Oh, Kay!

Oh, Kay!
1955 Studio Cast Recording
Music	George Gershwin
Lyrics	Ira Gershwin
Book	Guy Bolton P. G. Wodehouse
Basis	play La Presidente
Productions	1926 Broadway 1927 West End 1928 Broadway revival 1928 Film 1960 Off-Broadway revival 1990 Broadway revival

Oh, Kay! is a musical with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. It is based on the play La Presidente by Maurice Hanniquin and Pierre Veber. The plot revolves around the adventures of the Duke of Durham and his sister, Lady Kay, English bootleggers in Prohibition Era America. Kay finds herself falling in love with a man who seems unavailable. Oh Kay! was named for Kay Swift, and the leading male character, Jimmy, is named after her husband, Jimmy Warburg. The show is remembered for its enduring song, "Someone to Watch Over Me".

The musical opened on Broadway in 1926, starring Gertrude Lawrence and Victor Moore, and ran for 256 performances. The musical then opened in London's West End in 1927, starring Lawrence and John Kirby, where it ran for 213 performances.

Producers Alex A. Aarons and Vinton Freedly imagined Oh, Kay! as a Princess Theatre-style show, with a contemporary setting, simple sets, and a farcical story. Gertrude Lawrence, who had been featured in the Andre Charlot revues of 1924 and 1925, was chosen as the star before the songs or story had been written. In accordance with the typical creative process for early American musicals, George and Ira Gershwin wrote the score to Oh, Kay! before the librettists, Bolton and Wodehouse, began work on the book. When the book was completed, eight songs from the Gershwins' score were cut because they could not be easily inserted into the libretto. The show's Philadelphia previews ran more than three hours, and so the producers cut the prologue (where the leading lady was introduced), thus losing the first 4 songs, and also the Act II "Finaletto", which became obsolete in the reshuffling. This highlighted the farcical elements of the plot at the expense of the romantic ones, since the title character does not appear until 40 minutes into the show.