Crazy for You is the 1992 Broadway Tony Award-winner that was loosely based on the 1930 hit "Girl Crazy" by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. "We read the book, and it was dated," says Crazy for You librettist Ken Ludwig, author of Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo. "It was made up of skits and ... stereotypes."

But it also had four great Gershwin songs -- Bidin' My Time, Embraceable You, I Got Rhythm,and But Not for Me. The next step was logical: if the book was going to change, why not take advantage of this and add some other top Gershwin tunes? And so Ludwig and director Mike Ockrent added 13 other Gershwin songs to the seven numbers retained from Girl Crazy (out of the show's original 21). Seven came from Broadway shows (Treasure Girl from 1928, Oh! Kay from 1926, Show Girl from 1929, and Ladies First from 1918).

Five more were borrowed from two Hollywood films for which the Gershwins provided music and lyrics (Shall We Dance and Damsel in Distress, both from 1937). And finally there was one last addition, Naughty Baby, which was not written either for the stage or films. In the end, Crazy for You became a veritable Gershwin feast.

"We wanted audiences to believe that each song was written especially for Crazy for You -- that they couldn't possibly have come from anywhere else.... [One night] we overheard a couple talking about the show. The woman asked, 'Are George and Ira Gershwin still alive?' And her husband said, 'They must be. They're still writing musicals.'"

Though the book needed work, nothing was done to Ira's lyrics. Those for Girl Crazy are among his best - in fact, they are poetry of an indelible, universal sort. Just think of I'm biding my time, 'cause that's the kinda gal I'm or Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you! Embrace me, you irreplaceable you!

As for the story, Ludwig kept the basic premise of an Eastern playboy turning up in a small Western Town. In Girl Crazy, the setting was Custerville, Arizona, and the playboy was Danny Churchill, who is banished from New York by his father to a family-owned ranch, where - it is hoped - Danny will mend his ways and become a more responsible person. Danny becomes Bobby Child in Crazy for You, a banker who goes West to Deadrock, Nevada, to foreclose on a rundown theater.

Bobby, who is stage-struck, falls in love with Polly Baker (Molly Gray, in the original). But if he forecloses he will lose Polly, so he convinces her to put on a show that will pay off the debt her father owes on the theater. To keep the plot going there are mixups and misunderstandings, disguises and improbable appearances, but eventually everything is happily resolved, and Polly and Bobby are united, just like Danny and Molly in the original story.