Two of Broadway's biggest musical hits of the inter-war years were Roberto (1933) and The Vagabond King (1925). The latter was an all-out operetta composed by Rudolf Friml; the former a Jerome Kern musical filled with Kern's characteristically European-influenced, operetta-styled melodies.
   Jerome Kern had planned Roberto as a semi-operetta along the lines of his previous hits The Cat and the Fiddle and Music in the Air. What finally emerged was closer to traditional musical comedy, although the refulgent melodies of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," "The Touch of Your Hand" and "Yesterdays" definitely have their roots in the florid ground of operetta. Lyricist Otto Harbach contributed some clumsy and archaic lyrics to these songs ("So I chaffed them and I gaily laughed," "Days I knew as happy, sweet, sequester'd days") but they became standards nonetheless. Kern himself tried his hand at directing Roberto, but was replaced by the more experienced Hassard Short, who refused credit for his work out of respect to Kern.  
   Based on Alice Duer Miller's novel Gowns By Roberto, the show was set in Paris. John Kent, an All-American fullback from Haverhill College, has just inherited a dress shop run by his Aunt Minnie, who trades under the business name of Roberta. Minnie dies shortly after John's arrival in Paris, and John proposes that Minnie's attractive young assistant Stephanie run the shop as his partner. Their blooming romance is almost thwarted by the arrival of Sophie, John's college flame. By the fall of the curtain, John and Stephanie are reunited, and, in true operetta fashion, Stephanie reveals that she is actually a Russian princess.                         
   Ray Middleton, Fay Templeton, Tamara, Lyda Roberti, Sydney Greenstreet, and a young Bob Hope headed the cast. In supporting roles were two fellows who would go on to much bigger careers in Hollywood, Fred MacMurray and George Murphy. Reviews were mixed, but Kern's memorable score made the show a hit and it ran nine months. It toured successfully for another year, and was particularly popular on the West Coast. Kern followed its lead--he, too, went to California, and decided he preferred Hollywood to Broadway. With the exception of Very Warm For May in 1939, Kern never wrote another New York show.         
   Roberto, meanwhile, is almost never revived. But it survives, greatly altered, as a 1935 Astaire-Rogers vehicle, and as the 1952 MGM musical Lovely to Look At, with Howard Keel, Ann Miller, and Kathryn Grayson.