ABSTRACT
Throughout a career that spanned fifty years writing dialogue and lyrics for the American musical theater, Harry Bache Smith was plagued by two contradictory myths. The first suggested that he was a wunderkind, a kind of über-librettist capable of manufacturing musicals at the speed of light, with superhuman craftsmanship and wit provided by Thalia herself. Many of Smith’s friends and colleagues did much to advance this myth, relating stories of how he would dash off an ingeniously rhymed lyric in ten minutes’ time without breaking a sweat. To the purveyors of the second myth-that Smith was little more than a hack-his facility resulted in work that was essentially facile, massproducing recycled plots and antique jokes for popular consumption. Proponents of the first myth speak glowingly about Smith’s vastly eclectic knowledge of literature, history, and current events, while advocates of the second theory argue that his work relies too slavishly on literary models and history,
rendering him devoid of any real originality. When the first group hear his name, it conjures up positive images of popular comic operas, bright, sassy, slangy musical comedies, and easily digestible translations and adaptations of European operettas. The others reduce his name to a verb form, “Harry-B-Smithed,” inferring a lack of wit, pretentious lyrics, and all that is wrong with dramatic construction. Those who denigrate Smith and his achievements have also put forward a related theory about the author. It has been said that Smith aspired to be the “John D.Rockefeller of light opera”—that he wrote for the theater to make money not art. This myth is the easiest to dispense with because it is true. Smith had few illusions about creating art, and he did make a lot of money writing librettos. In the 1911-12 season alone, he collected royalties from eleven shows either on Broadway or out on tour-and that does not take into account revivals of older comic operas. But it does not necessarily follow that, in making a comfortable living, he did not succeed occasionally in making art. As he often said, “I think it is possible to write comic opera that shall be at the same time artistic and popular. I don’t do it often myself, for I am merely in the business of filling orders, but it can be done.”
