High Button Shoes

High Button Shoes
1947 Original Broadway Production Poster
Music	Jule Styne
Lyrics	Sammy Cahn
Book	Stephen Longstreet George Abbott
Basis	Novel by Stephen Longstreet The Sisters Liked Them Handsome
Productions	1947 Broadway 1948 West End 1956 Television 1982 Goodspeed Opera House 2007 Goodspeed Opera House

High Button Shoes is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by George Abbott and Stephen Longstreet. It was based on the semi-autobiographical 1946 novel The Sisters Liked Them Handsome by Longstreet. The story concerns the comic entanglements of the Longstreet family with two con men in Atlantic City.

The musical opened on Broadway in 1947 (running for 727 performances), on the West End in 1948, and has had several regional revivals as well as being televised in 1956.

Many involved with High Button Shoes were Broadway first-timers or relatively unknown, except for the director, George Abbott. The creative team, composer Jule Styne, lyricist Sammy Cahn and writer Stephen Longstreet had worked in Hollywood, as had the producers Monte Proser and Joseph Kipness (who had also produced several short-lived Broadway shows) and actors Phil Silvers, who was known for his on-screen con-man persona, and Nanette Fabray. The designers Oliver Smith and Miles White and choreographer Jerome Robbins were all Broadway veterans. Rumors circulated that the book by Longstreet was "hopeless" and that Abbott and Silvers were "heavily rewriting" it. The Shuberts, involved because the show was to play in one of their theaters, approved an increase in Abbott's percentage to include author's royalties. Historian Ken Mandelbaum agrees that the show's book was originally by Longstreet but that it was extensively rewritten by Abbott.