Vienna once exported a type of musical comedy which brought the world much pleasure and had many virtues. Realism was not one of the virtues. Yet in the whirl of ravishing gypsies disguised as archdukes and ravishing archdukes disguised as gypsies there usually appeared a suggestion, not of life, but of how a generation thought life ought to be.
Such an operetta was The Dollar Princess (1907) which, sensitive to the march of history, turned its back on gypsies and archdukes and instead examined the American millionaire. Today, few people remember it except music publishers, sentimentalists, and the Russians, who last week began adapting The Dollar Princess for their own devices.
Love & the Coal Trust. The Dollar Princess was Miss Alice Cowder, dashing daughter of John W. Cowder, president of the Coal Trust. Alice was a strong-minded girl, always abreast of stockmarket quotations. Of her it was said that "in any sort of weather, she works on all the while, until she's raked together, a tidy little pile."*Because her father liked to employ titled Europeans as footmen and office boys, Alice had acquired a rather low opinion of continental coronets ("You bid the right amount—you own a duke or count").
Presently, there appeared, from England, not a duke or count but plain Frederick George Cuthbert William Smythe, of the Smokeless Coal Smythes, who was determined to woo & win Alice, partly for her looks and partly for her $20 million which would help stabilize the shaky family business. After announcing: "I'll catch my little filly, I'll tame her, willy nilly, right round the neck I'll noose her and nevermore will loose her," he got a job as Alice's private secretary. For an act or so, Alice dodged his lasso. Then, in the second act finale where things started popping in the old Viennese operettas, Alice announced to a party of distinguished guests that she had picked Secretary Smythe to be her husband. Though at this point Freddie loved her well, he found her procedure highhanded. When old Cowder offered him $50 million as an added inducement, Freddie sang with simple dignity: "I trample on your gold..." Cowder: He scorns my daughter's addresses! Freddie: Thus do I treat all dollar princesses! The Chorus: He won't consent? Extremely queer He must be mad, it's very clear. Alice (weeping): Oh the disgrace, I cannot bear it... Freddie (in lilting three-quarter time): Her every action confesses The fortune she is worth The proudest of dollar princesses— Is sometimes the poorest on earth...(Curtain)
In the third act, the Coal Trust was in a bad way, chiefly because Old Man Cowder had ignored business for the sake of a Polish countess (in reality no countess at all, but a lion tamer). Smokeless Coal, on the other hand, was flourishing, which evened things up—at least by the peculiar laws of Viennese musicals. Alice says: "Oh take me, love, take me away," and Viennese audiences (in 1907) went home, humming happily and concluding that Americans, while somewhat uncouth and acquisitive, probably had hearts of gold or, at least, coal.