Maggie Murphy's Home

DESCRIPTION: "Behind a grammar schoolhouse In a double tenement, I live with my old mother, And always pay the rent.... You're welcome every evening at Maggie Murphy's home." Maggie enjoys the area, and hopes all will remain happy at home
AUTHOR: Words: Edward Harrigan / Music: David Braham
EARLIEST DATE: 1890 (sheet music published by Wm. A. Pond & Co, New York)
KEYWORDS: home nonballad dancing music
FOUND IN: Canada(Ont) Ireland
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Finson-Edward-Harrigan-David-Braham, vol. II, #159, pp. 263-266, "Maggie Murphy's Home" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Stanley Appelbaum, editor, _Show Songs: from The Black Crook to The Red Mill_, Dover Publications, 1974, pp. 47-50, "Maggie Murphy's Home" (1 text, 1 tune, a copy of the sheet music)
Richard Moody, _Ned Harrigan: From Corlear's Hook to Herald Square_, Nelson Hall, 1980, after p. 54, "Maggie Murphy's Home" (a copy of the sheet music)
Roud #5208
RECORDINGS:
The Shannon Quartet, "Maggie Murphy's Home" (Victor 19336, 1924)
Mick Moloney, "Maggie Murphy's Home" (on HarriganBrahamMaloney)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Firth b.28(3a/b), "Maggie Murphy's Home," G. Ingram and Co (London), n.d.
NOTES [1723 words]: Traditional collections of this are few, but there are some. Edith Fowke seems to have had one from Ontario, and there is a YouTube recording sung by John O'Donovan. The latter has definitely been folk processed; the words are very different (a whole verse seems to have come in from somewhere else) and the tune has also drifted a little.
For background on Harrigan and Braham, see the notes to "The Babies on Our Block."
When Edward Harrigan opened his new theater in 1890, the first show he put on there was "Reilly and the 400," which featured this song. According to Appelbaum, p. xxv, "'Maggie Murphy's Home,' an archetype of the 1890s waltz song, was sung by the fifteen-year-old Emma Pollock in the role of Maggie Murphy." Moody, pp. 189-190, reports "Reilly would probably have caught on even without Harrigan's newest sensations, the teenagie chippies Maggie Murphy and Kitty Lynch, played by Emma Pollock, age 16, and Ada Lewis, 17. Emma's Maggie Murphy blew into Casey's [social hall] 'like a sweet breath of air from over the meadow,' and as she 'stood ready to do her jig dance surrounded by roughs, toughs, and fallen women, she made you think of a little violet dropped among the weeds.' Reporters could not control themselves. She was 'like a little bobolink fluttering down from a rose in a frog pond.' Her prize jig led into 'Maggie Murphy's Home,' Al Smith's favorite song, the favorite of all Irishmen who knew that 'an organ in the parlor' did 'give the house a tone.'"
Al Smith famously ended up with "Sidewalks of New York" as the theme song of his political career, but it wasn't the song he wanted. He wanted "Maggie Murphy's Home" (Moody, p. 2); for background on the bandleader's mistake that led to Smith being stuck with "Sidewalks of New York," see the notes to that song.
Spaeth, p. 194: "This number has been associated with the name of Ada Lewis, but was actually introduced by the youthful Enmma Pollock. (Miss Lewis created the role of a tough, gum-chewing girl, which also became famous.) The Pollock interpretation included a 'Challenge Jig,' based on the contemporary custom of holding contests in dancing and other arts, and implying the limit of superlative skill. Maggie Murphy's Home is still remembered nostalgically as an exposition of simple New York life (the original home was in Brooklyn) and musically it was one of Braham's most effective creations."
The plot of "Reilly and the 400" is a typical Harrigan complication-fest. William Reilly (Harrigan) owns a pawnship. His lawyer son Ned is going to marry a rich girl, but a rival is trying to reveal Ned's humble past to break up the marriage. So William Reilly decides to pretend to be an Irish nobleman. The rival isn't what he seems to be either, but the book that would prove this gets mixed up with another, and everyone spends three acts looking for it before everyone ends up with the right partner (Franceschina, p. 198).
In the course of all this, "Waltzing music from an onstage orchestra leads into Maggie Murphy's Home, an exceptionally catchy waltz describing tenement life in New York City and performed by Maggie Murphy (Emma Pollock)... [After Reilly sings 'Taking in the Town,'] An eight minute jig follows in which Maggie Murphy and Bessie [Barlow, played by John Decker] compete in challenge dancing" (Franceschina, p. 199, although the music for the jig is lost). The show would prove popular enough to last 202 shows in its first run (Franceschina, p. 202) -- a near-record total (Ewen, p. 64, says it was the longest-running Harrigan/Braham show) -- and would later be revived.
Williams, p. 162: "In [Reilly and the 400] Harrigan introduced a new urban type into his company in the form of two teenage 'chippies' or tough girls. Maggie Murphy and Kitty Lynch were figures known on the street but new to the stage. When Kitty (played by Ada Lewis) appeared in her scruffy clothes and tight, ill-fitting sweater and rasped out to the pawn broker, 'Say Reilly, gimme me shoes!' she stopped the show.... Harrigan had 'framed' another bit of the city."
Harrigan's plays were noted for their complications on stage, but this musical produced one at home: Emma Pollock became involved with composer/bandleader David Braham's son George, a member of the Harrigan/Braham orchestra (Kahn, p. 155, calls it a "fiery romance"). She gave him a ring -- which George pawned to pay a gambling debt, and then had to come up with a trick to get it back (Franceschina, pp. 201-202). Plus, during a performance, he had to hide the fact that it was missing, which got him in trouble with his father even if he managed to avoid telling Emma.
