Present Arms (musical)

Present Arms
Sheet music cover (cropped)
Music	Richard Rodgers
Lyrics	Lorenz Hart
Book	Herbert Fields
Productions	1928 Broadway

Present Arms is a Broadway musical comedy that opened April 26, 1928, with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and book by Herbert Fields. It was produced by Lew Fields with musical numbers stage by Busby Berkeley. It ran for 155 performances at the Lew Fields' Mansfield Theatre, which today is known as the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Present Arms was filmed in 1930 with Irene Dunne, with its title changed to Leathernecking. The film is presumed lost.

Plot

The show starred Charles King, Flora Le Breton, Joyce Barbour and Busby Berkeley. A man from Brooklyn is serving as a buck private in Pearl Harbor. He flirts with an English Peer's daughter; however, she is being pursued by a German, who raises pineapples in Hawaii. The Brooklynite pretends to be a Captain in order to make an impression, but he is found out, booted out, and loses out on the girl, until he proves himself in a shipwreck.

Songs

Act One

• "Tell It to the Marines"
• "You Took Advantage of Me"
• "Do I Hear You (Saying I Love You)?"
• "A Kiss for Cinderella"
• "Is It the Uniform?"
• "Crazy Elbows"

Act Two

• "Down By the Sea"
• "I'm a Fool for You (I'm a Fool, Little One)"
• "Blue Ocean Blues"
• "Hawaii"
• "Kohala, Welcome"

External links

• ​Present Arms​ at the Internet Broadway Database
• Overview of show

This page was last edited on 20 May 2023, at 15:49