Toyland: A Song History

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“Toyland” comes from Babes in Toyland, an operetta with music by Victor Herbert and book and lyrics by Glen MacDonough. The show was first tried out at the Grand Opera House in Chicago on 17 June 1903 and opened in New York at the Majestic Theatre on 13 October 1903, and M. Witmark & Sons published the music that year. In the score “Toyland” is number 13 of the second act, and IMSLP counts it among Herbert’s best-known songs, together with “March of the Toys.”[1]

Posada print of a smiling street vendor holding up a tall pole hung with dangling toy figures as onlookers watch

José Guadalupe Posada, A vendor selling toys, zincograph, ca. 1880–1910. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its toys; it has no connection with the operetta.

The song was on records almost at once. The contralto Corinne Morgan recorded it with the Haydn Quartet for Victor in Philadelphia, in sessions logged (though unconfirmed) for March 1904, a disc later included in Archeophone’s anthology of popular recordings from that year, and she also recorded it for Columbia around 1904–05.[2][3][4] Two films carried it to later generations. Hal Roach and MGM’s 1934 Babes in Toyland, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, kept “Toyland” among the Herbert numbers it used, and Walt Disney’s 1961 version, with Ray Bolger, Tommy Sands, Annette Funicello and Ed Wynn, used it again beside new songs by George Bruns and Mel Leven.[5][6] Though it is not a carol, it is still found now and then on Christmas albums.[1][7]

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Sources

  1. IMSLP: “Babes in Toyland (Herbert, Victor)”.
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings: “Victor matrix C-1166. Toyland / Haydn Quartet ; Corinne Morgan”.
  3. Archeophone Records: “Corinne Morgan and Haydn Quartet”.
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: “Glen MacDonough”.
  5. AFI Catalog: “Babes in Toyland” (1934).
  6. AFI Catalog: “Babes in Toyland” (1961).
  7. Library of Congress, In the Muse: “Victor Herbert: From Babes in Toyland to Suite of Serenades”.