Supposedly it took David Braham just five minutes to compose the tune for this (Moody, p. 154; Franceschina, p. 200, tells how Harrigan had come to Braham late in the production and Braham didn't want to write a new tune, but gave in, and then, some days later, had this melody come into his head). Franceschina, p. 201, has a reprint of his rough draft of the music, and it certainly appears to have been quickly dashed off -- but Braham, according to Harrigan, had terrible handwriting (Franceschina, p. 2), so that may not prove much.
According to Williams, p. 207, "The [Tin Pan Alley] Irish-American girl began life as the tough 'chippie' characterized by Harrigan's Maggie Murphy and the somewhat gentler girl who sings 'Danny By My Side.'"
Gilbert, pp. 215-216, gives the story of how Emma Pollock ended up in Harrigan's company. She started seeking theatre work at a young age, and had many tribulations along the way, including having her mother pull her out of a show because they costumed her in tights. When she auditioned for Harrigan, she dressed in borrowed clothes -- and someone dropped a wet towel on her and ruined her hat and hair; she was afraid of losing the part and having to return the damaged clothing. But Harrigan, who was fond of odd costumes, cast Pollock as Maggie Murphy. On pp. 216-217, Gilbert reports that "Maggie Murphy's Home" "not only stopped the show -- it is still a known song. For Emma, thereafter and wherever -- in England, the continent, South Africa, Australia, and on the battlefields of France -- sang it continuously. [Compare Kahn, p. 155, who says that Pollock's "rendition of 'Maggie Murphy's Home' ... was so universally applauded that it was her theme song ever after."]
"Emma, who, happily, is still alive [presumably in 1941, when she would have been about 66] and still as sprightly, now confesses that Maggie Murphy's Home actually was in Brooklyn, and that when she removed to New York, her change was sadly noted in the Brooklyn Eagle.
"In her role, Emma danced a 'Challenge Jig,' and she had to do it very well, because it was necessary to the plot of Reilly and the Four Hundred.. The 'Challenge Jig' had a peculiar connotation. It was an old form of program billing attached to any type of artist... and it meant the equivalent of our modern 'tops,' or 'supercolossal.'"
Kahn, pp. 274-275: "Reilly and the Four Hundred was a smash hit. It ran for 202 straight performances that first season.... Several factors contributed to Reilly's success. The return of Harrigan to New York after his unaccustomed absence as, of course, one. Another was that John Wild... was back in the Harrigan fold. Another was the song 'Maggie Murphy's Home,' which was fetchingly rendered by Emma Pollock in her debut with the company. She was only fifteen but had got herself hired by auditioning in her older sister Evelyn's clothes. But the most talked-about aspect of the production was Harrigan's unveiling in it of a type of low-life character novel to the state -- the Tough Girl." (This was mostly Ada Lewis, but Emma also played one to a lesser degree.)
Her role as Maggie was evidently a great success, and secured Emma's place in Harringan's company for years to come. She played the wife of the seemingly-disappeared Hogan in "The Last of the Hogans" (Franceschina, p. 203), and what sounds like a big role as the beautiful street performer daughter Nellie, the poverty-stricken daughter of former mine owner Paddy Dempsey, in "The Woolen Stocking." In "Notoriety," she played Bessie, the daughter of the retired policeman hero, Barney Dolan, played by Harrigan (Franceschina, p. 209). Even after Harrigan's company broke up and reformed when Harrigan's son Eddie died, a theatrical program in the author's possession (quoted in "Babies On Our Block) shows that, in 1895, she played Diana McFudd, the younger sister of Cordelia (McFudd) Mulligan (a role originated by Tony Hart's wife Gertie Granville; Franceschina, p. 159), in a touring production of the play "Cordelia's Aspirations." Clearly she was a performer Harrigan liked a lot.
(It wasn't universal. According to Kahn, pp. 284-285, Another young actress, Fannie Batchelder, briefly worked with Harrigan, and called Ada Lewis, Emma, Emma's sister Evelyn, and one Margery Teal by the gang name "The Racy Four," concealing their actual names but calling Emma, e.g., "The Human Fly" and Ada "The Hoodlum." Batcheler "made her Racy Four out to be ninnies of little charm and less culture. The Human Fly was depicted, for example, as childishly prone to jealous tantrums, La Sale [Teal] as as spiteful gossip, and the Hoodlum as so woefully ignorant that when an admirer presented her with some sterling silver she had been obliged sheepishly to ask Fannie Batchelder what 'sterling' meant." It is left to the reader to determine what the odds are that Lewis would have asked such a question of someone she despised. What I suspect Batchelder's story proves is that Pollock was a teenager. Well, we knew that....)
In 1895, Richard F. Outcault created created a comic strip, "Hogan's Alley," featuring "The Yellow Kid," which in turn inspired the term "yellow journalism" (see the Wikipedia entry on the "Hogan's Alley" comic strip). This name comes from the first line of the last verse of this song: "I walk through Hogan's Alley at the closing of the day"; Outcault was fond of Ned Harrigan's plays (Williams, p. 208).
The "organ in the parlor" of the chorus was probably a reed organ; Williams, p 32, says, "During the second half of the nineteenth century, the reed organ, its bellows operated by a foot pump, became popular, especially in working-class homes." - RBW
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