Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/80

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN far removed from American life. Musical comedy was of our own soil, its wit was native, its book topical, its music generally livelier, if cheaper, and it bore down heavily upon the comedy.

But musical comedy never ceased to be a technical monstrosity, a bearded lady. In opera in any form the music helps the story; the story suggests the music. It is the artful blending of the two. In musical comedy the story and the score often were as friendly and mutually helpful as the North and South of Ireland. Either they ignored each other, or the story was kept leaping madly from the cane fields of Louisiana to Greenland's icy mountains, to India's coral strands, and back to a Montana ranch by way of the Bowery, to keep up with the changing costumes of the chorus. The peasants and soldiers, having rollicked a Heidelberg drinking song, gave way for a moment to the low comedy of the Cincinnati brewer and the English silly ass in love with the heroine, and were back as cotton pickers cakewalking to the strains of Georgia Camp Meeting, the story arriving badly out of breath in its dash from Mitteleuropa. The song cues frequently were the funniest things in the show. To the last, musical comedy