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50-455: Owing to high ticket prices, ribald publicity campaigns and the occasional use of prurient material, the revue was typically patronized by audience members who earned more and felt even less restricted by middle-class social norms than their contemporaries in vaudeville . Like much of that era's popular entertainments, revues often featured material based on sophisticated, irreverent dissections of topical matter, public personae and fads, though

100-424: A classic by critics. Atkinson, reviewing the revival, wrote that the musical "renews confidence in the professionalism of the theatre." Time devoted a cover story to Rodgers and Hart on September 26, 1938. The magazine reported that their success "rests on a commercial instinct that most of their rivals have apparently ignored". The article also noted their "spirit of adventure." "As Rodgers and Hart see it, what

150-557: A competing revue to the undergraduates, called variably Revue and Integration or Revue and Imitation. The Moira Stuart Cup is competed for annually at the United Hospitals Comedy Revue, by all five of the University of London Medical Schools . It has been won by all medical schools at least once, with RUMS (UCL Medical School) and St George's Hospital Medical School achieving the most victories, winning

200-652: A continued embrace of a unifying authorial presence in this seemingly scattershot genre, much as was earlier the case with Ziegfeld, Carrol, et al . With different artistic emphases, the revue genre is today above all upheld at traditional variety theatres such as the Le Lido , Moulin Rouge and Friedrichstadt-Palast Berlin, as well as in shows in Las Vegas. It is a current and fairly longstanding tradition of medical, dental, engineering, legal and veterinary schools within

250-406: A cut above, so did the team try to raise the standard of the musical form in general. Thus, A Connecticut Yankee (1927) was based on Mark Twain 's novel, and The Boys From Syracuse (1938) on William Shakespeare 's The Comedy of Errors . "They had always considered the integration of story and music a crucial factor in a successful show." They used dance significantly in their work, using

300-405: A joke about impregnating his wife "right through the old midnight trampoline" (her diaphragm ) and other sexual references. Some comedians build their careers on blue comedy. Among the best known of these are Redd Foxx , Lawanda Page , and the team of Leroy and Skillet, all of whom later performed on the family-friendly television show Sanford and Son . Page, Leroy, and Skillet specialised in

350-410: A master of ribaldry (technically called grotesque body ) in his Gargantua and other works. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne and The Lady's Dressing Room by Jonathan Swift are also in this genre; as is Mark Twain 's long-suppressed 1601 . Another example of ribaldry is " De Brevitate Vitae ", a song which in many European -influenced universities

400-477: A particular African American form of blue spoken word recitation called signifying or toasting . Dave Attell has also been described by his peers as one of the greatest modern-day blue comics. On talk radio in the United States and elsewhere, blue comedy is a staple of the shock jock 's repertoire. The use of blue comedy over American radio airwaves is severely restricted due to decency regulations;

450-487: A series of successful musicals and films. They quickly became among the most popular songwriters in America, and from 1925 to 1931 had fifteen scores featured on Broadway. In the early 1930s they moved to Hollywood, where they created several popular songs for film, such as " Isn't It Romantic? " and " Lover ", before returning to Broadway in 1935 with Billy Rose 's Jumbo . From 1935 to Hart's death in 1943, they wrote

500-413: A single entertainment. Minstrelsy 's olio section provided a structural map of popular variety presentation, while literary travesties highlighted an audience hunger for satire. Theatrical extravaganzas , in particular, moving panoramas, demonstrated a vocabulary of the spectacular. Burlesque , itself a bawdy hybrid of various theatrical forms, lent to classic revue an open interest in female sexuality and

550-468: A string of highly regarded Broadway musicals, most of which were hits. Many of their stage musicals from the late 1930s were made into films, including On Your Toes (1936) and Babes in Arms (1937), though rarely with their scores intact. Pal Joey (1940), termed their masterpiece, has a book by The New Yorker writer John O'Hara . O'Hara adapted his own short stories for the show, which featured

