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Harrigan
& Hart
1844-1911
1855-1891
Musical
Comedy, Composers
The form we now know as musical comedy was
initiated on Broadway by Edward (Ned) Harrigan and Tony Hart.
Produced between 1878 and 1884, with book and lyrics by Harrigan
and music by his father-in-law David Braham, these shows featured
characters and situations taken from everyday street life
familiar to most New Yorkers. Harrigan, Hart and Braham laid
a path that Broadway musicals would follow profitably for
more than a century to come.
 Harrigan
was a variety comic who had made his name in the variety melodeons
of San Francisco, and Hart was a stage-struck reform school
escapee with a rare gift for stage comedy. They met in the
mid 1870's, when both were touring the Midwest, and soon developed
a routine that poked fun at New York's infamous neighborhood
militia's. These local "guard troops" were little
more than uniformed drinking clubs sponsored by local politicians.
Weekend parades to impress the public were usually so beer-soaked
that the participants only managed to look ridiculous. To
spoof this, Harrigan and Hart donned ill-fitting uniforms
and staggered through inept military drills while singing
a merry march.
Audiences all across the country loved the
act and the catchy "Mulligan Guard's March" was
soon heard all around the world. In the novel Kim Rudyard
Kipling notes that it was a favorite with British troops in
India who replaced the names of New York streets with various
Indian locales.
When Harrigan and Hart reached New York,
the "Mulligan Guard" act was such a sensation that
it toured the city's top variety theaters for over a year.
Inspired by this acclaim, they expanded the act into "The
Mulligan Guard Picnic" in 1878. This sketch ran for forty
minutes and it packed audiences into Broadway's Theatre Comique
for a month.
In the Mulligan Guard shows the versatile
Harrigan performed, produced, and directed while writing the
scripts and lyrics. The action was always set on the scruffy
streets of downtown Manhattan, with Harrigan playing politically
ambitious Irish saloon owner Dan Mulligan, and Hart winning
praise as the black washerwoman Rebecca Allup. Their shows
still used the minstrel form of blackface.
It was the first in what would be a seven-year
series of full-length musical farces. Most of these farces
centered around Irish-Americans in New York. These farces
proved extremely popular with New York's immigrant-based lower
and middle classes, overlooked groups that loved seeing themselves
depicted on stage. Powerful politicians made a point of showing
up too, anxious to curry the favor of voters.
With the success of their plays came financial gains. They
were called The Merry Partners but by 1885 the partnership
had run its course. Harrigan's penchant for hiring relatives
annoyed Hart who felt he was being slighted. Hart went off
on his own, but the crippling late stages of syphilis forced
him off the stage a year later and he died in 1891 at the
young age of 36.
Harrigan continued his busy life. In December
1890, he opened his own theater on 35th Street and Sixth Avenue
in Manhatttan. While his plays eventually became passe, with
Vaudeville emerging, he still was sought out as an actor and
continued to act through 1909. On June 12, 1911 Harrigan died.
While their songs and plays are rarely heard
today their legacy is important to Irish-Americans. Prior
to Harrigan & Hart most Americans looked down upon the
Irish immigrants. "No Irish Need Apply" was the
common phrase. After Harrigan & Hart's shows became popular,
Irish-Americans were at least looked at differently.
Harrigan & Hart's bumbling New York Irish cop, a pre-curser
to the Keystone Cops, at least brought a smile to the faces
of the many Americans familiar with their plays. This was
a major step for Irish-Americans who had previously been depicted
as apes and hoodlums.
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