I loved High Button Shoes, which is based on Stephen Longstreet's semi-autobiographical novel, The Sisters Liked Them Handsome. The Longstreets were a socially prominent family in New Brunswick, NJ, and I have no idea how much of the script is accurate, but i'm sure for the author and a lot of the audience in 1947 it was a nostalgic trip back to 1912.
The score is fun, the orchestrations really nice, and the show relies heavily on vaudeville actors doing their schtick. I find it equivalent to old comedia del'arte p[lays by Goldoni in which the serious actors acted their lines while the clowns improvised and adapted their comic business and dialogue to the necessities of the plot. Act One is the setup to the swindle which culminates in the great, and worth seeing over and over, zany Act Two Mack Sennett ballet, which is absolutely brilliant, accompanied with bits from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, Columbia the Gem of the Ocean, and other tunes. I'd go back tomorrow just for the ballet.
This is unusual that he went through many names.
Frm wikipedia:
Born Chauncey (later Henri) Weiner (sometimes Wiener), he was known as Stephen Longstreet from 1939. He wrote as Paul Haggard, David Ormsbee and Thomas Burton, and Longstreet, as well as his birth name.
The 1948 Broadway musical High Button Shoes was based on Longstreet's semi-autobiographical 1946 novel, The Sisters Liked Them Handsome.
Under contract at Warner Bros. in the 1940s, Longstreet wrote The Jolson Story and Stallion Road, based on his novel of the same name and starring Ronald Reagan. He later wrote The Helen Morgan Story, and as a television writer in the 1950s and 1960s he wrote for Playhouse 90.
