Oh, Kay! is a musical with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. It is based on the play La Présidente by Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Veber. The plot revolves around the adventures of the Duke of Durham and his sister, Lady Kay, English bootleggers in Prohibition Era America. Kay finds herself falling in love with a man who seems unavailable. The show is remembered for its enduring song, "Someone to Watch Over Me". The musical opened on Broadway in 1926, starring Gertrude Lawrence and Victor Moore, and ran for 256 performances. The musical then opened in London's West End in 1927, starring Lawrence and John Kirby, where it ran for 213 performances. Background Producers Alex A. Aarons and Vinton Freedley imagined Oh, Kay! as a Princess Theatre-style show, with a contemporary setting, simple sets, and a farcical story. Gertrude Lawrence, who had been featured in the André Charlot revues of 1924 and 1925, was chosen as the star before the songs or story had been written. In accordance with the typical creative process for early American musicals, George and Ira Gershwin wrote the score to Oh, Kay! before the librettists, Bolton and Wodehouse, began work on the book. When the book was completed, eight songs from the Gershwins' score were cut because they could not be easily inserted into the libretto. The show's Philadelphia previews ran more than three hours, and so the producers cut the prologue (where the leading lady was introduced), thus losing the first 4 songs, and also the Act II "Finaletto", which became obsolete in the reshuffling. This highlighted the farcical elements of the plot at the expense of the romantic ones, since the title character does not appear until 40 minutes into the show. The story aptly captured the spirit of the Roaring Twenties, featuring settings and characters familiar to theatre audiences: an opulent Long Island mansion and notorious (but comic) bootleggers. During rehearsals, George Gershwin purchased a rag doll in a Philadelphia toy store. The ballad, "Someone to Watch Over Me", was staged with Lawrence alone on stage, clutching the doll and singing to it. It was the hit song of the show and became a Gershwin standard. Synopsis Act I It is 1926, the Jazz Age and the era of Prohibition. Jimmy Winter is very popular among the young ladies, and