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Good News is a musical comedy which opened on Broadway in 1927, set on the campus of the fictional "Tait College". The book was by Buddy DeSylva and Laurence Schwab, lyrics by DeSylva and Lew Brown, and music by Ray Henderson. The famed song-and-dance number "The Varsity Drag" is from this show. It also features the song "The Best Things in Life Are Free" (no relation to the 1992 hit song by Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson). Good News was adapted as a movie by MGM in 1930 starring Bessie Love, Cliff Edwards and Penny Singleton. The finale was filmed in Technicolor. It was remade again by MGM in 1947 in Technicolor; the latter featured additional songs by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and starred June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Mel Tormé, and Joan McCracken. The musical was revived on Broadway in a 1974 production featuring Alice Faye in the role of Professor Kenyon The popular, revised version of "Good News!" was written in 1993 by Mark Madama and Wayne Bryan for the Musical Theatre of Wichita. An update of a very popular 20s musical, Good News is the epitome of the "new version" turning a hackneyed, old-style show into a jazzy, full-of-pep, razzamatazz that has the audience in its grip fromo the moment the curtain goes up. And the songs? Well, the fact that they include, "You're the Cream in My Coffee", "The Varsity Drag", "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries", "Button Up Your Overcoat" and "Keep Your Sunny Side Up" should give you an inkling of just how much there is in this gem of a show.
Chanin's 46th St Theatre, Broadway - 6 September, 1927 (551 perfs) In 2003, the Jewish Community Center of Pittsburgh staged a revival.
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