ABSTRACT
Harry’s triumph carried him through the new year. He felt that if he must be remembered for something, Robin Hood was as good an example of his work as anything else, and for the three or four weeks it took him to create it, the return in commissions, royalties, and reputation was staggering. Smith never really understood why the show was so very popular and had always preferred his libretto to The Serenade, but when that show was revived in March 1930 as part of the Jolson Theatre series, it was clear to the author that he was in the minority. Critics called it a “fairly melodious but prodigiously unfunny” work with a book that is “no match on any count for the libretto of ‘Robin Hood.’” Smith’s text was considerably revised, with the leading character’s name changed from Yvonne to Inez, and the monastery and adjoining convent altered to a military barracks and a girls’ boarding school so that the audience would not be scandalized by the promise of fun between nuns and monks. However they chose to do it, it was fine with Harry, so long as they paid him his royalties. Unlike Reginald de Koven and Victor Herbert, he was still alive to enjoy these revivals: alive and working.
