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What became of it

A Damsel in Distress

P. G. Wodehouse · first published 1919

Wodehouse adapted his own novel, and George and Ira Gershwin wrote the songs.

3 versions · 1919–1937 · screen, stage

The 1937 film put Fred Astaire in an English country house with a Gershwin score — A Foggy Day and Nice Work If You Can Get It both come from it — and Wodehouse worked on the adaptation himself, which almost never happened with his books.

The novel is the usual Wodehouse machine: an American in London, an aristocratic family, a misdelivered letter, and prose so exact that nobody has ever successfully imitated it.

The Thames with St Paul’s Cathedral, London
The Thames with St Paul’s Cathedral, London · John Thomas Serres · 1825 — a plate from our edition

On screen

2

Film and television, earliest first.

  • 1919 A Damsel in Distress George Archainbaud
  • 1937 A Damsel in Distress George Stevens

On stage

1

Opera, musical theatre and ballet made from it.

  • — A Damsel in Distress George Gershwin

Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.