Typed Letter Signed about Bella and Sam Spewack

TLS from the great songwriter addressed to "Peggy" (evidently the singer and actress Peggy Wood), regarding a stalled possible collaboration with playwrights Bella and Samuel Spewack. June 4, 1936. Text, in part: "[...] I'm puzzled by what the hell can be restraining those Spewacks from getting something down on paper. To my knowledge, they've been improvising their play since February and heaven knows how long before. [...] Not much of a chance of my being east before September. This might strike you as a volte face (as the learned fellows say) but i made the proviso with Gordon-Spewack and Co. that should I be tied up here -- as is now the case -- I will do my job if, as and when they cough up a script. I suppose the three of them are being blown about all over Europe at this writing, but should Sam and Bella still be in New York and you run into them, will you please indicate that I'm still in California and am thirsty." 1 p. 5 x 7.75 inches on personal letterhead.

Kern had collaborated with playwrights Bella and Sam Spewack on the 1934 movie musical The Cat and the Fiddle, a film adaption of the 1931 operetta which starred Peggy Wood in its London production. Wood had also starred in Kern's early music Love O'Mike in 1917, and would go on to be best-known as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music. (15141)

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