A Broadway Musical the black-themed musical itself. "The Wiz" proved to be Brown's only success. Following a dismal October–November tryout with Helen Gallagher and Julius LaRosa at the theatre in the Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, the producers fired most of the cast and creative personnel, including director/choreographer George Faison. Gower Champion was called in to rescue the Broadway-bound production with only a month to go, but he feared that the show's defects were too serious to remedy and insisted on receiving a "Production supervised by" credit only. After 14 previews, the Broadway production opened and closed the same night at the Lunt-Fontanne
Broadway theatre of the minstrel shows), followed by the ragtime-tinged "" (1898), and the highly successful "In Dahomey" (1902). Hundreds of musical comedies were staged on Broadway in the 1890s and early 1900s made up of songs written in New York's Tin Pan Alley involving composers such as Gus Edwards, John Walter Bratton, and George M. Cohan ("Little Johnny Jones" (1904), "45 Minutes From Broadway" (1906), and "George Washington Jr." (1906)). Still, New York runs continued to be relatively short, with a few exceptions, compared with London runs, until World War I. A few very successful British musicals continued to achieve great