The musical debuted on January 1, 1906 at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway and ran for 90 performances before closing on March 17. The role of Mary Jane Jenkins was created by Fay Templeton and Kid Burns was played by Victor Moore. Frederick Solomon was music director for the production. The musical re-opened later the same year, on November 5, at the New York Theatre with the cast almost unchanged. It played there for an additional 32 performances before closing on December 1. Its only Broadway revival after that was from March 14 to April 13, 1912 at George M. Cohan's Theatre, where it ran for 36 performances with a different cast.
The piece is remembered for several songs, such as its title song, "Forty-five Minutes from Broadway", originally sung by Moore, and for tunes about its leading lady character, "Mary Is a Grand Old Name" and "So Long Mary", both sung in the original production by Templeton, which were performed in recreations of the original stage play within the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy.
^"Jay" is an old-fashioned synonym for "reuben" or "rube". See [1]. It means a rural person who is ignorant of the ways of a large city; it survives in the term "jaywalking".
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