Biography
Born on 28 February 1869 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and dying on 8 May 1926 in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, Rida Johnson Young earned recognition on Broadway for her work as both playwright and lyricist. Her 1906 play Brown Of Harvard, later adapted for the screen in 1926, incorporated the song ‘When Love Is Young’. She followed this with The Boys Of Company ‘B’ and The Lancers, each premiering in 1907, then Glorious Betty in 1908 and The Lottery Man in 1909. Ragged Robin arrived in 1910, a collaboration with Rita Olcott that featured incidental music by Frederic K. Logan. For Naughty Marietta, which opened the same year at the New York Theatre and completed 136 performances, Young supplied both book and lyrics while Victor Herbert composed the score; the production starred Emma Trentini and Orville Harrold and contained the songs ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp’, ‘Naughty Marietta’, ‘It Never, Never Can Be Love’, ‘If I Were Anybody Else But Me’, ‘’Neath The Southern Moon’, ‘Sweet By And By’, ‘Live For Today’, ‘I’m Falling In Love With Someone’ and ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life’.
Barry Of Ballymore, staged in 1911 with music by Chauncey Olcott and Ernest R. Ball, preceded Macushla (1912, music again by Ball and lyrics by J. Keirn Brennan). The Red Petticoat appeared in 1912, followed by The Isle O’ Dreams in 1913, for which Young shared lyric duties with Olcott and George Graff on Ball’s music. Additional titles from 1913 to 1917 included The Girl And The Pennant, Shameen Dhu, Lady Luxury, Captain Kidd, Jr., Her Soldier Boy, His Little Widows and Maytime. His Little Widows, created with W.C. Duncan, was later adapted by Firth Shephard and reached London in 1927 under the title Lady Luck. Maytime, by contrast, ran for nearly 500 performances; its score by Sigmund Romberg featured Young’s words for ‘The Road To Paradise’ and ‘Will You Remember (Sweetheart)?’, the sole number kept when the work became a 1937 film starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.
During 1918 Young completed Sometime as well as the book and lyrics for Little Simplicity, the latter set to music by Augustus Barratt. In the following decade she wrote the play Little Old New York (1920, filmed in 1940) together with the musicals Orange Blossoms (1922) and The Dream Girl (1924), both again paired with Herbert; the latter contained the song ‘My Dream Girl, I Loved You Long Ago’. After Young’s death, Naughty Marietta returned to Broadway in 1929 and 1931, enjoyed numerous road and regional mountings, and reached the screen in 1935 with MacDonald and Eddy in the leading roles. Several of her stage works were eventually transferred to film, and she also provided the soundtrack score for Mother Machree in 1928.
Barry Of Ballymore, staged in 1911 with music by Chauncey Olcott and Ernest R. Ball, preceded Macushla (1912, music again by Ball and lyrics by J. Keirn Brennan). The Red Petticoat appeared in 1912, followed by The Isle O’ Dreams in 1913, for which Young shared lyric duties with Olcott and George Graff on Ball’s music. Additional titles from 1913 to 1917 included The Girl And The Pennant, Shameen Dhu, Lady Luxury, Captain Kidd, Jr., Her Soldier Boy, His Little Widows and Maytime. His Little Widows, created with W.C. Duncan, was later adapted by Firth Shephard and reached London in 1927 under the title Lady Luck. Maytime, by contrast, ran for nearly 500 performances; its score by Sigmund Romberg featured Young’s words for ‘The Road To Paradise’ and ‘Will You Remember (Sweetheart)?’, the sole number kept when the work became a 1937 film starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.
During 1918 Young completed Sometime as well as the book and lyrics for Little Simplicity, the latter set to music by Augustus Barratt. In the following decade she wrote the play Little Old New York (1920, filmed in 1940) together with the musicals Orange Blossoms (1922) and The Dream Girl (1924), both again paired with Herbert; the latter contained the song ‘My Dream Girl, I Loved You Long Ago’. After Young’s death, Naughty Marietta returned to Broadway in 1929 and 1931, enjoyed numerous road and regional mountings, and reached the screen in 1935 with MacDonald and Eddy in the leading roles. Several of her stage works were eventually transferred to film, and she also provided the soundtrack score for Mother Machree in 1928.