Editing Ring Lardner (section)

=== Theatre and music ===
Lardner also had a lifelong fascination with the theatre, although his only Broadway three-act successes were the thrice-filmed ''[[Elmer, the Great]]'', co-written with [[George M. Cohan]], and ''[[June Moon]]'', a [[comedy]] authored with [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] veteran [[George S. Kaufman]]. Lardner also wrote skits for the [[Ziegfeld Follies]] and a series of brief nonsense plays that ridiculed the conventions of the theatre, using zany humor and outrageous, impossible stage directions, such as "The curtain is lowered for seven days to denote the lapse of a week."<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/ringlardnerother0000robi/page/139/mode/1up |title=Ring Lardner and the Other |first=Douglas |last=Robinson |author-link=Douglas Robinson (academic) |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=0195076001 |page=139 |date=1992 |access-date=2024-06-10 |via=Internet Archive |url-access=registration}}</ref>

He was a dedicated composer and lyricist: both his first (''Zanzibar'' (1903)) and last (''June Moon'' (1929)) published stage works included several Lardner tunes. He wrote at least one recorded song for [[Bert Williams]], co-wrote one for [[Nora Bayes]], and provided the lyrics for the song "That Old Quartet" (1913) by [[Nathaniel D. Mann]]. Other collaborators of note included Aubrey Stauffer, [[Jerome Kern]] on ''[[Very Good Eddie]]'' (1915), and [[Vincent Youmans]]—with whom he toiled on the Ziegfeld–[[Marilyn Miller]]–[[Fred Astaire|Asstores]] musical ''Smiles'' (1930).<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z_usBBxC_TQC&pg=PA83 |title=Show Tunes: The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway's Major Composers |first=Steven |last=Suskin |author-link=Steven Suskin |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=9780195125993 |page=83 |date=2000 |access-date=2024-06-10 |via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=May 24, 2023 |title=Smiles (Broadway Production) |url=https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/smiles-11267 |access-date=May 24, 2023 |website=IBDB Internet Broadway Database}}</ref>