"Jerome Kern's last musical, 'Very Warm for May,' bombed on Broadway in 1939, six years before the composer's death. Written with Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom Kern had created the epochal 'Show Boat' in 1927, the work vanished from public view for nearly half a century.Hammerstein wouldn't allow the revival of the ill-fated show, which featured Kern's classic 'All the Things You Are,' whose ingenious harmonic structure has inspired countless jazz improvisers. In 1985, New York's Equity Theater Library got the OK to put on a small-scale production of 'Very Warm for May,' which made people take note. It's a show-within-a-show about an avant-garde theater troupe rehearsing a surrealist musical in the barn of a kooky Long Island matron. Eve Arden, who became famous years later as TV's 'Our Miss Brooks,' played her on Broadway."
What a great idea. Clear off all that overgrown brush that passes for musical theater today. Let's bring back Of Thee I Sing while we're at it.
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