Tell Me More

• Original Broadway Production (1925)
  New York, NY
• London Production (1925)
  London, England

Click on the title for info on the song.

Original score

• Tell Me More!
• Shop Girls and Mannequins
  • aka Opening Ensemble [no note]
• Mr. and Mrs. Sipkin
  • aka Monty, Their Only Child [no note]
• When the Debbies Go By
• Three Times a Day
• Why Do I Love You?
• How Can I Win You Now
  • aka How Can I Win You Now? [no note]
• Kickin' the Clouds Away
• Love is in the Air
• My Fair Lady
  • aka Lady Fair [no note]
• In Sardinia
  • aka Where the Delicatessen Flows [no note]
• Baby!
  • aka Baby [no note]
• Kenneth Won the Yachting Race
• Poetry of Motion, The
• Oh, So La Mi
  • aka Oh Sole, Oh Me! [no note]
• Ukulele Lorelei

Cut prior to opening

• I'm Somethin' on Avenue A
• He-Man, The
• Gushing

Added during New York run

• Once
• Love, I Never Knew
• Have You Heard?
• Murderous Monty (and Light-Fingered Jane)
  • aka Murderous Monty [no note]

Kenneth Dennison’s courtship of Peggy Van De Leur plays out against a whirl of Manhattan shop floors and debutante parties. Jane Wallace pushes the “Debbies” through society drills while comedian Monty Sipkin meddles, and Bonnie Reeves and Billy Smith spark their own romance. A yacht race win, fashion-show frippery, and a side trip to Sardinia fuel misunderstandings and reunions until the couples sort themselves out to bright dance specialties and upbeat finales.

The song later titled “Baby!” began as “Sweetheart” (lyrics by Clifford Grey) for the unproduced musical The Flying Island and was reused in the 1923 London revue The Rainbow. For Tell Me More, Ira Gershwin and B. G. De Sylva supplied new lyrics, creating “Baby!”. When the show moved to London, George Gershwin wrote a new melody for those lyrics, since London audiences already knew the earlier tune from The Rainbow.

Lou Holtz’s specialty number “Oh, So La Mi,” which he had performed in vaudeville for years, was based on “‘O Sole Mio,” the 19th-century song by Edoardo di Capua and Giovanni Capurro. Holtz recorded it twice, in 1923 and 1924; the second recording appears to be either a revised lyric or a “Part 2.”

• My Fair Lady (Pre-Broadway title)