Stanislaus Stange

Stanislaus Stange (1862–1917) was a Liverpool-born playwright, librettist, lyricist, and composer whose Broadway credits span the fin de siècle era and the early twentieth century. He emigrated to the United States in 1881, initially pursuing work as an actor and elocution teacher specializing in the Delsarte technique. Among his students during this period was Alice Nielsen, for whom he would later write theatrical material. His early performing career included work with a drama club in Kansas City, Missouri, where he acted in and directed productions of The Bells and Richard III, and he subsequently toured with George C. Milne, Stuart Robson, and William H. Crane.

Stange eventually relocated to New York, where he found greater success as a writer than he had as a performer. A sustained collaboration with composer Julian Edwards produced a series of musicals beginning with Madeline, or the Magic Kiss in 1895, a romantic fantasy built around the conceit of an old man who grows younger with each kiss. The partnership continued with Brian Boru (1896), The Wedding Day (1897), The Jolly Musketeer (1898), and When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1902), the last of which generated the popular patriotic song "My Own United States." Stange also contributed the book for Victor Herbert's The Singing Girl, a vehicle for his former pupil Alice Nielsen whose plot drew on elements from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. In 1904 he adapted Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer into the musical The Two Roses, with music by Ludwig Engländer and Louise Le Baron in the leading role. That same year, working with songwriters William Jerome and Jean Schwartz, he wrote Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!!, a hit vehicle for comedian Eddie Foy that became the longest-running musical of the 1903–1904 Broadway season.

His stage work extended beyond musical theatre. His play Quo Vadis?, adapted from Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel of the same name, premiered in Chicago at McVicker's Theater in 1899 before reaching Broadway and the West End in 1900. Stange also translated and adapted Oscar Straus's operetta The Chocolate Soldier in 1909, serving as its director as well, and the production achieved the longest run of any work associated with his career. His Broadway credits additionally include Dolly Varden, The Belle of London Town, The Girl in the Taxi, and the play Cashel Byron.

In 1910, his play The Girl with the Whooping Cough generated public controversy over its content. The mayor of New York intervened and all Broadway performances were halted. Drama critic George Jean Nathan described the play as nauseating and disgusting in its efforts to be risqué. Two years later, in 1912, Stange suffered a stroke while working on a production of The Chocolate Soldier, and his health and output declined in the years that followed. He died on January 2, 1917, at the age of 54. His son, Hugh Stanislaus Stange, went on to work as a playwright and screenwriter.