Shows D

DIE DOLLARPRINZESSIN (The Dollar Princess) Music by Leo Fall. Lyrics by Adrian Ross. Book by A.M. Willner and Fritz Grünbaum, adapted into Englsish by Basil Hood. Daly's Theatre, London - 25 September, 1909 (428 perfs) Knickerbocker Theatre Broadway (Book and Lyrics by George Grossmith) - additional numbers by Jerome Kern. - 6 September, 1909 (288 perfs) STORY Act 1 In the New York offices of the millionaire businessman John Couder, the typists are hard at work but Couder's daughter, Alice, complains about the way the girls dally with their young men at the expense of good time-keeping in the office. `Every girl should serve just one master, and yours is the typewriter,' she tells them. Alice takes pride in being a real self-made Yankee girl and she considers men as mere playthings. Alice's father has a curious taste for employing impoverished titled Europeans and teaching them how to earn their living by daily work and among these unfortunates is Baron Hans von Schlick, whom Couder has taken on as his head groom. Hans has had to rebuild his life after falling on hard times at his castle on the Rhine but he makes it clear that he does not think too highly of Couder, the coal king, who treats his formerly aristocratic employees as ordinary lackeys. When Couder takes Hans to task for failing to turn up for Couder's morning horse ride, Hans boldly asserts that he will not turn up the next day either. Hans has been teaching Couder's niece, Daisy, to ride, and the two of them have found it a most enjoyable experience. Hans, indeed, has developed amorous feelings towards Daisy, but she is only interested in their remaining just good friends. Their discussions are disturbed by the arrival of Fredy Wehrburg, an old friend of Hans. He has left Europe because his father, a wealthy coal-mine owner, wanted him to marry a local girl whom Fredy considered a silly goose and now he has come to take a job with Couder and, he admits to Daisy and Hans, to try to marry Alice, even though he knows her only by sight. Hans and Daisy warn him that Alice is a hard nut, but Fredy is not easily put off. He has never been a wayside rose, and he has always had a fancy for blonde plaits and blue eyes. Alice gives Fredy the once over to see whether his background and character make him a suitable employee, and to test his attitude to having a young lady as his boss. She tests him further by flirting with him but, when she ends by asking him whether she appeals to him, Fredy replies, 'Absolutely not!' Couder, a widower, has sent his nephew, Dick, to Europe to find a titled lady to act as hostess for him and Dick now returns with his father Tom, Couder's brother, and a young lady—all three of them full of enthusiasm for their trip. The young lady is in reality a cabaret singer named Olga Labinska but, to impress Couder, the three of them prefer to pass her off as Countess Olga Przibiczewska, a field-marshal's widow who has lost all her property through political disorder. Couder summons the staff to meet this new lady of the house and the girls are suitably impressed but, when Hans and Fredy are introduced, they and Olga recognise each other immediately, for she is a former girlfriend of Fredy. Olga attempts to cover up by telling Couder that she met the two of them at a Court Ball in Berlin, but Fredy and Hans know it was more likely the Jardin de Paris or Maxim's. Olga backs up Lily Elsie - the original Dollar Princess

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