varying in style from “Gus Edwards’ School Boys and Girls” to “The Vaudeville Revue of 1915”—­a musical travesty on prevailing ideas—­and the books of a few long musical successes, from comedy scenes in “Watch your Step” to “Ned Wayburn’s Town Topics,” that “Musical comedy, from a vaudeville standpoint, and a ‘Broadway’ or two-dollar standpoint, are two different things.  A writer has to treat them in entirely different ways, as a doctor would two different patients suffering from the same ailment.  In vaudeville an author has to remember that nearly everyone in the audience has some one particular favorite on the bill—­you have to write something funny enough to:  please the admirers of the acrobat, the magician, the dancer, the dramatic artist, the rag-time singer and the moving pictures.  But in ‘Broadway’ musical comedy it is easier to please the audiences because they usually know what the show is about before they buy their tickets, and they know what to expect.  That’s why you can tell ‘vaudeville stuff’ in a ‘Broadway’ show—­it’s the lines the audience laugh at.

“To put it in a different way, let me say that while in two-dollar musical comedy you can get by with ‘smart lines’ and snickers, in vaudeville musical comedy you have to go deeper than the lip-laughter.  You must waken the laughter that lies deep down and rises in appreciative roars.  It is in ability to create situations that will produce this type of laughter that the one-act musical comedy writer’s success lies.”

1.  An Average One-Act Musical Comedy Recipe

While it is not absolutely necessary to open a musical comedy with an ensemble number, many fine acts do so open.  And the ensemble finish seems to be the rule.  Therefore let us assume that you wish to form your musical comedy on this usual style.  As your act should run anywhere from thirty to fifty minutes, and as your opening number will consume scarcely two minutes, and your closing ensemble perhaps three, you have—­on a thirty-five minute basis—­ thirty minutes in which to bring in your third ensemble, your other musical numbers and your dialogue.

The third ensemble—­probably a chorus number, with the tenor or the ingenue, or both, working in front of the chorus—­will consume anywhere from five to seven minutes.  Then your solo will take about three minutes.  And if you have a duet or a trio, count four minutes more.  So you have about eighteen minutes for your plot and comedy—­including specialties.

While these time hints are obviously not exact, they are suggestive of the fact that you should time everything which enters into your act.  And having timed your musical elements by some such rough standard as this—­or, better still, by slowly reading your lyrics as though you were singing—­you should set down for your own guidance a schedule that will look something like this: 

Opening ensemble............. 2 minutes

    Dialogue
       Introducing Plot,
       First Comedy Scenes....... 4 "