Editing Gallagher and Shean (section)

==Career==
Both comedians were relatively obscure vaudeville performers until they teamed up in 1910.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gallagher-and-Shean|title=Gallagher and Shean {{!}} American vaudeville team|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=2019-07-10}}</ref> Gallagher and Shean first joined forces during the tour of ''The Rose Maid'' in 1912, but they quarreled and split up two years later, in 1914.<ref name=":0" /> They next appeared together in 1920, to star in the Shubert Brothers' production of the highly successful ''Cinderella on Broadway'', through the efforts of Shean's sister, [[Minnie Marx]] (mother of the [[Marx Brothers]]).<ref name=":0" /> This pairing lasted until 1925 and led to their fame. 
[[File:Gallagher and Shean cover.png|left|thumb|Sheet music cover for their popular titular song]]
Gallagher and Shean remain best known for their theme song "[[Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean]]", which was a hit in the 1922 ''[[Ziegfeld Follies]]''. [[Bryan Foy]],<ref name=":0" /> son of stage star [[Eddie Foy Sr.|Eddie Foy]] and eldest member of the "[[Seven Little Foys]]", said he had written the song, but it is officially attributed to Gallagher and Shean. The song is also sometimes called "Absolutely, Mr. Gallagher? Positively, Mr. Shean!"<ref name=":0" /> The song endured in popularity and was regularly tweaked and updated with additional verses; consequently, it exists in several different versions. The song was recorded by Gallagher and Shean as two sides of a 10" [[78 rpm record]] in 1922 for [[Victor Records]]. It was also recorded on [[Okeh Records]] by [[The Happiness Boys]] ([[Billy Jones (singer)|Billy Jones]] and [[Ernie Hare]]) and on [[Cameo Records]] by Irving and Jack Kaufman, and even in Yiddish on [[Banner Records]], by M. Z. Feinman Brothers. When performed by other artists, it was usually preceded with this introductory lyric:

:There are two funny men
:The best I've ever seen
:One is Mr. Gallagher
:And the other Mr. Shean

:When these two cronies meet
:Why it surely is a treat
:The things they say
:And the things they do
:And the funny way they greet ...

The song was extremely popular and well remembered: a pastiche was included in ''[[The Cabaret Girl]]'', a 1922 musical produced in London; a parody of it was recorded by [[Bing Crosby]] and [[Johnny Mercer]] in the late 1930s; another parody was performed by [[Jackie Gleason]] and [[Groucho Marx]] (who was Al Shean's nephew) on television in 1967; and [[Lenny Bruce]] was able to make an offhanded reference to it in his nightclub act of the 1960s, all of them confident that audiences would recognize it right away.

Each verse ended with a question-and-answer refrain, one of which&mdash;Shean singing "Absolutely, Mister Gallagher?" and Gallagher replying "Positively, Mister Shean!"&mdash;became their tagline.<ref>Slide, Anthony (2012). ''The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville''. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 203. {{ISBN|1-61703-250-6}}</ref> This cross-talk format continues to be imitated, parodied, and referenced for audiences who may have no knowledge of the original. Cartoonist [[Bobby London]] depicted his characters ''[[Dirty Duck (comix character)|Dirty Duck]]'' and Weevil telling each other "Posilutely, Weevil!" "Absotively, Mr. Duck!" In the 1960s, an Australian cleaning product "Mister Sheen" launched a successful TV campaign using the original tune with new lyrics ("Oh, Mr. Sheen, Oh, Mr. Sheen"), as did several 1980s radio commercials for [[Pitney Bowes]] office equipment: "Absolutely, Mister Pitney!" "Positively, Mister Bowes!"

Capitalizing on the post-[[King Tut]] craze for everything Egyptian, Gallagher and Shean appeared in Egyptian dress (Gallagher in the [[pith helmet]] and white suit of the tourist, Shean in the fez and oddly skirted jacket of a "native" Egyptian colonial).