I'll Say She Is (1924) is a musical comedy revue written by brothers Will B. Johnstone (book and lyrics) and Tom Johnstone (music). It was the Broadway debut of the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo). A revival of I'll Say She Is, as "adapted and expanded" by the writer-performer Noah Diamond, was seen Off Broadway at the Connelly Theater in 2016. Background I'll Say She Is led to the Marxes' rise out of vaudeville and into stardom on the Broadway stage and later into motion pictures, and came at a time when they had gotten themselves effectively banned from the major vaudeville circuits owing to a dispute with E. F. Albee, and had failed in an attempt to produce their own shows on the alternate Shubert circuit. The show included some Marx Brothers routines and musical specialties from their years in vaudeville, incorporated into a thin narrative about a rich girl looking for thrills, as presented to her by a succession of male suitors. The libretto and lyrics were written by Will B. Johnstone, who later co-wrote the classic Marx Brothers films Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932) with music by his brother, Tom Johnstone. The comedic high point was a long sketch featuring Groucho as Napoleon, which the Brothers regarded as the funniest thing they ever did. After touring for almost a year, the show opened on Broadway on May 19, 1924 at the Casino Theatre. It closed on February 7, 1925 after 313 performances. It was a roaring success, and it catapulted the Marx Brothers to superstardom, accepted by the New York smart set of the Algonquin Round Table. Alexander Woollcott and Robert Benchley were among the theatre critics who made I'll Say She Is a smash, and George S. Kaufman would co-write their next two Broadway musicals, The Cocoanuts (1925) and Animal Crackers (1928). Unlike those shows, however, I'll Say She Is was never made into a film. A version of its opening scene, however, was made into a short for Paramount Pictures as part of a feature called The House That Shadows Built (1931), made to celebrate Paramount's 20th anniversary of their founding in 1912, and as a promotion for the then-upcoming Marx film Monkey Business. An animated version of the Napoleon scene (with Groucho voicing himself) was incorporated into an ABC-TV special called The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians (1970). Synopsis Act I