PORTERIANA

Speranza

While still at Harvard, Porter and a fellow student, T. Lawrason Riggs, collaborated on a professional Broadway show, SEE AMERICA FIRST.

On one of his frequent tripts to visit friends in East Hampton, Porter had met Elisabeth Marburry, the socially prominent literary agent who had recently co-sponsered the immensely successful VERY GOOD EDDIE.

Hoping to do as much for Porter's career as she had for Kern's, Marbury agreed to produce the show that Porter and Riggs had recently written.

"SEE AMERICA FIRST: a patriotic comic opera" may have seemed like a clever idea on paper, but when it was performed on the stage it was a complete failure.

The story dealt with the efforts of an anti-British U. S. senator to keep his daughter from meeting anyone from across the Atlantic.

Of course, inevitably, after being taken out West, the girl does meet a titled Englishman (CLIFTON WEBB), they fall in love, and eventually the senator loses his prejudices.

Apparently, the fact that this was a sppo of the George M. Cohan flag-wavers -- particularly George Washington, Jr. -- was lost on the unnamed critic of the New York Dramatic Mirror, who wrote:

"The lyrics are studiously copied after Gilbertian pattern in the long and complicated rhyme effects achieved."

"The music, however, gives the impression that its composer, after the first hour, gave up the task of recreating a Sullivan atmosphere, preferring to seek his inspiration in our own George M. Cohan."