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285 Pages·2005·10.51 MB·English

by  Korey Rothman

ABSTRACT

Title of Dissertation: SOMEWHERE THERE’S MUSIC: NANCY
HAMILTON, THE OLD GIRLS’ NETWORK, AND
THE AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE OF THE 1930S
AND 1940S

Korey R. Rothman, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005

Dissertation directed by: Professor Heather Nathans
Department of Theatre

Nancy Hamilton, a Broadway lyricist, playwright, actress, screenwriter, and
Academy Award-winning filmmaker, is an important unsung figure of the twentieth
century musical theatre. Although she is now remembered chiefly as the lyricist of the
song “How High the Moon” and, in the recent drive to recover gay and lesbian history,
the life-long romantic partner of “first lady of the American stage,” Katharine Cornell,
Hamilton was a successful lyricist of the intimate revue, a genre of musical theatre that
flourished during the 1930s. Her intimate revues One for the Money (1939) and Two for
the Show (1940) launched the careers of luminaries of stage and screen, including Alfred
Drake, Gene Kelly, and Betty Hutton, and Three to Make Ready (1946), which featured
Ray Bolger, ran for an impressive 323 performances.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hamilton maintained a constant presence as
employer or employee on Broadway, and it appeared that she thrived by surrounding
herself with an Old Girls’ Network of women with whom she maintained overlapping
professional and romantic relationships. This previously unchronicled Old Girls’
Network, which included women such as Katharine Hepburn, Beatrice Lillie, and Mary
Martin, countered the established Old Boys’ Network of popular entertainment and
launched the careers of many well-known women performers, producers, directors,
composers, and lyricists. Yet, even with the support of this network, Hamilton could
barely sustain her career after the 1940s. This dissertation considers the successes and
failures of Hamilton’s career and suggests that Hamilton offers a fascinating case study
that allows the historian to map a larger network of women on Broadway. The
dissertation further considers how the story of Nancy Hamilton and her circle offers
historians an opportunity to expand their analysis of American musical theatre to explore
how a woman could use the “bottom-most” aspects of her identity -- her gender and (at
times) sexuality -- to create a subaltern network and establish a career on Broadway. It
further encourages musical theatre scholars to re-think the ways in which they document
and tell the history of women in the musical theatre.
SOMEWHERE THERE’S MUSIC: NANCY HAMILTON, THE OLD GIRLS’S
NETWORK, AND THE AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE OF THE 1930S AND
1940S

by

Korey Rothman

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland at College Park in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2005

Advisory Committee:
Professor Heather Nathans, Chair
Dwight Blocker Bowers
Professor Jackson Bryer
Professor Franklin Hildy
Professor Scot Reese
© Copyright by
Korey R. Rothman
2005
Dedication

for
Stacey

Finally
ii
Acknowledgments

In one interview Nancy Hamilton stated, “All writing is plain hard work. It does
not spring as the goddess Minerva did from the brain of Jupiter, instantly and fully
clothed.”1 The same is true of a dissertation. Fortunately I had a number of people who
made the hard work a little easier. I am grateful for the excellent institutional support I
received. In particular, I want to thank Mary Ellen Rogan and Mark Maniak of the New
York Performing Arts Library, Nanci Young of the Smith College Archives, Kathleen
Banks Nutter of the Sophia Smith Collection, Alex Rankin of the Boston University
Special Collection, Leslie Fields of the Morgan Library, the staff at the Library of
Congress’s Manuscript Division and Performing Arts Reading Rooms, and Judy
Markowitz and Mary Scott of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the
University of Maryland. I am also grateful for the financial support of Smith College --
the Margaret Storrs Grierson Travel Grant allowed me to travel to their archives -- and
the American Society for Theatre Research -- the Thomas F. Marshall Travel Fellowship
helped me travel to the 2003 ASTR conference, where I received valuable feedback on
my research.
I am also so appreciative of the people who were willing to share their memories
of Nancy Hamilton with me – Nancy Smart, Margaret Hamilton, Tom Snyder, Arthus
Laurents, Joe Whitmore, Nancy Nichie, Busy Suppes, and Reverend Tony Jarvis. I am
especially grateful to Hamilton’s niece, Sally Hamilton. Through the time I spent with
her in Boston and on Martha’s Vineyard, and through our subsequent e-mail

