Donald Ogden Stewart was commissioned to write a musical comedy tailored to the unique comic persona of vaudeville performer Joe Cook.

"[5] Additional members of the large Broadway cast included the Merriel Abbott Specialty Dancers, the Tommy Atkins Sextet,[note 2] the Four Horsemen, and, according to a contemporary review, a "beauty chorus of 60 lithe and lustrous girls".

[7] Theater historian Dan Dietz suggests that some of the comedy quartets, such as the Uninternational Four, the Four Horsemen, and the Giersdorf Brothers, may actually have been Joe Cook playing multiple roles, as he did in his well-known "Four Hawaiians" skit.

Also as Joe Squibb he lights a bearded man's whiskers, impersonates four German acrobats, plays the saxophone and ukulele, turns handsprings, plays golf with a shovel, eats lunch from a lunchbox the size of an automobile crate, examines the insurance doctor come to examine him, creates a gadget that can puncture balloons while cracking nuts and another for inflating paper bags so that when punctured they can make a resounding noise.

New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson called it "the most stunning dance number [with the Tommy Atkins Sextet] attired in costumes of original color schemes, against quiet and expansive backgrounds".

A studio recording was released in 2004 by PS Classics with a cast that included Andrea Burns, Mario Cantone, Carolee Carmello, Gavin Creel, Mark Linn-Baker, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Deborah Tranelli, and Anne Kaufman.

[14] The recorded score drops "Mechanical Ballet", "Giddyup Back" and "Bird in Hand", and includes several numbers not explicitly listed in the Playbill for the original production.