The farcical story centers on three couples who find themselves together at a cottage in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the midst of a blackmail scheme focusing on a fun-loving Manhattan heiress who has run off, leaving an unhappy fiancé.

A popular myth holds that the show was financed by selling baseball's Boston Red Sox superstar Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, resulting in the "Curse of the Bambino.

[2] When the production arrived in Chicago, producer Harry Frazee re-cast the show with new stars, had the book rewritten and asked Youmans and Caesar to write additional songs.

The show opened on March 11, 1925, at the Palace Theatre, where it starred Binnie Hale, Joseph Coyne and George Grossmith Jr. and became a hit, running for 665 performances.

[9][10][11] The cast featured veteran screen star Ruby Keeler and included Helen Gallagher, Bobby Van, Jack Gilford, Patsy Kelly and Susan Watson.

Busby Berkeley, nearing the end of his career, was credited as supervising the production, although members of the cast and crew later stated that his name was his primary contribution to the show.

[12][13] Among a number of extensive dance sequences, Keeler – who returned from retirement for the production – was lauded for energetic tap routines incorporated into "I Want to Be Happy" and "Take a Little One-Step".

presented a semi-staged production of No, No, Nanette in May 2008, directed by Walter Bobbie, with choreography by Randy Skinner, starring Sandy Duncan, Beth Leavel and Rosie O'Donnell.

[1] Leigh Montville discovered during research for his 2006 book, The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, that No, No, Nanette had originated as a non-musical stage play called My Lady Friends, which opened on Broadway in December 1919.

Jimmy thus has plenty of disposable income, and, because he likes to use his money to make people happy, he has secretly become the (platonic) benefactor of three beautiful women: Betty from Boston, Winnie from Washington, D.C., and Flora from San Francisco.

Tom Trainor, Billy's nephew and assistant, works up the courage to tell Nanette that he loves her, and she returns his sentiments ("I've Confessed to the Breeze").

Jimmy's lady friends are attempting to blackmail him, and he, afraid that Sue will find out about them, enlists Billy's legal help to discreetly ease the girls out of his life.

Unknown to Jimmy, Billy decides to take Tom and meet the three ladies at the Smiths' seaside home, Chickadee Cottage, in Atlantic City, New Jersey ("Call of the Sea").

Lucille runs into Billy, and though she is surprised to meet him in Atlantic City, she assures him that she does not mind whether he spends time with other women as long as she's there to watch – and he comes home with her at the end of the evening ("You Can Dance with Any Girl At All").

The original Broadway production opened to positive reviews; in The New York Times, Herman J. Mankiewicz pronounced it "full of much vigorous merriment and many agreeable tunes," and "a highly meritorious paradigm of its kind.

"[21] It acknowledged that the plot was slight but praised the score, noting that "I Want to be Happy" and "Tea for Two" were already hit tunes (having premiered in the Chicago production the previous year).

The New York Times proclaimed "Winninger gave the greatest performance of his career...it was a more than hardened theatre-goer who was not moved to near hysterics by his every appearance.

"[21] Benchley stated that "Winninger and Wellington Cross, with that ease and facile kidding which comes to comedians after a long run, are a highly comic pair.

Clive Barnes of the New York Times stated: "For everyone who wishes the world were 50 years younger ... the revival of the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette should provide a delightful, carefree evening.

The New York Times thought it "attractively tongue-in-cheek", while John O'Connor of The Wall Street Journal deemed it "a sparkling revival" that was "spiked with jiggers of self-conscious and self-congratulatory camp.

"[27] O'Connor found her charming and warm, writing, "she smartly whisks the delirious audience right back to those good old Busby Berkeley movies.

Barnes stated "the melodies are light, cheerful and exuberant", and the lyrics "[deserve] a place in any museum of American musical comedy, and yet live wonderfully today.