The Chocolate Soldier (Der Tapfere Soldat ), with music by Oscar Straus (The Waltz Dream ) and lyrics by Rudolph Bernauer and Leopold Jacobson, was based on George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play, Arms and the Man. Shaw had sold the rights for a German operetta version of his play, certain that such an unlikely project was doomed to failure. However, he learned his lesson. When the show became an international hit, he vowed never again to sign away rights to any of his work.
The militant Germans found Shaw's pacifist plot a little hard to take, but the popularity of the music led to runs in England and the U.S. The show reached New York's Lyric Theatre on September 13, 1909, where it ran for 296 performances with Ida Brooks Hunt and Flavio Arcaro in the leads. Like most plays of its time, its comparatively short Broadway run was no indication of its success, for it went on the road and has enjoyed popularity ever since.
When MGM decided to film the operetta in 1940, Shaw, still smarting at his lack of business sense thirty years earlier, set terms too steep for the frugal studio. MGM decided to use the Straus score and title, but to substitute a play to which they already owned the rights, Ferenc Molnar's play, Testör. This play was first performed in Hungary in 1911. It opened in New York on September 3, 1913 as Ignorance is Bliss with William Courtleigh and Rita Jolivet.
This production survived only eight performances and did not reach popularity until the Theatre Guild produced it with the legendary stage couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, in a considerably revised version.
Re-titled The Guardsman, it opened on October 13, 1924 at the Garrick, and ran 248 performances. The Lunts also appeared in MGM's 1931 film version, the only film in which the exquisite Miss Fontanne starred.
Jeanette MacDonald and her husband, Gene Raymond went out on the road with this play, also in 1951.
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