I'd Rather Be Right

• Original Broadway Production (1937)
  New York, NY
• Musicals Tonight! Concert (2011)
  New York, NY

Click on the title for info on the song.

Original score

• A Homogeneous Cabinet
• Have You Met Miss Jones?
• Beauty Sequence: Here He Is
• Take and Take and Take
• Spring in Vienna
• A Little Bit of Constitutional Fun
• Sweet Sixty-Five
• We're Going to Balance the Budget
  • aka Tune Up Bluebird [no note]
• American Couple
• Labor Is the Thing
• I'd Rather Be Right
• Off the Record
• A Baby Bond (for Baby)

Cut prior to opening

• Everybody Loves You
• The World Is My Oyster
• A Treaty, My Sweetie, With You
• I'd Rather Be Right (first version)
• His Chances are Not Worth a Penny
• What It's All About
  • aka We Just Dance and Sing [no note]
• Not So Innocent Fun
  • aka Nine Young Girls and Nine Old Men [no note]

Added after New York opening

• Spring in Milwaukee

Attending the annual Fourth of July concert in Central Park, young Phil Smith and Peggy Jones can't quite transcend the day's bad news—Phil hadn't got the raise he had been expecting. The couple wants to get married—if only they knew if President Roosevelt were going to balance the budget, that would be a big help.

As if on cue, FDR himself enters and offers to give the youngsters whatever help he can. He calls in his Cabinet and asks Phil to sing "Have You Met Miss Jones?" to them as a way of enlisting their help as well. Soon, an entire parade of New Deal characters and programs—including the Federal Theatre Project—tromp through Central Park, all summoned to either support or criticize FDR.

At the end of the day, FDR can't promise to balance the budget for Phil and Peggy, but suggests they marry any way—the country will survive and so will they. (Source: George S. Kaufman site.)