No, No, Nanette

No, No, Nanette
1971 revival recording Illustration by Hilary Knight
Music	Vincent Youmans
Lyrics	Irving Caesar Otto Harbach
Book	Otto Harbach Frank Mandel 1971: Burt Shevelove
Basis	Emil Nyitray and Frank Mandel's play My Lady Friends
Productions	1924: Chicago 1925: West End 1925: Broadway 1971: Broadway revival
Awards	Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book

No, No, Nanette is a musical with a book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel based on Mandel's 1919 Broadway play My Lady Friends; lyrics by Irving Caesar and Harbach; and music by Vincent Youmans. The farcical story centers around three couples who find themselves together at a cottage in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the midst of a blackmail scheme focusing on a fun-loving Manhattan heiress who has run off, leaving an unhappy fiancé. Its songs include the well-known "Tea for Two" and "I Want to Be Happy".

After a pre-Broadway tour in 1924, the musical was revised for a production later 1924 in Chicago, where it became a hit and ran for more than a year. In 1925 No, No, Nanette opened both on Broadway and in London's West End, running for 321 and 665 performances, respectively. Film versions (1930 and 1940) and revivals followed. A Broadway revival in 1971, with the book adapted by Burt Shevelove, was a success, running for 861 performances.

A popular myth holds that the show was financed by selling baseball's Boston Red Sox superstar Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, resulting in the "Curse of the Bambino."^[1] However, it was Mandel's original play, My Lady Friends, rather than No, No, Nanette, that was directly financed by the Ruth sale.