This is about the stage musical. For the film, see The Gay Divorcee.
Gay Divorce.
Gay Divorce is a stage musical based on an unproduced play by J. Hartley Manners.
Cast[]
- Fred Astaire - Guy Holden
- Betty Starbuck - Barbara
- Luella Gear - Hortense
- Claire Luce - Mimi
- Erik Rhodes - Tonetti
- G.P. Huntley Jr. - Teddy Egbert
- Eric Blore - Waiter
Plot[]
Guy Holden, an American writer traveling in England, falls madly in love with a woman named Mimi, who disappears after their first encounter. To take his mind off his lost love, his friend Teddy Egbert, a British attorney, takes him to Brighton Beach, where Egbert has arranged for a "paid co-respondent" to assist his client in obtaining a divorce from her boring, aging, geologist husband Robert. What Holden does not know is that the client is none other than Mimi, who in turn mistakes him — because he is too ashamed of his occupation to say what it is, namely pseudonymously writing cheap "bodice ripper" romance novels — for the paid co-respondent.
At the end, when her husband appears, he is unconvinced by the faked adultery—but is then unwittingly revealed, by the waiter at the resort, to have been genuinely adulterous himself.
Musical numbers[]
- Act I
- "After You, Who?" - Guy
- "Why Marry Them?" - Barbara & Girls
- "Salt Air" - Teddy, Barbara & Girls
- "I Still Love the Red, White and Blue" - Hortense
- "After You, Who?" (reprise) - Guy
- "Night and Day" - Guy & Mimi
- "How's Your Romance?" - Tonetti & Chorus
- Act II
- "What Will Become of Our England?" - Waiter & Girls
- "I've Got You on My Mind" - Guy & Mimi
- "Mister and Missus Fitch" - Hortense
- "You're in Love" - Guy, Mimi & Tonetti