George White's Scandals

For other uses, see George White's Scandals (disambiguation).

George White's Scandals were a long-running string of Broadway revues produced by George White that ran from 1919–1939, modeled after the Ziegfeld Follies. The "Scandals" launched the careers of many entertainers, including W. C. Fields, the Three Stooges, Ray Bolger, Helen Morgan, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr and Rudy Vallée. Louise Brooks, Dolores Costello, Barbara Pepper, and Alice Faye got their show business start as lavishly (or scantily) dressed chorus girls strutting to the "Scandal Walk". The Black Bottom, danced by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola, touched off a national dance craze.

Several dozen of George Gershwin's songs first appeared in the 1920–24 editions of Scandals, mostly with lyricists Arthur Jackson for the first two years and Buddy De Sylva and E. Ray Goetz thereafter. Two of these songs became standards: "Stairway to Paradise" (1922, lyrics by De Sylva and Ira Gershwin under his early pseudonym, "Arthur Francis") and "Somebody Loves Me" (1924, lyrics by Ballard MacDonald and De Sylva). George Gershwin and De Sylva's twenty-minute opera Blue Monday was first performed in the 1922 edition but dropped after opening night.

George White's Scandals is also the name of several movies set within the Scandals, all of which focus primarily on the show's acts, with a thin backstage plot stringing them all together. The best known of these was 1934's George White's Scandals, with music and additional dialogue by Jack Yellen, which marked the film debut of Alice Faye. Flapper-era cartoonist and designer Russell Patterson worked on Broadway in various capacities; for George White's Scandals of 1936, he served as scenic designer. George White's Scandals of 1920 was featured in a film-length episode in the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.Young Indiana Jones and the Scandal of 1920 is the 8th episode in the second season.

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