10 of Broadway's Female Firsts You Might Not Know About

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My new book, Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy that the History Books Left Out is out on shelves this November! It is the first-ever book about female musical theatre writers. Over 300 women who have written book, music, and or lyrics for Broadway and/or off-Broadway shows are included in the new book, which is published by Applause Theatre and Cinema Books.

In this column, I wanted to give readers 10 fun facts on firsts achieved by women who are featured in the book! Of course, female writers are much more than just statistics, and women deserve recognition for more than just breaking a barrier to an accomplishment. But these women who made history with their Broadway firsts are also worth celebrating and remembering!

First Woman To Write a Libretto

While the musical as we know it today arguably didn’t take shape until the second half of the 19th century when The Black Crook hit the scene, there were theatrical productions that included songs that appeared on New York stages before that time. A notable instance of this was Tammany; or, The Indian Chief. Billed as a “serious opera”, Tammany; or The Indian Chief was presented at the John Street Theatre, considered the first permanent theater in New York City. The show premiered in 1794, making Ann Julia Hatton, who penned the show’s libretto, the first known female libretto writer in America. The political musical was somewhat controversial, and Hatton was responsible for writing its book and its original lyrics, as well as adapting some lyrics from existing Native American songs. 

First Woman in America To Make Her Living Writing For The Stage

Louisa Medina was the first known woman in America to make her living as a stage dramatist. Starting in 1833, she penned 34 works for the stage. Medina died at age 25, but not before saving the Bowery Theatre, one of the most prominent venues in New York, from closure with her hit shows. Credit for this is often given to the theater’s management and sadly Medina’s plays were mostly lost to posterity due to a fire. But Medina made history in her time for going against what society expected and many of her melodramas were the talk of the town during the five years she was actively writing in the 1830s.

First Woman To Be The Sole Writer of a (Not-Full Length) Broadway Musical

Clare Kummer was an incredibly prolific theatre writer with 29 Broadway writing credits to her name between 1903 and 1945. In 1921, she wrote two one act musicals called The Choir Rehearsal and Chinese Love. These two one acts played in a program together that made Kummer the first woman to write book, music, and lyrics herself for a Broadway musical. Since the shows weren’t full length but together they comprised a full length evening, Kummer isn’t often cited as having made history in this way. The first woman to be the sole writer of full length Broadway musical wouldn’t come along until more than half a century later. 

First All-Female Writing Team on Broadway

How is it that most Broadway fans don’t know about the first all-female writing team on Broadway? The reason may be that their show, Just Because, closed relatively quickly in 1922, mostly due to circumstance. Annelu Burns, Anna Wynne O’Ryan, Madelyn Sheppard, and Helen S. Woodruff were called amateurs by several journalists and critics, who expressed surprise and delight at the high quality of Just Because. This was not entirely correct; the team had a good amount of experience between them, including credits writing Broadway plays, contributing to reviews, and writing published songs including a popular World War I anthem. Just Because closed early due to a conflict between the writers and the show’s producers.

First Woman To Be The Sole Composer of a Full Length Broadway Musical

In 1930, Kay Swift was the first woman to be the sole composer of a full length Broadway musical—and the show was a hit, in the midst of the Great Depression! Fine and Dandy is a fascinating show in theatre history for these reasons and more. Swift wrote the music to Fine and Dandy to the lyrics of her husband, James Warburg. However while Swift used her real name in show billing, Warburg wrote his lyrics under the pseudonym of Paul James. This was because Warburg was a highly successful financier and society considered writing for Broadway to be below him. At the same time as Swift wrote this history-making musical with her husband, she was having an affair with one of the greatest writers on Broadway: George Gershwin. Gershwin and Swift were close friends and had a long affair. This affair was given space to flourish when Warburg was called to Washington D.C. to be part of President FDR’s brain trust about saving the American economy after the stock market crash. As Katharine Weber, Swift’s granddaughter, wrote in her terrific book The Memory of All That…: “Some couples, when faced with a marital crisis, have a baby. My grandparents had a Broadway musical.” And that musical, Fine and Dandy, was one of several reasons that Swift made Broadway history. 

First Woman To Write a Full Length Broadway Score Alone

Ann Ronell got her start as the rehearsal pianist for the 1928 musical Rosalie when she was only 21 years old. She went on to contribute music to a song for the 1931 Broadway revue Shoot The Works! and to sell several of her songs in Tin Pan Alley. In 1933, her most enduring song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”, co-written with Frank Churchill, became the first hit song from a Disney movie. In 1942, Ronell wrote music and lyrics—without a co-writer—for the Broadway musical Count Me In. The show started as a college musical production at Catholic University, but The Shuberts endeavored to move it to Broadway based on its success. Count Me In made her the first woman to write a full length score for Broadway alone. Ronell also wrote the first theme song to play over film credits, with her music and lyrics to “Linda” for the 1945 movie Story of G.I. Joe. 

First Woman To Write Book, Music, and Lyrics for a Full Length Broadway Musical

Every fan of Broadway musicals should know about Micki Grant. Grant was the first woman to write book, music, and lyrics for a full length Broadway musical and she starred in it and the show ran for over 1,000 performances! Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope, was Grant’s original musical about the Black experience, and it was a sensation, running from 1972 to 1974. Grant made many records in her lifetime. Among them, she was the first Black actor to hold a contract role with a main storyline on a daytime soap and the first Black woman to achieve success at her high level writing commercial jingles for television. Grant wrote sensational songs for several other Broadway musicals, including Working and Your Arms Too Short To Box With God.

First Black Woman To Direct on Broadway

While Women Writing Musicals is largely focused on musical theatre writers, I wanted to include a few women who made their careers as directors but intersected with musical theatre writing as conceivers of their own shows. Vinnette Carroll is one of these, and she holds an important place in theatre history for many reasons. Among them is that she was the first Black woman to direct on Broadway. She made this record by directing Micki Grant’s Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope in 1972; Carroll also conceived the musical. Her other accomplishments include founding the Urban Arts Corps, a theatre company focused on bringing arts to underserved communities and getting artists of different races together to create new productions; they produced over 100 shows. 

First Long-Running Musical in Spanish

Did you know that there was a hit musical in Spanish that ran for over 1,000 performances off-Broadway. El Grande de Coca-Cola was co-conceived by Diz White, who was also one of the stars of this musical that occupied the Mercer Arts Center and Plaza 9 from 1973 to 1975. The show is about a town in Honduras where a would-be impresario promises to present a parade of stars at the local theater. When none of them show up, he attempts to  pass off the local town folk as celebrities. El Grande de Coca-Cola was presented entirely in Spanish but non-Spanish speakers could understand a good deal of the show too, due to its broad physical comedy and use of impressions.

First Tony Award-Winning Best Musical Penned Solely By Women

In 2015, when Fun Home won the Tony Award for Best Musical, Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron became the first all-female writing team of a show that took home the big prize. The unlikely hit musical, based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel about coming of age in a funeral home as a lesbian with a closeted father, became a deeply felt and stunningly realized show that ran for over 500 performances at Circle in the Square. At the Tony Awards, Tesori and Kron also became the first all-female writing team to take home the award for Best Score, prompting Tesori to say in her speech: “"For girls, you have to see it to be it. We stand on the shoulders of other women who have come before us."

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