1 Wambly Bald, “Bachelor Girl Makes Good on Broadway,” New York Post, 12
April 1946, Nancy Hamilton, Clippings in the Theatre Collections, The Billy Rose
Theatre Collection, New York Performing Arts Library, New York.
iii
correspondence, I discovered so many dimensions to her aunt. I cannot thank her enough
for her time and her generosity.
I am grateful for the friendship and professional advice of many people -- Brett
Crawford, Richard Tharp, Andrew White, Sandy Jackson, Leslie Jansen, Michael
Hastings, Frank Pajares, Rita Phelps, and, especially, Catherine Treischmann and Karl
Kippola. Marcy Marinelli’s patience was a remarkable help to me. Thanks to Stacy
Wolf, whose groundbreaking work on lesbians and musical theatre opened up new
avenues of exploration for me, for supporting this project. Ann Hampton Callaway sang
a terrific song about my dissertation. I am indebted to Catherine Schuler for her
invaluable contributions to my time in graduate school. And I want to thank my family --
especially my mom, dad, and grandmother-- who always thought that by the time I was
thirty they would no longer have to loan me money.
I was fortunate to have a committee who offered me incredible resources. Both
Scot Reese and Dwight Blocker Bowers worked with me on my Master’s thesis and have
shared their encyclopedic knowledge of the American musical with me for years.
Jackson Bryer reminded me how both to study theatre and love it. I am so grateful to
Frank Hildy for his kindness and support. And, especially, Thanks to Heather Nathans
for rescuing this project when it most needed it. I also want to thank her for being an
excellent mentor – both as an educator and as a scholar -- and for all the fashion advice.
Finally, I want to acknowledge Stacey Stewart. I should start by thanking her for
her untiring proofreading efforts. Without her my dissertation would have approximately
four billion extra commas. We started this journey together and she is with me at the
end. Every day I thank her for every minute in between.
iv
Table of Contents

Table of Contents..........................................................................................................................v
List of Figures...............................................................................................................................vi
Introduction: “The Words May Be Wrong”.............................................................................1
Research Methods............................................................................................................9
Chapter Structure...........................................................................................................17
Chapter One: “New Faces”: Introducing Nancy Hamilton..................................................21
The Hamilton Family.....................................................................................................23
Gender and Sexuality in the 1920s................................................................................28
The Women’s Colleges..................................................................................................32
Hamilton at Smith..........................................................................................................34
Hamilton the Debutante.................................................................................................43
The Years After Smith...................................................................................................45
New York.......................................................................................................................48
Hamilton and the Women Wordsmiths.........................................................................65
Chapter Two: “Women Who Could So Amuse”: Nancy Hamilton and the Old Girls.......74
The Old Boys’s Network...............................................................................................75
New Faces of 1934.........................................................................................................79
Entering the Sewing Circle............................................................................................89
Brenda Forbes, Gertrude Macy, and One for the Money...............................................98
The Mannish Woman..................................................................................................106
Two for the Show.........................................................................................................111
Enter Katherine Cornell...............................................................................................115
World War II................................................................................................................125
Three to Make Ready...................................................................................................135
Life After Three to Make Ready..................................................................................138
Helen Keller in Her Story............................................................................................143
Chapter Three: “Blah, Blah, Blah”: Nancy Hamilton as Broadway Lyricist...................153
Lyric Writing in the 1930s and the Intimate Revues...................................................154
The Greats....................................................................................................................159
Nancy Hamilton the Lyricist.......................................................................................163
Nancy Hamilton and the Intimate Revues...................................................................170
One for the Money and the Critics...............................................................................186
Two for the Show and Three to Make Ready...............................................................192
The Book Musicals......................................................................................................195
“The Freshness of Amateur Skylarking?”...................................................................208
“I Want To Make Good on Broadway”.......................................................................217
Chapter 4: “When I am Old and Eighty”: The End of Nancy Hamilton’s Career..........220
Why does nobody know Nancy Hamilton of Sewickley?...........................................231
Epilogue: Choices.....................................................................................................................253
Appendix A: Career Chronology...........................................................................................258
Bibliography..............................................................................................................................260
Primary Sources...........................................................................................................260
Secondary Sources.......................................................................................................264
v
List of Figures

