The paper focuses on a once highly successful showbiz product, whose relation to the Hungarian theatrical canon is twofold. On the one hand, the revue operetta entitled A Happy Summer in Pest, which premiered in the Budapest Operetta Theatre during the Second World War, in 1943, is not part of the Hungarian theatrical canon. On the other hand, the show belongs to a local ‘millennial orpheum operetta’ brand, canonised in the first half of the 20^th century by librettists and the audience. These operettas owed their success to recurring thematic elements linked to Budapest’s entertainment heritage and nostalgic tuning. The paper discusses the heritagization mechanism of the following thematic elements: the 1896 Millennium Exhibition, the entertainment district of Ősbudavára, and the Somossy Orpheum. Then the paper examines the political, professional, cultural, and performance contexts of the 1943 A Happy Summer in Pest production, its reception, and its afterlife.