This hit musical was a rousing political satire, with a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. The show has a surprisingly modern story, concerning the first presidential campaign to be won using a media campaign. The hero is candidate John P. Wintergreen, who runs on a platform of Love. His campaign manager has whipped up national excitement by promoting a beauty contest in Atlantic City, promising that the bachelor Wintergreen will marry the winning beauty and make her First Lady. ("Who the lucky girl will be / Who gets to leave the bourgeoisie?" is one couplet from a chorus on this subject.) However, before Wintergreen can tie the knot with the winner, Diana Devereaux, he falls in love with a secretary, Mary Turner, who is young, pretty, and blessed with a fine soprano voice and a top-notch recipe for cornmeal muffins. How can a mere beauty pageant winner compete with all that? Wintergreen marries Turner and is sworn in as President. Devereaux sues him for breach of promise, nearly causing Wintergreen's impeachment. But since the President's love for his wife is obviously true and faithful, the public forgives him.

The show ran for 441 performances and became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Since Gershwin saw the show more as an operetta than as a regular musical, he composed a more "classical" overture than usual. Most Broadway overtures are simply medleys of the show's top songs. But this time Gershwin wrote a well-developed orchestral fantasia on three songs: "Wintergreen for President," "Who Cares?," and the title song. There was a sequel, Let 'em Eat Cake, but its plot (involving an attempted Fascist-style takeover of the Wintergreen administration) was far too grim, and the show flopped.

© All Music Guide

Who Cares?

The George S. Kaufman and the Gershwin brothers' first musical was Strike Up the Band, a weighty political satire with a brilliantly composed score that closed in Philadelphia. But when Morrie Ryskind lightened Kaufman's lampoon and the Gershwin brothers wrote sweetened songs, Strike Up the Band made Broadway. This success prompted the Gershwins, Kaufman, and Ryskind to try political satire again with Of Thee I Sing, where the most momentous issue discussed is the marital obligation of the President of the United States. And like the lightened and sweetened Strike Up the Band, Of Thee I Sing made Broadway. But the music of Of Thee I Sing was in many ways more like the original than the revived Strike Up the Band in that both are composed scores with entire scenes set to music rather than simply a sequence of sweet songs. In "Who Cares?," the Gershwins integrate a chorus, a dramatic scene, and a love duet. That the scene is a press conference, that the chorus is reporters, that the dramatic scene is between the President and the First Lady, and that the love duet is a bright and bouncy song that sums up the emotional and political philosophy of the musical in its title is what makes the song brilliant. That the tune of "Who Cares?" starts with a long legato melody and moves through a syncopated cadence into a big choral refrain is what makes the song popular.

© James Leonard, Rovi