The Words May Be Wrong”
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: SOMEWHERE THERE’S MUSIC: NANCY HAMILTON, THE OLD GIRLS’ NETWORK, AND THE AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE OF THE 1930S AND 1940S Korey R. Rothman, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Dissertation directed by: Professor Heather Nathans Department of Theatre Nancy Hamilton, a Broadway lyricist, playwright, actress, screenwriter, and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, is an important unsung figure of the twentieth century musical theatre. Although she is now remembered chiefly as the lyricist of the song “How High the Moon” and, in the recent drive to recover gay and lesbian history, the life-long romantic partner of “first lady of the American stage,” Katharine Cornell, Hamilton was a successful lyricist of the intimate revue, a genre of musical theatre that flourished during the 1930s. Her intimate revues One for the Money (1939) and Two for the Show (1940) launched the careers of luminaries of stage and screen, including Alfred Drake, Gene Kelly, and Betty Hutton, and Three to Make Ready (1946), which featured Ray Bolger, ran for an impressive 323 performances. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hamilton maintained a constant presence as employer or employee on Broadway, and it appeared that she thrived by surrounding herself with an Old Girls’ Network of women with whom she maintained overlapping professional and romantic relationships. This previously unchronicled Old Girls’ Network, which included women such as Katharine Hepburn, Beatrice Lillie, and Mary Martin, countered the established Old Boys’ Network of popular entertainment and launched the careers of many well-known women performers, producers, directors, composers, and lyricists. Yet, even with the support of this network, Hamilton could barely sustain her career after the 1940s. This dissertation considers the successes and failures of Hamilton’s career and suggests that Hamilton offers a fascinating case study that allows the historian to map a larger network of women on Broadway. The dissertation further considers how the story of Nancy Hamilton and her circle offers historians an opportunity to expand their analysis of American musical theatre to explore how a woman could use the “bottom-most” aspects of her identity -- her gender and (at times) sexuality -- to create a subaltern network and establish a career on Broadway. It further encourages musical theatre scholars to re-think the ways in which they document and tell the history of women in the musical theatre. SOMEWHERE THERE’S MUSIC: NANCY HAMILTON, THE OLD GIRLS’S NETWORK, AND THE AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE OF THE 1930S AND 1940S by Korey Rothman Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland at College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2005 Advisory Committee: Professor Heather Nathans, Chair Dwight Blocker Bowers Professor Jackson Bryer Professor Franklin Hildy Professor Scot Reese © Copyright by Korey R. Rothman 2005 Dedication for Stacey Finally ii Acknowledgments In one interview Nancy Hamilton stated, “All writing is plain hard work. It does not spring as the goddess Minerva did from the brain of Jupiter, instantly and fully clothed.”1 The same is true of a dissertation. Fortunately I had a number of people who made the hard work a little easier. I am grateful for the excellent institutional support I received. In particular, I want to thank Mary Ellen Rogan and Mark Maniak of the New York Performing Arts Library, Nanci Young of the Smith College Archives, Kathleen Banks Nutter of the Sophia Smith Collection, Alex Rankin of the Boston University Special Collection, Leslie Fields of the Morgan Library, the staff at the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division and Performing Arts Reading Rooms, and Judy Markowitz and Mary Scott of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the University of Maryland. I am also grateful for the financial support of Smith College -- the Margaret Storrs Grierson Travel Grant allowed me to travel to their archives -- and the American Society for Theatre Research -- the Thomas F. Marshall Travel Fellowship helped me travel to the 2003 ASTR conference, where I received valuable feedback on my research. I am also so appreciative of the people who were willing to share their memories of Nancy Hamilton with me – Nancy Smart, Margaret Hamilton, Tom Snyder, Arthus Laurents, Joe Whitmore, Nancy Nichie, Busy Suppes, and Reverend Tony Jarvis. I am especially grateful to Hamilton’s niece, Sally Hamilton. Through the time I spent with her in Boston and on Martha’s Vineyard, and through our subsequent e-mail 1 Wambly Bald, “Bachelor Girl Makes Good on Broadway,” New York Post, 12 April 1946, Nancy Hamilton, Clippings in the Theatre Collections, The Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Performing Arts Library, New York. iii correspondence, I discovered so many dimensions to her aunt. I cannot thank her enough for her time and her generosity. I am grateful for the friendship and professional advice of many people -- Brett Crawford, Richard Tharp, Andrew White, Sandy Jackson, Leslie Jansen, Michael Hastings, Frank Pajares, Rita Phelps, and, especially, Catherine Treischmann and Karl Kippola. Marcy Marinelli’s patience was a remarkable help to me. Thanks to Stacy Wolf, whose groundbreaking work on lesbians and musical theatre opened up new avenues of exploration for me, for supporting this project. Ann Hampton Callaway sang a terrific song about my dissertation. I am indebted to Catherine Schuler for her invaluable contributions to my time in graduate school. And I want to thank my family -- especially my mom, dad, and grandmother-- who always thought that by the time I was thirty they would no longer have to loan me money. I was fortunate to have a committee who offered me incredible resources. Both Scot Reese and Dwight Blocker Bowers worked with me on my Master’s thesis and have shared their encyclopedic knowledge of the American musical with me for years. Jackson Bryer reminded me how both to study theatre and love it. I am so grateful to Frank Hildy for his kindness and support. And, especially, Thanks to Heather Nathans for rescuing this project when it most needed it. I also want to thank her for being an excellent mentor – both as an educator and as a scholar -- and for all the fashion advice. Finally, I want to acknowledge Stacey Stewart. I should start by thanking her for her untiring proofreading efforts. Without her my dissertation would have approximately four billion extra commas. We started this journey together and she is with me at the end. Every day I thank her for every minute in between. iv Table of Contents Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v List of Figures............................................................................................................................... vi Introduction: “The Words May Be Wrong”............................................................................. 1 Research Methods............................................................................................................9 Chapter Structure...........................................................................................................17 Chapter One: “New Faces”: Introducing Nancy Hamilton.................................................. 21 The Hamilton Family.....................................................................................................23 Gender and Sexuality in the 1920s ................................................................................28 The Women’s Colleges..................................................................................................32 Hamilton at Smith..........................................................................................................34 Hamilton the Debutante.................................................................................................43 The Years After Smith...................................................................................................45 New York.......................................................................................................................48 Hamilton and the Women Wordsmiths .........................................................................65 Chapter Two: “Women Who Could So Amuse”: Nancy Hamilton and the Old Girls ....... 74 The Old Boys’s Network...............................................................................................75 New Faces of 1934.........................................................................................................79 Entering the Sewing Circle............................................................................................89 Brenda Forbes, Gertrude Macy, and One for the Money...............................................98 The Mannish Woman ..................................................................................................106 Two for the Show .........................................................................................................111 Enter Katherine Cornell...............................................................................................115 World War II................................................................................................................125 Three to Make Ready...................................................................................................135