Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern (1885-1945) composed his first complete show, The Red Petticoat, in 1912. Between 1915 and 1919, he composed a series of intimate chamber musicals, mostly in collaboration with Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, known as the Princess Theatre shows. These works — Very Good Eddie; Oh, Boy!; Oh, Lady! Lady!!; Leave It To Jane; And Zip Goes A Million — are credited with laying the foundation of the modern American musical comedy. Throughout the 1920s Kern's composing style broadened with works such as Sally; Sitting Pretty; Dear Sir; Sunny; and The City Chap, culminating in 1927 with the American operetta masterpiece, Show Boat (written with Oscar Hammerstein II). With that epic, Kern began a series of works for the stage which were more operatic and involved the close interweaving of music, song and speech, including Sweet Adeline (1929), The Cat And The Fiddle (1931), Music In The Air (1932) and Roberta (1933).