Eddie Foy "DONNYBROOK!" Art Lund / Susan Johnson 1961 Broadway FLOP Sheet Music
(This is a rare piece of sheet music for the song "HE MAKE...)
This is a rare piece of sheet music for the song "HE MAKES ME FEEL I'M LOVELY" from the Original Broadway production of the JOHNNY BURKE and ROBERT E. McENROE musical comedy "DONNYBROOK!" at the Forty-Sixth Street Theatre in New York City. (The production opened May 18th, 1961 and closed after only 68 performances.) ..... The musical starred EDDIE FOY and ART LUND and featured JOAN FAGAN, SUSAN JOHNSON, PHILIP BOSCO, SIBYL BOWAN, GRACE CARNEY, CLARENCE NORDSTROM, CHARLES C. WELCH, BRUCE MacKAY, JAMES GANNON, ALFRED DeSIO and EDDIE ERICKSON ..... CREDITS: Music and Lyrics by JOHNNY BURKE ("Nellie Bly", "Carnival in Flanders", "Donnybrook!"); Book by ROBERT E. McENROE; Sets and Costumes designed by ROUBEN TER-ARUTUNIAN; Directed and Choreographed by JACK COLE; Produced by FRED HEBERT and DAVID KAPP ..... DETAILS: The over-sized four page piece of sheet music measures approx. 9" X 12" inches and is copyrighted 1961 by Harms Inc., New York City ..... CONDITION: With the exception of a price sticker on the front, sticker residue on the back and light edge wear, this rare piece of sheet music is in excellent condition and will make a wonderful addition to the collection of any musical theatre aficionado or historian. This item will be carefully packaged in a protective sleeve and backed by stiff cardboard
Edwin Fitzgerald known professionally as Eddie Foy and Eddie Foy Sr. , was an American actor, comedian, dancer, and vaudevillian. He was a legendary figure of his time, who developed his own authentic style that became a distinctive trade-mark for him.
Background
Eddie Foy, son of Richard and Ellen (Hennessy) Fitzgerald, was born on March 9, 1856 in New York City. He was named Edwin.
His father, a tailor, entered the Federal army in 1861 and died of a wound two years later, leaving his family in poverty. To aid his mother and two sisters, Edwin began singing and dancing on the streets at the age of eight, in company with a wandering fiddler.
His mother removed to Chicago in 1865, where the boy blacked boots, sold papers, and did odd jobs, meanwhile trying to get into theatrical work.
Career
At sixteen he began calling himself Foy and received his first salary for acting when he appeared briefly in a concert hall.
In 1878 he formed a partnership with James Thompson, and the two for several years sang and danced in the mining camps and “boom towns” of the West, among them Dodge City, Leadville, Denver, Tombstone, Butte, and San Francisco. They appeared with Emerson’s Minstrels in San Francisco in 1882 and with Carncross’s Minstrels at Philadelphia in 1884. Foy next played in melodrama and comedy, including Baron Rudolph and Jack-in-the-Box, and spent two periods in the Alcazar Stock Company in San Francisco. In 1887, while playing with Kate Castleton in Crazy Patch, he began using the clownlike facial make-up which became a sort of trade-mark for him. His quizzical countenance, with the small mouth upcurving at the corners, was happily suited to such a character.
The first in which Foy appeared was The Crystal Slipper, 1888. This was followed by Bluebeard, Sindbad, and Ali Baba.
Foy left Henderson in 1894 to star in Off the Earth; then in Little Christopher Columbus, 1895; Hotel Topsy Turvy, 1898; The Strollers, 1901; and The Wild Rose, 1902.
In 1903 he was engaged to play the comic Sister Anne in an elaborate fantasy, Mr. Bluebeard. While he was appearing in this play in the Iroquois Theatre, Chicago, December, 30, 1903, fire broke out, the audience became panic-stricken, and more than six hundred lives were lost.
Foy played a hero’s part. Sending his little son, who was in the wings, out in care of a stage hand, he ran to the footlights, striving to quiet the audience and to bring down the asbestos curtain. He left only when a shower of blazing fragments fell over him and set his wig afire.
Foy had leading comedy parts in Piff! Paff! Pouf! , opening in 1904; The Earl and the Girl, 1905; The Orchid, 1907; Mr. Hamlet of Broadway, 1908; and Up and Down Broadway, 1910. Over the River (1911 to 1913) was his last musical comedy.
He went into vaudeville with these children in 1913, and with the exception of a short engagement in motion-pictures, continued in that work for ten years.
In 1923 he and his family appeared in a comedy, That Casey Girl, after which he retired. In the autumn of 1927, however, he entered vaudeville again in a short play entitled The Fallen Star, in which he was appearing when he was stricken suddenly and died at Kansas City. He succumbed to heart failure while on tour with the show at age 71.
Foy had stage mannerisms which were peculiarly his own, and many were the imitations of him in later years. By this time he had made such a reputation as an eccentric farceur that he was engaged by David Henderson of Chicago to play leading comedy parts in his series of gorgeous extravaganzas.
Connections
Eddie Foy was married in 1878 to Rose Howland, who died in 1884. In 1890 he married Lola Sefton, who died in 1894, leaving a daughter. In 1896 he married Madeline Morando, by whom he had seven children. His third wife died in 1918, and in 1923 he married Marie Combs, who survived him.