and "dignified." Glenville was "excruciatingly funny”, and as for those who thought Ward overacted, the critic queried "when did one ever encounter any acting in our musical comedy productions?" However the naysayers’ opinions were in the majority and led to the show’s early demise on Broadway, after which it disappeared without a trace.
Away from the cynical gaze of the New York critics, another perspective of the show from "behind the footlights" (and on its pre-Broadway tour), was provided by the London theatrical journal The Era:
DOROTHY WARD AND SHAUN GLENVILLE IN THE STATES.
FELICITATED BY PRESIDENT HARDING.
Miss Dorothy Ward and Mr. Shaun Glenville, both so popular with playgoers in London and the provinces, have scored unmistakable personal successes on their first appearance in the United States according to our New York correspondent. They made their début in “Phoebe of Quality Street,” a musical version of Sir James M. Barrie's “Quality Street,” which has been acted as a comedy in both the United States and over here.
In the States it was no less a stage favourite than Miss Maud Adams, who acted the demure Phoebe, and Miss Ward's success in the character is all the greater because of this fact. “Phoebe of Quality Street” was adapted to the musical comedy stage by Edward Delaney Dunn, with music by Walter Kollo. The Press was divided in its judgement on the play, but Miss Ward offered no such disagreement. Her beauty, her charm and stage talent each received praise from the critics in Atlantic City, where the play was first produced, in Washington, where it next played, and where President Harding was an interested auditor, and later in New York. It is known that Mr. Shubert, who engaged Miss Ward and Mr. Glenville, has persuaded each to cancel their vaudeville bookings in London and elsewhere until after Christmas in order that they may appear in another play. Miss Ward feels that it would be wise for her to remain to enact a new role more suitable to her manifold charms and talents, than her present part, and she has cabled her agents accordingly.
A representative of “The Era” found the popular English actress in her dressing-room at the Shubert, delighted with her success and bubbling over with animation. “Do you hear them?” she cried in glee as the applause from the audience reached her dressing-room. “Isn't it wonderful? Now that it is ail over I confess that I was a bit nervous until after the first performance. You know when Mr. Shubert engaged me he did not tell me what play I was to appear in. All I knew was that he wanted me to star in a new musical play, and it was not until I arrived in New York that I was handed my part, and knew that it was the character that Maud Adams had played so beautifully many years ago. It is difficult for any one to ‘follow’ Maud Adams, who is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, actress on the American stage; and besides, the role is one that is not in line with the work that I love best and have done most of. However, if the proof of the pudding is the eating, I have had a most enjoyable meal.”
And Miss Ward and Mr. Glenville have every reason to feel proud of their personal successes. If the critics failed to agree upon the merits of the play, they did agree that Miss Ward was utterly delightful, that she danced divinely, sang prettily, and looked like a Juno with an aureole. Her beautiful hair has already formed the subject of many Press stories.
While in Washington, Mr. Glenville— who, by the way, has been accepted at once as one of the cleverest comedians that have come to the States—was the recipient of a photograph from President Harding on which he inscribed a most cordial sentiment, expressing his appreciation for “a most delightful evening and many hearty laughs.” An added role has been written into the play for Mr. Glenville, that of an Irish sergeant, and he acts this with considerable skill, besides adding much to the gaiety of the play by his topical songs, his agile dancing, and some of his own specialities which he has cleverly interwoven in the story.
Miss Ward sends her greetings to her friends, in which Mr. Gienville joins.
“We are here until late in the year,” she says, “but we will eat our usual Christmas pudding with our friends at home.”
The latest news is that “Phoebe of Quality-street” closed after a fortnight’s engagement at the Shubert Theatre, but Miss Ward and Mr. Glenville were at once re-engaged by the Shuberts to star in “The Belle of New York of 1921," which will open this week at the Winter Garden for a summer engagement. Miss Ward will have a congenial role in the new play, which is built from the material of the popular “Belle,” with a lot of new material to bring it to date.
The Era (London), Wednesday, 1 June 1921, p.12
(The latter show referenced by the journal subsequently opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York on 13 June under the title of The Whirl of New York and played successfully for 124 performances.)
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Meanwhile Walter Kollo’s Drei alte Schachteln continued to receive the occasional European revival up to more recent times and the original score was recorded complete in 1953 by Cantus Classics (reissued on CD in 2010) and in 1993 by BMG/Eurodisc. The latter is available to hear on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USsNxLJEAWo&list=OLAK5uy_m-QGi0alMKo6KvShafqfhjFqwDF0vFIdk&index=1
Additional Sources:
Wikipedia (German edition - translated)
Dan Dietz, The Complete Book of 1920s Broadway Musicals (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Washington DC, 2019)
