White Horse Inn (Broadway version)

[1] The original operetta by Erik Charell and composers Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz was based on the popular farce of the same name by Oscar Blumenthal and Gustav Kadelburg.

In 1931, Jacob Wilk, executive for Warner Brothers Films, had approached Erik Charell with regard to a possible American production of White Horse Inn.

But it was not until February 1936 that The New York Times finally disclosed that a triumvirate of producers – Rowland Stebbins, Warner Brothers and the Rockefellers – would present White Horse Inn.

"Such delay was due to the depression shortage of investment capital for large scale musicals, and a reluctance to mount Graham's translation, penned in an 'old-fashioned operetta' style".

Richard Watts stated in the New York Herald Tribune: "A beautiful colorful and sufficiently lively show...It is my private opinion that White Horse Inn is several times livelier than the previous European spectacle The Great Waltz, and at least as handsome".

The Nazis were not amused to see Aryan culture mixed with so called 'Nigger Jazz' by a group of theatre people who were not only mostly Jewish but also homosexual (Benatzky excepted on both counts).

They considered Im weissen Rössl scandalous, especially the Esther Williams-style swimming pool scene in which the near-naked girls and boys emerged from the water ballet in a grand dance routine.

Josepha prefers Dr. Otto Siedler, a visiting city solicitor who eyes fellow hotel guest Ottilie, daughter of a brash Berlin manufacturer, Giesecke.

While Im weißen Rößl in its multiple international productions always freely accommodated musical interpolations, Charell and the American producers sabotaged one of the show's greatest strengths, its hit score.

The only plausible rationale is that Warner Brothers, as was the then-common practice with musical films among all Hollywood studios, often junked a show's original stage score for other new and inferior songs they owned.

[3] White Horse Inn was unquestionably the most lavish and eagerly awaited musical theatre premier of the New York season (with the possible exception of Billy Rose's Jumbo).

[4] While original cast recordings were commonly made from a show's hit songs in Berlin, London and Paris at the time, the practice in New York was not as widespread until the Oklahoma!

For that reason, there was not any American recording of any songs in the White Horse Inn's score made during the New York run until this tape was found in 2009.