Leave It to Jane: History and Key Facts

Leave It to Jane is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the 1904 play The College Widow, by George Ade. The story concerns the football rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College, and satirizes college life in a Midwestern U.S. town. A star halfback, Billy, forsakes his father's alma mater, Bingham, to play at Atwater, to be near the seductive Jane, the daughter of Atwater's president.

The musical was created for the Princess Theatre, but another of the "Princess Theatre Shows", Oh, Boy!, was a long-running hit at the Princess at the same time; so Leave It to Jane premiered instead at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway in 1917. and had a long-running Off-Broadway revival in 1959. Some of the best-known songs are "A Peach of a Life", "Leave It to Jane", "The Crickets Are Calling", "The Siren’s Song", "Sir Galahad" and "Cleopatterer".

Source and attribution

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