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A CANOPY OF GREEN SPREADS
gracefully over a stage half the size of a football field.
In front of it stretch nearly 11,000 seats, arranged in a gentle 52-foot rake. Each evening from
mid-June through mid-August, the lights blaze, the music swells and a dervish of dancers defy
the laws of gravity. It’s a St. Louis institution. A tradition for 97 summers. It’s The Muny.
The love of good theatre on a grand scale seems to have been part of the St. Louis psyche from
the outset: In 1916, actress Margaret Anglin selected the site of the present day Muny for an
outdoor production of
As You Like It
. The show featured a “community prologue,” giving more
than 200 St. Louisans a chance to perform. The show was a critical and popular success.
In 1917, the Convention Board of the St. Louis Advertising Club decided to proceed with plans
to host in June the 13th Annual Convention of Advertising Clubs of the World. As late as April
10 there was no entertainment feature for the convention, which would open June 3. Attorney
Guy Golterman, Parks Commissioner Nelson Cunliff and Mayor Henry Kiel set the wheels in
motion that would lead to the construction of an outdoor theatre in Forest Park. The first
municipally-owned outdoor theatre in America was built in 49 days, minus seven days lost to
rain. The grand opera
Aida
was presented on June 5, 1917.
By 1919, a charter had been formed naming the outdoor theatre: The Municipal Theatre
Association. On June 16, 1919,
Robin Hood
was presented as the first show performed under
“The Muny” banner.
Since that summer of 1919, when Robin Hood and his band of merry musicians first trod the
venerable boards, St. Louis has considered The Muny its own theatre. That tradition may have
been established by then-mayor Kiel, who demonstrated his support of the fledgling enterprise
by making his stage debut in that first production as King Richard.
THROUGH THE DECADES,
The Muny has played host to some of the biggest names in
show business: Vincent Price, Cary Grant, W. C. Fields, Bob Hope, Ethel Merman, Cab Calloway,
Pearl Bailey, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Phyllis Diller, John Travolta, Angela Lansbury, Betty White,
Sarah Jessica Parker and a constellation of other stars. The Muny has produced and presented
grand operas, operettas, concerts, ballet troupes and Broadway musicals. Its current fame
rests on the latter, with St. Louisans justly proud of the elaborate and professionally-staged
classic Broadway musicals presented on The Muny stage, unrivaled by any theatre anywhere!
THE MUNY’S FAME HAS RESTED SOLIDLY
on its fabulous productions, yet it seems
that there is more than show biz behind its success. Native St. Louisan, Muny veteran and
popular actress Mary Wickes put this mystique very well: “...You young lovers take notice –
there is no more romantic setting than The Muny on a warm summer night, full moon, that
great orchestra playing and a golden-voiced tenor singing...Trust me. It’s as close to heaven
as some of us will get!”
A H I S T O R Y O F T H E M U N Y
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