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600-449: A title character who is a heel . Critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in his review, "Although it is expertly done, how can you draw sweet water from a foul well?" When the show was revived in 1952, audiences had learned to accept darker material, thanks in large part to Rodgers' work with Oscar Hammerstein II . The new production had a considerably longer run than the original and was now considered

650-412: A traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan , that took place in late 1975 and early 1976. Towards the end of the 20th century, a subgenre of revue largely dispensed with the sketches, founding narrative structure within a song cycle in which the material is culled from varied works. This type of revue may or may not have identifiable characters and a rudimentary storyline but, even when it does,

700-511: A wondrous toy/Just made for a girl and boy" in the first stanza, then reprises with "The city's clamor can never spoil/The dreams of a boy and goil" in the last. Many of the songs (" Falling in Love with Love ", " Little Girl Blue ", " My Funny Valentine ") are wistful or sad, and emotional ambivalence seems to be perceptible in the background of even the sunnier songs. For example, "You Took Advantage of Me" appears to be an evocation of amorous joy, but

750-420: Is a humorous song that emphasises sexual themes and is often rich with innuendo . Historically these songs tend to be confined to groups of young males, either as students or in an environment where alcohol is flowing freely. An early collection was Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy , edited by Thomas D'Urfey and published between 1698 and 1720. Selected songs from Wit and Mirth have been recorded by

800-416: Is a usual counterpart of ribaldry underlies its controversial nature and explains why ribaldry is sometimes a subject of censorship . Ribaldry, whose usual aim is not "merely" to be sexually stimulating, often does address larger concerns than mere sexual appetite. However, being presented in the form of comedy, these larger concerns may be overlooked by censors. Sex is presented in ribald material more for

850-463: Is both a student beer-drinking song and an anthem sung by official university choirs at public graduation ceremonies. The private and public versions of the song contain vastly different words. More recent works like Candy , Barbarella , L'Infermiera , the comedic works of Russ Meyer , Little Annie Fanny and John Barth 's The Sot-Weed Factor are probably better classified as ribaldry than as either pornography or erotica. A bawdy song

900-411: Is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to indecency . Blue comedy is also referred to as "bawdiness" or being "bawdy". Like any humour, ribaldry may be read as conventional or subversive . Ribaldry typically depends on a shared background of sexual conventions and values, and its comedy generally depends on seeing those conventions broken. The ritual taboo -breaking that

950-528: Is not so, as the Oxford English Dictionary contains earlier references to the use of blue to mean ribald: 1890 Sporting Times 25 Jan. 1/1 "Shifter wondered whether the damsel knew any novel blue stories." and 1900 Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Oct. 12/4 "Let someone propose to celebrate Chaucer by publicly reading some of his bluest productions unexpurgated. The reader would probably be locked up." Private events at show business clubs such as

1000-409: Is now sometimes (incorrectly) employed as an analog for "revue," though the term was proprietary to Ziegfeld until his death in 1932. Other popular proprietary revue names included George White's "Scandals," Earl Carroll 's "Vanities" and John Murray Anderson 's Greenwich Village Follies . Revues are most properly understood as having amalgamated several theatrical traditions within the corpus of

1050-515: Is present to some degree in every culture and has likely been around for all of human history. Works like Lysistrata by Aristophanes , Menaechmi by Plautus , Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius , and The Golden Ass of Apuleius are ribald classics from ancient Greece and Rome . Geoffrey Chaucer 's " The Miller's Tale " from his Canterbury Tales and The Crabfish , one of the oldest English traditional ballads, are classic examples. The Frenchman François Rabelais showed himself to be

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1100-478: The City Waites and other singers. Sailor's songs tend to be quite frank about the exploitative nature of the relationship between men and women. There are many examples of folk songs in which a man encounters a woman in the countryside. This is followed by a short conversation, and then sexual intercourse, e.g. "The Game of All Fours". Neither side demonstrates any shame or regret. If the woman becomes pregnant,

