The Theatre: New Musical in Manhattan: Apr. 15, 1940

Higher and Higher (music & lyrics by Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart; produced by Dwight Deere Wiman). In virtually all musicomedies, the book is merely a nuisance, like the bones in fish. But in Higher and Higher it becomes as much of an outright menace as maggots in cheese.

The plot drones on about a houseful of servants who try to rehabilitate their bankrupt master by palming off a pretty scullery maid as a debutante, hoping she will bag a millionaire. The stage swarms with snooty butlers, comic valets, tripping parlormaids, hoity-toity housekeepers, red-nosed cooks. Higher and Higher is really floored...