Figure 1. Nancy Hamilton (undated photograph)............................................................22
Figure 2. Margaret, Marshall, and Nancy Hamilton (1908)............................................25
Figure 3. Nancy Hamilton (1912)....................................................................................27
Figure 4. Nancy Hamilton, graduation from Smith College............................................47
Figure 5. Cartoon by Helen Hokinson.............................................................................49
Figure 6. Katharine Hepburn in The Warrior Husband (1934).......................................52
Figure 7. Nancy Hamilton, advertisement for Pride and Prejudice................................57
Figure 8. Publicity photo of Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis..................................62
Figure 9. Beatrice Lillie (1953).......................................................................................63
Figure 10. Program for New Faces of 1934.....................................................................84
Figure 11. Nancy Hamilton in “Katharine Hepburn in Little Women.”...........................85
Figure 12. Elsie Janis and Eva Le Gallienne in Elsie Janis and Her Gang.....................95
Figure 13. Brenda Forbes and Nancy Hamilton (undated photograph).........................100
Figure 14. Nancy Hamilton (late 1930s)........................................................................110
Figure 15. Publicity Photograph of Katharine Cornell..................................................116
Figure 16. Postcard of Chip Chop..................................................................................121
Figure 17. Nancy Hamilton, Katharine Cornell, Guthrie McClintic, Noel Coward, and
Graham Payn (circa 1950)......................................................................................126
Figure 18. In costume for the Katharine Cornell Jamboree on Martha’s Vineyard.....129
Figure 19. On U.S.O. tour in Italy (1944)......................................................................136
Figure 20. Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, and Katharine Cornell at Chip-Chop (circa
1954).......................................................................................................................146
Figure 21. Nancy Hamilton, Katharine Cornell, Helen Keller, and Polly Thompson, with
the film canister for Helen Keller in Her Story.......................................................148
Figure 22. The postcard that inspired Workers Unite....................................................175
Figure 23. The back of the postcard with the breakdown of characters and scenes......176
Figure 24. Nancy Hamilton working on renovations to The Barn................................227

vi
Introduction: “The Words May Be Wrong”

How high the moon is the name of this song.
How high the moon, though the words may be wrong.
We’re singing it.
Because you requested it.
So we’re swinging it, just for you.
How high the moon?
Does it touch the stars?
How high the moon?
Does it reach up to Mars?
Though the words may be wrong to this song.
We’re asking how high high high high high is the moon.

Ella Fitzgerald riffing on Nancy Hamilton’s lyrics
for “How High the Moon”1

In 2003, as I was writing this dissertation, actress Katharine Hepburn died at age
ninety-six. As I listened to the non-stop stream of retrospectives and read obituary after
obituary, I realized that every one emphasized Hepburn’s penchant for pants, with
statements similar to the New York Times’s obituary:
Society was catching up to [Hepburn’s] willful, independent style. She
had been wearing pants, then considered quite unladylike, since the 1930s.
In her 1993 television autobiography, she recalled: “I realized long ago
that skirts are hopeless. Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a
skirt, I say: ‘Try one. Try a skirt.’ Although she based her choice on
comfort, her trademark trousered look became so influential that the
Council of Fashion Designers of America gave her a lifetime achievement
award in 1986.2

1 Ella Fitzgerald, “How High the Moon,” That Old Black Magic, Hip 9003, n.d.,
compact disc.
2 Caryn James, “Katharine Hepburn, Spirited Actress, Dies at 96,” The New York
Times, 30 June 2003, sec. A, page 1.

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