1150-497: The Federal Communications Commission can levy fines against radio stations that air obscene content. As a part of English literature, blue literature dates back to at least Middle English , while bawdy humor is a central element in works of such writers as Shakespeare and Chaucer . Examples of blue literature are also present in various cultures, among different social classes, and genders. Until

1200-633: The Follies charged $ 5.00 for an opening night ticket ($ 130 in 2020 dollars); at that time, many cinema houses charged from $ 0.10 to 0.25, while low-priced vaudeville seats were $ 0.15. Among the many popular producers of revues, Florenz Ziegfeld played the greatest role in developing the classical revue through his glorification of a new theatrical "type", "the American girl". Famed for his often bizarre publicity schemes and continual debt, Ziegfeld joined Earl Carroll , George White , John Murray Anderson , and

1250-764: The Marx Brothers and the Fairbanks Twins found great success on the revue stage. One of Cole Porter 's early shows was Raymond Hitchcock 's revue Hitchy-Koo of 1919 . Composers or lyricists such as Richard Rodgers , Lorenz Hart , Irving Berlin , and George M. Cohan also enjoyed a tremendous reception on the part of audiences. Sometimes, an appearance in a revue provided a key early entry into entertainment. Largely due to their centralization in New York City and their adroit use of publicity, revues proved particularly adept at introducing new talents to

1300-634: The Masquers often showed this blue side of otherwise clean-cut comedians; a recording survives of one Masquers roast from the 1950s with Jack Benny , George Jessel , George Burns , and Art Linkletter all using highly risqué material and obscenities. Many comedians who are normally family-friendly might choose to work blue when off-camera or in an adult-oriented environment; Bob Saget exemplified this dichotomy . Bill Cosby 's 1969 record album 8:15 12:15 records both his family-friendly evening standup comedy show, and his blue midnight show, which included

1350-624: The Shubert Brothers as the leading producing figure of the American revue's golden age. Revues also had a presence in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, with films such as "Frau meiner Träume" being made. Revues took advantage of their high revenue stream to lure away performers from other media, often offering exorbitant weekly salaries without the unremitting travel demanded by other entertainments. Performers such as Eddie Cantor , Anna Held , W. C. Fields , Bert Williams , Ed Wynn ,

1400-585: The doo-wop style, by The Marcels . Bob Dylan included his Nashville-inflected version of the song on his Self Portrait album of 1970. Frederick Nolan writes that " My Romance " (written for Jumbo ) "features some of the most elegantly wistful lyrics...[it] is, quite simply, one of the best songs Rodgers and Hart ever wrote." Other of their many hits include " My Funny Valentine ", " Falling in Love with Love ", " Here In My Arms ", " Mountain Greenery ", " My Heart Stood Still ", " The Blue Room ", " Ten Cents

1450-512: The 1940s, writers of English-language blue literature were almost exclusively men; since then it has become possible for women to build a commercial career on blue literature. While no extensive cross-cultural study has been made in an attempt to prove the universality of blue literature, oral tradition around the world suggests that this may be the case. Rodgers and Hart Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership between composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and

1500-567: The American theatre. Rodgers and Hart , one of the great composer/lyricist teams of the American musical theatre , followed up their early Columbia University student revues with the successful Garrick Gaieties (1925). Comedian Fanny Brice , following a brief period in burlesque and amateur variety, bowed to revue audiences in Ziegfeld's Follies of 1910 . Specialist writers and composers of revues have included Sandy Wilson , Noël Coward , John Stromberg, George Gershwin , Earl Carroll , and

1550-615: The British team Flanders and Swann . In Britain predominantly, Tom Arnold also specialized in promoting series of revues and his acts extended to the European continent and South Africa. With the introduction of talking pictures, in 1927, studios immediately began filming acts from the stage. Such film shorts gradually replaced the live entertainment that had often accompanied cinema exhibition. By 1928, studios began planning to film feature-length versions of popular musicals and revues from

