Some of America's most influential composers came into their own in the 1930s. Brothers George and Ira Gershwin's "Girl Crazy" helped open this musical decade and also introduced America to the personality and pipes of Ethel Merman, who would endure in both theater and Hollywood for nearly 40 more years. In 1931, the brothers teamed with George F. Kaufman to compose the score for "Of Thee I Sing," which ran on Broadway for 441 performances and was the first American musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
The brothers gave the 1930s one of its most controversial pieces with the epic operetta "Porgy and Bess." The story of African-American life in South Carolina, it called for an all African-American cast, something unheard of at this point in American History. The show was four hours long at its first performance at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1935, and after some cuts made its Broadway debut, running for only 124 performances. Since then, it has been reincarnated in various forms and earned its place as an American classic, with George Gershwin calling it his greatest work ever.
Before teaming up with Oscar Hammerstein and creating musicals with him until the 1960s, Richard Rodgers paired with fellow Columbia University student Lorenz Hart and composed songs for various shows throughout the 1920s, before deciding to try their luck in Hollywood in 1930. By the middle of the decade, they were lured back to the theater world by legendary producer Billy Rose to score his circus musical "Jumbo." For the remainder of the 30s, they went on to create such classics as "On Your Toes," "Babes in Arms" and "The Boys From Syracuse" before Hart passed away in 1943.
The early 1930s saw the debut of dramatic playwright Eugene O'Neill's only comedy "Ah! Wilderness" in 1933, a lighthearted work that was a far cry from his classic tragedies "A Long Day's Journey Into Night " and "Mourning Becomes Electra." The team of George F. Kaufman and Moss Hart loaded the decade with laughs and escape, giving America such classic comedies as "Dinner at Eight," "You Can't Take It With You" and "The Man Who Came to Dinner."