Memphis Bound (usually styled Memphis Bound!) is a 1945 American musical based on the Gilbert and Sullivan opera H.M.S. Pinafore. The score was adapted and augmented by Don Walker and Clay Warnick, with a libretto credited to Albert Barker and Sally Benson, "with gratitude to W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan." The original production starred an all-black cast including Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Plot An all-African-American touring company is traveling to Memphis on a showboat, the Calliboga Queen. When the boat is run aground in Tennessee, the company mounts a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore to raise funds to get it unstuck. Much of the musical consists of a play within a play, as the company presents a musically updated version of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera; the boat pilot (played by Bill Robinson in the original production) takes a major role as Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty. Another actor (Avon Long in the original) sings and dances the role of Captain Corcoran, while the part of Josephine goes to an Andrews Sisters-style trio of women from the company chorus (Sheila Guyse, Ida James, and Thelma Carpenter)—each had been promised the role, so they join forces and play it simultaneously. The police arrest the company for performing without a license, and the case is taken to court in a scene involving excerpts from another Gilbert and Sullivan work, Trial by Jury. Productions The show was given a pre-Broadway tryout at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, early in May 1945.<ref name=Smithsonian-p2>Program for Memphis Bound, p. 2</ref> The production gave top billing to Bill Robinson and Avon Long. The show then opened at the Broadway Theatre on May 24, 1945. In 1939, Robinson had starred as the Lord High Executioner in Mike Todd's musical The Hot Mikado, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (another updated version, The Swing Mikado, opened on Broadway almost simultaneously). Memphis Bound marked his return to Broadway, in another vehicle based on Gilbert and Sullivan. John Wildberg, who had successfully presented Philip Yordan's Anna Lucasta with an African-American cast on Broadway the previous year, was producer; Robert Ross directed, assisted by Eva Jessye, with Vinton Freedley credited for "personal supervision" of the show. Memphis, one of numerous Second World War-era Broadway musicals created by white production teams for black casts, was the