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1600-647: The Festival, with St. George's Medics Revue having been performing annually at the Fringe for 18 years and have sold-out their show for the last nine years. The BSMS Medic Revue has performed sellout shows in the Brighton Fringe Festival since 2008. The MDs Comedy Revue performed at the Fringe for the first time in 2015, to a sell-out audience, repeating this feat their second show in 2016 and their third in 2018. The Cambridge clinical school also now run

1650-667: The UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia to put on revues each year, combining comedy sketches, songs, parodies, films and sound-bites. One of the most notable and funniest is the Australian National University's "Arts Revue". As well as performing at their respective universities, shows will often be performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe . The Cambridge Medics Revue, St George's Medics Revue, and Birmingham Medics Revues have all performed at

1700-464: The act of using swear words and discussing things that people would not discuss in "polite society". A "blue comedian" or "blue comic" is a comedian who usually performs risqué routines layered with curse words. There is a common belief that comedian Max Miller (1894–1963) coined the phrase, after his stage act which involved telling jokes from either a white book or a blue book, chosen by audience preference (the blue book contained ribald jokes). This

1750-456: The ballets of George Balanchine . Comparisons between Rodgers and Hart and the successor team of Rodgers and Hammerstein are inevitable. Hammerstein's lyrics project warmth, sincere optimism, and occasional corniness. Hart's lyrics showed greater sophistication in subject matter, more use of overt verbal cleverness, and more of a "New York" or "Broadway" sensibility. The archetypal Rodgers and Hart song, "Manhattan", rhymes "The great big city's

1800-443: The bandwagon and produced expensive revues such as Harmony Heaven ( British International Pictures , 1929), Elstree Calling (BIP, 1930), and The Musical Revue Of 1959 (BI P, 1960). Revues are often common today as student entertainment (with strong traditions in many universities in UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark). These use pastiche , in which contemporary songs are re-written in order to comment on

1850-469: The college or courses in a humorous nature. While most comic songs will only be heard within the revue they were written for, sometimes they become more widely known—such as "A Transport of Delight", about the big red London bus, by Flanders and Swann , who first made their name in a revue titled At the Drop of a Hat . The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour in the mid-1970s consisting of

1900-666: The lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895–1943). They worked together on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs from 1919 until Hart's death in 1943. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were introduced in 1919 while Rodgers was still in high school and Hart had already graduated from Columbia University . One of their first collaborations was at Columbia, and resulted in the 1920 Varsity Show , Fly With Me , which incidentally also involved Oscar Hammerstein II . After writing together for several years, they produced their first successful Broadway musical, The Garrick Gaieties , in 1925, which introduced their hit song " Manhattan " and led to

1950-401: The man will not be there anyway. Rugby songs are often bawdy. Examples of bawdy folk songs are: " Seventeen Come Sunday " and " The Ballad of Eskimo Nell ". Robert Burns compiled The Merry Muses of Caledonia (the title is not Burns's), a collection of bawdy lyrics that were popular in the music halls of Scotland as late as the 20th century. In modern times Hash House Harriers have taken on

2000-612: The masculine gaze. Revues enjoyed great success on Broadway from the World War I years until the Great Depression , when the stock market crash forced many revues from cavernous Broadway houses into smaller venues. (The shows did, however, continue to infrequently appear in large theatres well into the 1950s.) The high ticket prices of many revues helped ensure audiences distinct from other live popular entertainments during their height of popularity (late 1910s–1940s). In 1914,

2050-452: The primary attraction was found in the frank display of the female body. Revue comes from the French word for "review," as in a "show presenting a review of current events." George Lederer 's The Passing Show (1894) is usually held to be the first successful American "review." The English spelling was used until 1907 when Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. popularized the French spelling. "Follies"

