Chapter Four treats Rogers’ alliance with Florenz Ziegfeld, whose popular Zeigfeld Follies made him the leading entertainer in early twentieth-century America. When the Oklahoman joined the show, he served as a cowboy counterpoint to the glamorous Ziegfeld Girls and sophisticated urban dancers and comedians. Rogers’ witty observations and droll comments on the events and values of the day, delivered in a drawling voice and homespun manner, delighted city audiences and critics alike. Attired in cowboy clothes and often twirling a rope, his humorous monologues and shrewd observations sharpened his image as a plainspoken man of the people, a national star, and a celebrity.

The numerous revues that opened in spring 1924 reflected many different approaches to the popular and profitable genre. Five revues debuted over four days in May in New York (including I’ll Say She Is, starring the Marx Brothers; Innocent Eyes, featuring Mistinguett and on-stage nudity; and The Grand Street Follies, produced away from Times Square at the Neighborhood Playhouse). London had its own revues open that showed tremendous aesthetic contrasts, including Elsie Janis at Home starring the popular American entertainer, and two editions of major series: Ziegfeld’s Follies, which included a sequence dedicated to the memory of Victor Herbert, and George White’s Scandals, the last Scandals for which George Gershwin wrote music, premiered on Broadway.

On 25 and 26 December 1923, three musicals opened – The Rise of Rosie-Reilly, Mary Jane McKane, and Almond Eye – each of which reflected takes on current theatrical trends, whether a rags-to-riches scenario or Orientalism, followed on New Year’s Eve by The Song and Dance Man, a play about a musician, and Kid Boots, a musical comedy created for Eddie Cantor and, as a Ziegfeld production, included a revue built in to the plot. Kid Boots marked a change in professional reputation for Cantor as he moved from being known primarily as a blackface, often crass, comedian to a physical comedian whose humour was always clean.