thumb|upright=1.75|Bolton, centre, with l to r, [[Morris Gest, P. G. Wodehouse, Ray Comstock and Jerome Kern, c. 1917]]
Guy Reginald Bolton (23 November 1884 – 4 September 1979) Among his 50 plays and musicals, most of which were considered "frothy confections", additional hits included Primrose (1924), the Gershwins' Lady, Be Good (1924) and especially Cole Porter's Anything Goes (1934).
Bolton also wrote stage adaptations of novels by Henry James and Somerset Maugham, and wrote three novels on his own and a fourth in collaboration with Bernard Newman. He worked on screenplays for such films as Ambassador Bill (1931) and Easter Parade (1948), and published four novels, Flowers for the Living (with Bernard Newman, 1958), The Olympians (1961), The Enchantress (1964) and Gracious Living (1966). With Wodehouse, he wrote a joint memoir of their Broadway years, entitled Bring on the Girls! (1953).
Biography
Early years
Bolton was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, the elder son of an American engineer, Reginald Pelham Bolton, and his wife Kate (née Behenna). The family moved to the US, settling in New York City's Washington Heights. Bolton studied to be an architect, attending the Pratt Institute School of Architecture and Atelier Masqueray, New York. He also studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. and helping to design the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument and the Ansonia Hotel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, but was drawn to writing.
Early writing career
While Bolton was still a student, his stories had been published in magazines. At the age of 26, he wrote his first stage play, The Drone, in collaboration with Douglas J. Wood. His second play, The Rule of Three (1914), was written without a partner, but the following year he embarked on his first musical theatre collaboration, Ninety in the Shade, with music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Harry B. Smith and book by Bolton, first produced at the Knickerbocker Theatre, New York, on 25 January 1915. The same year, he wrote Hit-the-Trail-Holiday with George M. Cohan. That same year he collaborated with Kern and others on the musicals Nobody Home and the even more successful Very Good Eddie, the first two "Princess Theatre musicals". The latter of the two was also a hit in London.
Bolton quickly became known for his part in moving the American musical away from the European operetta tradition: "No more crown princes masquerading as butlers, no more milkmaids who turn out at the final curtain to be heir to several thrones." Nevertheless, he collaborated with one of operetta's last practitioners, Emmerich Kálmán, in an adaptation of Kálmán's 1915 piece Zsuzsi Kisassony. Miss Springtime, as the American version was called, was produced at the New Amsterdam Theatre in 1916. Bolton wrote the book; the lyrics were by Herbert Reynolds and P. G. Wodehouse, the latter writing with Bolton for the first time in what became a lifelong working partnership and personal friendship. Kern, who already knew Wodehouse, introduced him to Bolton at the premiere of Very Good Eddie. Wodehouse admired Bolton's stagecraft, but thought his lyrics weak, and at Kern's urging they decided to write jointly, Wodehouse concentrating on the lyrics and Bolton on the book.
thumb|125px|left|[[P. G. Wodehouse, Bolton's friend and collaborator]]
For the Princess Theatre, Bolton and Wodehouse wrote the book and lyrics for Have a Heart (1917), Oh, Boy! (1917), which ran for 463 performances, Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), See You Later (1918) and Oh! My Dear (1918). They also collaborated on Miss 1917 (1917) at the Century Theatre, on Bolton's second Kálmán show, The Riviera Girl (1917), and on Kissing Time (1918), the latter two for the New Amsterdam. During these years, Bolton also wrote successful plays with George Middleton and others. But it was the Princess Theatre shows with Kern that made the most impression; some of these shows were so popular that they transferred to the larger Casino Theatre to finish their runs. An anonymous admirer wrote a verse in their praise that begins:
:This is the trio of musical fame,
:Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.
:Better than anyone else you can name
:Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.
In February 1918, Dorothy Parker wrote in Vanity Fair:
right|thumb|upright|Sheet music from [[Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918)]]
Later writing career
Bolton went on to write more than fifty stage works, mainly in collaboration with others. By 1934 he had made twelve shows with Kern and seven with Gershwin. Besides Wodehouse, his frequent writing partners were the American, George Middleton, with whom he wrote ten shows, and the Englishman, Fred Thompson, with whom he wrote fourteen. His collaborations with Middleton were non-musical comic plays, produced with success on both sides of the Atlantic. Their Polly With a Past (1917) was a success in both New York and London, where its cast included Edna Best, Noël Coward, Edith Evans, Claude Rains and C. Aubrey Smith. Their Adam and Eva was another favourite that was adapted for film and frequently revived by smaller theatres. He adapted a French comedy to create the book for The Hotel Mouse in 1922. With Thompson, he wrote the book for early musicals by George and Ira Gershwin, Lady, Be Good (1925) and Tip-Toes (1926). An occasional collaborator in later years was "Stephen Powys", a pseudonym of Bolton's fourth wife, Virginia de Lanty (1906–1979).
thumb|left|upright|Bolton and Wodehouse wrote the book for Cole Porter's [[Anything Goes.]]
During the 1920s and 30s "Bolton worked at a tremendous rate on shows … beautifully constructed, and full of fun and excruciating puns." The show was, in the words of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Popular Music, "a smash hit" in New York and in London.
With Wodehouse, Bolton wrote the semi-autobiographical book Bring on the Girls!, subtitled, "The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy" (1954). It is full of anecdotes about the larger-than-life characters who dominated Broadway between 1915 and 1930, but the biographer Frances Donaldson writes that it is to be read as entertainment rather than reliable history: "Guy, having once invented an anecdote, told it so often that it was impossible to know whether in the end he believed it or not." Other collaborations between the two writers were not acknowledged on title pages or in programmes, but were plays by one turned into novels by the other, or vice versa. Bolton's play, Come On, Jeeves centred on one of Wodehouse's best-known characters; Wodehouse later adapted the play as the novel Ring for Jeeves. Wodehouse's novels French Leave, The Small Bachelor and others were adapted from plots by Bolton.
In his later years, Bolton wrote four novels, Flowers for the Living (with Bernard Newman, 1958), The Olympians (1961), The Enchantress (1964) and Gracious Living, Limited (1966).
Although born of American parents, Bolton was a British subject until 1956, when he took American citizenship. and he settled from time to time in European towns and cities including London, but never Paris, which he loathed. His main residences were on Long Island, New York, including Great Neck (at the time of the Princess Theatre shows), and Remsenburg, where he and his wife lived in the years after the Second World War. In 1952, Wodehouse and his wife bought a house two miles away, and for the rest of Wodehouse's life, he and Bolton would go for a daily walk when the latter was not travelling abroad.
Bolton died on a visit to London in 1979, at the age of 94.