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2100-524: The purpose of poking fun at the foibles and weaknesses that manifest themselves in human sexuality , rather than to present sexual stimulation either overtly or artistically. Also, ribaldry may use sex as a metaphor to illustrate some non-sexual concern, in which case ribaldry borders satire . Ribaldry differs from black comedy in that the latter deals with topics that would normally be considered painful or frightening , whereas ribaldry deals with topics that would only be considered offensive. Ribaldry

2150-421: The role of tradition-bearers for this kind of song. The Unexpurgated Folk Songs of Men (Arhoolie 4006) is a gramophone record containing a collection of American bawdy songs recorded in 1959. Blue comedy is comedy that is off-colour , risqué , indecent , or profane , largely about sex. It often contains profanity or sexual imagery that may shock and offend some audience members. "Working blue" refers to

2200-508: The songs remain the focus of the show (for example, Closer Than Ever by Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire ). This type of revue usually showcases songs written by a particular composer or songs made famous by a particular performer. Examples of the former are Side By Side By Sondheim (music/lyrics Stephen Sondheim ), Eubie! ( Eubie Blake ) Tom Foolery ( Tom Lehrer ), and Five Guys Named Moe (songs made popular by Louis Jordan ). The eponymous nature of these later revues suggest

2250-785: The stage. The lavish films, noted by many for a sustained opulence unrivaled in Hollywood until the 1950s epics, reached a breadth of audience never found by the stage revue, all while significantly underpricing the now-faltering theatrical shows. A number of revues were released by the studios, many of which were filmed entirely (or partly) in color. The most notable examples of these are The Show of Shows ( Warner Brothers , 1929), The Hollywood Revue of 1929 ( Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , 1929), Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 ( Fox Film Corporation , 1929), Paramount on Parade ( Paramount , 1930), New Movietone Follies of 1930 (Fox, 1930), and King of Jazz ( Universal , 1930). Even Britain jumped on

2300-495: The standard for Broadway songwriting. "His ability to write cleverly and to come up with unexpected, polysyllabic rhymes was something of a trademark, but he also had the even rarer ability to write with utmost simplicity and deep emotion." Rodgers, as a creator of melodies, ranks with Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin . Their shows belong to the era when musicals were revue-like and librettos were not much more than excuses for comic turns and music cues. Still, just as their songs were

2350-465: The trophy six times each. The cup is not officially endorsed by Moira Stuart herself. a. In 2019, the judges ironically declared Imperial College School of Medicine the winners, because they could not decide which of The MDs Comedy Revue or The Zebraphiles were the funnier. b. The 2002 UH Revue was a showcase of each Medical School's Revue societies, with the competition element brought in from 2003. ribald Ribaldry or blue comedy

2400-414: The very title suggests some doubt as to whether the relationship is mutual or exploitative. One of Rodgers and Hart's best known songs, " Blue Moon ", had an unusual genesis. The tune was originally called "Prayer," and was to be sung by Jean Harlow in the 1934 film Hollywood Party , but was cut. Hart then wrote a new lyric, intended to be the title song for Manhattan Melodrama (1934), which

2450-555: Was cut again. A third lyric, "The Bad in Every Man," was used in the film. At the urging of Jack Robbins, head of MGM's music publishing unit, Hart wrote a fourth lyric as a standalone song. Glen Grey and the Casa Loma Orchestra recorded it in 1936, and that version topped the charts for three weeks. Elvis Presley included a haunting version on his self-titled debut album, in 1956. It again was #1 in 1961, this time in

2500-406: Was killing musicomedy was its sameness, its tameness, its eternal rhyming of June with moon." Their songs have long been favorites of cabaret singers and jazz artists. Ella Fitzgerald recorded their songbook and Andrea Marcovicci based one of her cabaret acts entirely on Rodgers and Hart songs. Hart's lyrics – facile, vernacular, dazzling, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholic – raised

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