As Thousands Cheer

As Thousands Cheer (1933), a musical revue by Moss Hart (sketches), Irving Berlin (music, lyrics). [Music Box Theatre, 400 perf.] This revue was cleverly tied together by the device of pretending that each song and skit was derived from a headline in one imaginary newspaper. Thus, the headlines “Heat Wave Hits New York” and “Unknown Negro Lynched By Frenzied Mob” provided cues for Ethel Waters's two great numbers, “Heat Wave” and “Supper Time.” The latter song was an early attempt to inject serious social comment into a basically lighthearted evening. The first act finale, coming to life from the cover of the paper's rotogravure section, celebrated a turn‐of‐the‐century “Easter Parade,” with Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb leading the Fifth Avenue paraders. The sketches poked fun at famous people, such as Miller's impersonation of Barbara Hutton, Waters as Josephine Baker, Helen Broderick as Aimee Semple McPherson, and Webb as Mahatma Gandhi on a hunger strike and John D. Rockefeller rejecting the gift of Rockefeller Center. Other notable songs: How's Chances?; Harlem on My Mind; Lonely Heart; Not for All the Rice in China. Brooks Atkinson of the Times called the revue “a superb panorama of entertainment.” Although the Sam Harris production was often as lavish as the opulent extravaganzas of earlier decades, the spectacle in this case was always secondary to the content, and the show took its place among the new generation of more thoughtful revues. A small‐scale Off‐Broadway revival in 1998 was well received.