Hamburg Amerika Line "WHITE HORSE INN" Musical Themed Menu 1932 Farewell Dinner

Description

This is a rare March 16th, 1932 menu from the Farewell Dinner aboard Hamburg Amerika's Dumpfers "Albert Bassin" Mitwoch Steamship with a theme and evening's music tied to the highly successful RALPH BENATZKY and ROBERT STOLZ musical "WHITE HORSE INN" .....
Im weißen Rößl
(English title:
WHITE HORSE INN
) is an operetta by Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz in collaboration with a number of other composers and writers, set in the picturesque Salzkammergut region of Upper Austria.
It is about the head waiter of the White Horse Inn in St. Wolfgang who is desperately in love with the owner of the inn, a resolute young woman who at first only has eyes for one of her regular guests. The show enjoyed huge successes both on Broadway (
The production opened October 1st, 1936 at New York's Center Theatre and ran for 223 performances)
and in the West End (651 performances at London's Coliseum beginning April 8th, 1931) and was filmed several times. The musical was based on a play that premiered in Berlin in 1897.
In the last decade of the 19th century, Oscar Blumenthal, a theatre director from Berlin, Germany, was vacationing in Lauffen (now part of Bad Ischl), a small town in the vicinity of St. Wolfgang. There, at the inn where he was staying, Blumenthal happened to witness the head waiter's painful wooing of his boss, a widow. Amused, Blumenthal used the story as the basis of a comedy — without music — which he co-authored with actor Gustav Kadelburg. However, Blumenthal and Kadelburg relocated the action from Lauffen to the much more prominent St. Wolfgang, where the Gasthof Weißes Rößl had actually existed since 1878. Having thus chanced upon a suitable title, the authors went to work, and
Im weißen Rößl
eventually premiered in Berlin in 1897.
Just as the play was about to be forgotten — a silent film
The White Horse Inn
directed by Richard Oswald and starring Liane Haid had been made in Germany in 1926 — it was revived, again in Berlin, and this time as a musical comedy. During a visit to the Salzkammergut, the actor Emil Jannings told Berlin theatre manager Erik Charell about the comedy. Charell was interested and commissioned a group of prominent authors and composers to come up with a musical show based on Blumenthal and Kadelburg's libretto. They were Ralph Benatzky, Robert Stolz and Bruno Granichstaedten (music), Robert Gilbert (lyrics), Hans Muller-Einigen and Charell himself.
The show premiered in Berlin on November 8th, 1930. Immediately afterwards it became a success around the world, with long runs in cities like London, Paris, Vienna, Munich and New York. During the Third Reich, the comedy was marginalized and not performed (Goebbels called it "eine Revue, die uns heute zum Hals heraushängt" — "the kind of entertainment we find boring and superfluous today"), whereas people in the 1950's, keen on harmony and shallow pleasures, eagerly greeted revivals of the show. German-language films based on the musical comedy were made in 1935, 1952 and 1960 ..... DETAILS: The menu measures 4 1/2" X 10 1/8" inches (9 5/8" X 10 1/8" when opened) and has a flap door in the center that opens to reveal the menu and evening's entertainment. The backside is blank ..... CONDITION: With the exception of the start of seam splits at the top of the folds and a crease at the top center, this rare menu is in excellent condition and will make a wonderful addition to the collection of any musical theatre aficionado or historian. This item will be carefully packaged in a protective, carded sleeve and backed by stiff cardboard.