Young, Rida Johnson (1875–1926)

views updated

Young, Rida Johnson (1875–1926)

American playwright, lyricist, and librettist. Born Rida Louise Johnson on February 28, 1875 (some sources cite 1869), in Baltimore, Maryland; died from breast cancer on May 8, 1926, in at her home inSouthfield Point, near Stamford, Connecticut; daughter of William A. Johnson and Emma (Stuart) Johnson; educated in public schools; attended Wilson College, Chambersberg, Pennsylvania; also attended Radcliffe College; married James Young, in 1898 (divorced, 1909 or 1910).

Selected plays:

Lord Byron (1898); Brown of Harvard (1906); The Boys of Company B (1907); The Lancers (1907); Glorious Betsy (1908); Ragged Robin (1909); The Lottery Man (1909); Naughty Marietta (music by Victor Herbert, 1910); Barry of Ballymore (1911); Next (1911); (libretto) The Red Petticoat (music by Jerome Kern, 1912); The Isle o' Dreams (1913); The Girl and the Pennant (1913); Shameen Dhu (1914); Lady Luxury (1914); Captain Kidd, Jr. (1916); Her Soldier Boy (1916); (lyrics) His Little Widows (1917); Maytime (music by Sigmund Romberg, 1917); Sometime (music by Rudolf Friml, 1918); Little Simplicity (1918); Little Old New York (1920); Macushla (1920); The Front Seat (1921); The Rabbit's Foot (1924); (with Harold Atteridge) The Dream Girl (music by Victor Herbert, 1924); Cock o' the Roost (1924).

Selected novels:

Brown of Harvard (1907); Out of the Night (1925); Red Owl (1927).

Selected songs:

"Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life," "'Neath the Southern Moon," "I'm Falling in Love with Someone," "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!," "The Sweet Bye and Bye," and "Italian Street Song" (from Naughty Marietta, 1910); "Mother Machree" (from Barry of Ballymore, 1911); "Will You Remember?," "Sweethearts," and "The Road to Paradise" (from Maytime, 1917).

Rida Johnson Young was born in 1875, in Baltimore, Maryland, to William A. Johnson and Emma Stuart Johnson , prominent members of the community. Her father was well known in Baltimore and her mother was a descendant of a Rothschild. Young's early education began in public schools, and she later attended Wilson College in Chambersberg, Pennsylvania. (Evidence suggests that she also attended Radcliffe College.)

Despite opposition from her conservative parents, Young left Maryland for New York to peddle her first play, written at age 18. Although her parents had funded only a short visit, Rida took a job selling furniture polish, making $4 weekly, and continued to seek actors to sponsor her play. Her first work, a lengthy tale about Omar Khayyam, required 100 actors and could not be produced. However, in the process, she acquired the sponsorship of E.H. Sothern, who helped her get an interview with producer Daniel Frohman and a walk-on role in Three Musketeers. A self-admittedly weak actress, she continued performing for four years, ending her stint with Sothern's company during a 1899 rehearsal for Song of the Sword. She was asked to resign after she threw a stool to ward off a stage villain and it hit the director in the face. She then worked as an extra, making $25 per week.

Young took a job with Witmark music publishers, where for two years she engaged in the "factory" work of writing music. She wrote songs for specific individuals or marketing projects, and added encores to existing songs or new words to existing music. "Turning out songs at that rate was bewildering," said Young. She estimated that she wrote a total of 500 songs in her lifetime, including those that she later incorporated into her own plays. The most popular of these were "Mother Machree" from Barry of Ballymore (1911), "I'm Falling in Love with Someone" from Naughty Marietta (1910), and "Sweethearts" from Maytime (1917).

Young left the company and traveled to the South to resume her acting career, playing opposite James Young, Jr., a handsome actor and son of a senator from Maryland. She had originally met him in Baltimore, where he worked at a local newspaper; they were married in 1898. Lord Byron, a play that Young had written for her husband, was not a notable hit, but she scored her first true success with Brown of Harvard in 1906. Although this play had also been written for her husband, the director cast Harry Woodruff in the lead. Young later condensed the play into a farcical sketch that her husband performed in vaudeville. (Rida and James would divorce in 1909 or 1910.) Her next play, The Boys of Company B (1907), spent two years on Broadway, and Glorious Betsy (1908) firmly established Young's success as a playwright. In 1908, Frohman sent Young to "study" at Oxford University in order to gather material for another college play, a genre that Young had created interest in. Although no play from this experience was performed on Broadway, it is thought that Frohman later produced a play of Young's about Oxford life in London.

In subsequent years, Young wrote plays and rewrote stories in other forms. Ragged Robin, a romantic comic opera, was written by Young in 1909 specifically for Chauncey Olcott, a popular tenor. When Young received a request from Victor Herbert to rewrite it in book form, their collaboration produced another play, NaughtyMarietta, the source of some of her best-known songs. This musical, which set new standards for Broadway comedy, has been produced several times, including a 1978 presentation at the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.

By the time Young wrote Naughty Marietta, she had amassed considerable wealth. In 1917, for example, she had a musical and a comedy running simultaneously, plus another musical in rehearsal. By 1908 she bought an estate in Stamford, Connecticut, and later bought a summer home in Bellhaven, New York. Chief among her passions was gardening, an activity she likened to writing with its "pruning," "weeding," and "growing." Young would mentally work a writing idea throughout the day, much of the time spent in her garden. She would then devote three hours in the morning at the typewriter transcribing her thoughts. Critics tend to attribute her popularity to the formulaic consistency of her plays, all comic rather than realistic, dealing with the inviting topics of young love and college scenarios. Young continued to write until her death from breast cancer in 1926. And although her name has been largely forgotten, many of her songs are universally recognized in popular culture. Naughty Marietta and Maytime, two musicals that were made into films starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, remain classics of the cinema.