Hollywood, Here We Come: Tryout Shows of the 1950s

The fates and fortunes of commercial shows of the 1950s  demonstrate how deep the influence of Hollywood was in American commercial theater coming through Philadelphia on tryout runs.

For a blog post with additional information and images, go HERE

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COPYRIGHT © PETER SCHMITZ 2024. All Rights Reserved.

[AITH OPENING MUSIC]

Welcome once again to Adventures in Theater History! Bringing you the best stories from the deep and fascinating history of theater in the city of Philadelphia. I’m your host Peter Schmitz. Our original theme music is composed by Christopher Mark Colucci - though he’s not responsible, of course, for this particular tune:

[MUSIC - “HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD”]

A recurring historical theme throughout this episode will be how pervasive the world of Hollywood was in American commercial theater of the 1950s.  As we shall see, this was the era when many major Broadway playwrights suddenly also became Hollywood screenwriters and vice versa. And since writers like to write about what they already know, an astounding number of Broadway plays were about movies, and many Hollywood movies, like say, All About Eve, told the stories of Broadway writers, actors and plays. 

Now the migration of stage actors to Hollywood, as we’ve noted previously, began in the 1920s, And though some stage veterans who had become film stars in earlier days, like Henry Fonda or Bette Davis or Talullah Bankhead would come back to the theater for specific projects, almost every young star that made a hit on Broadway during the 1950s was almost immediately whisked off to Hollywood, never to return - as we saw with the case of Marlon Brando. 

Philadelphia (our particular subject) was now decidedly just a Tryout Town, not a destination city, by any means, and its theatergoers might see these young actors live, briefly, on their way up, when they came through town with a tryout show - but the next time Philly audiences saw them it was on the silver screen at their neighborhood movie house. And this was true even if the performer or writer came from Philadelphia itself. A notable example, of course, being Quaker City’s own Grace Kelly, who went quickly from doing community theater around the East Falls and Germantown neighborhoods in her teens, to going off to New York to study acting, to doing one Broadway play, and then rocketing off forever into the world of Hollywood and international celebrity as Princess Grace of Monaco.

But that’s all we’re going to say about Grace Kelly here on the public podcast feed. We have just released a Members Only episode about Grace Kelly and her uncle, the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright George Kelly, on Patreon. If you’d like to hear that, head on over there! Find it and all the other benefits of being a supporter of theater history! There’s an easy link in the show notes. I’ll remind you again at the end of the episode.

But now, back to our Feature Presentation! “Hollywood, Here We Come: Tryout Shows of the 1950s”.

November 8, 1951: A young Audrey Hepburn made her stage debut in the title role of the play Gigi at the Walnut Street Theatre. (Though previously Hepburn had been a member of the chorus in various musical revues in London's West End. This was certainly her first speaking role.) 

Adapted by Anita Loos from the novel by the author Colette, Gigi was about a tomboyish sixteen-year-old French girl, on the cusp of adulthood, set in late 19th Century Paris. Audrey Hepburn had been recommended for the part of Gigi by Colette herself, who had seen her on the set of her early film, Monte Carlo, Baby:

Audrey Hepburn: “BABY!” [French dialogue not transcribed]

With her gamine beauty and her intriguing Anglo-French accent, Audrey Hepburn was a natural  for the part. Gigi is being groomed to be a courtesan in the French demi-monde, having been carefully schooled by the elder female relatives on how to be fascinating to men. Over the course of the actions, Gigi is eventually wooed and won by an older Parisian playboy, Gaston. 

Cathleen Nesbitt played Gigi’s Great-Aunt Alicia, and Josephine Brown portrayed Mme. Alvares, her grandmother. (Brown only had a few days to prepare for her role, as the Philadelphia-born actress Florence Reed had been fired during rehearsals.) But, at the end of the play, the two women are only disappointed that Gigi actually fell in love and married Gaston, which rather broke the family code of artful gold-digging without commitment. 

In an interview, during rehearsals, with the Philadelphia Inquirer the Belgian-born Hepburn, still perfecting her conversational English, expressed some nervousness about going on the stage. "Suppose I do not make good in this part, and be sent back on the next ship. I want so much to stay in America for a while." But perhaps because the show was directed by a Frenchman, Raymond Rouleau - who spoke very little English himself - Hepburn’s language skills were not a pressing issue.

The production of Gigi was having a weeklong tryout run at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia before going to Broadway. In the Inquirer, reviewer Henry Murdock (who we’ll hear a lot from during this episode) noted some shaky line readings, but on the whole he was charmed by Hepburn’s performance.

In his review, Murdock likened the character of the young Gigi to that of Frankie in Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding. Member of the Wedding, you may recall, had also played at the Walnut, two years previously. But unlike the character of Frankie in McCullers’ play, Gigi, in Colette's work, finds her first encounters with older male sexual fascination not as traumatic and terrifying, but instead as exciting and empowering.

In his own review in the Sunday Inquirer a few days later, theater critic Linton Martin seconded Murdock’s praise. However, Martin also presciently noted it was likely that Hepburn would not remain a theater actress for very long. “Unknown here hitherto on either stage or screen, she is a real ‘find’ in the role of Gigi, and it would not be a bit surprising if Hollywood undertakes to snatch her from the footlights for the films.”

January 7, 1952: The Shrike, a play by Joseph Kramm, had its world premiere at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. The production starred Jose Ferrer, who also produced and directed.

Joseph Kramm, as it happened, was a former Philadelphian, though now he lived in New York City. Kramm had once been a journalist and had also once had aspirations as an actor, but lately he was mostly slaving away as a copywriter in a big Madison Avenue advertising firm. This was the ninth play Joseph Kramm had written, and it was the first one ever to get a big professional Broadway production. His wife, the actress Isabel Bonner, was in the cast of his show, in the role of a psychiatrist.

The Shrike was about a theater director named Jim Downs (played by Ferrer), who had been committed to a psychiatric ward in a hospital following a suicide attempt. Every day Jim is visited by his sweet-natured wife, Ann (played by Judith Evelyn), who had come to comfort him - or so everyone thinks. Over the course of the drama we learn that Ann is actually torturing and psychologically destroying Jim. Like the "shrike" of the title, she is a small predatory bird who impales and kills her prey.

The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reviewer wrote that it was ‘engrossing, provocative, well-constructed and  . . highly dramatic.” And after its brief Philadelphia tryout run, The Shrike opened on Broadway the very next week at the Cort Theatre in New York. The New York Times reviewer termed it "a plausible melodrama that is likely to scare the living daylights out of you." Jose Ferrer won two Tony Awards for his work on the production - for Best Actor and Best Director.

And The Shrike went on to win the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. But Kramm was fired from his job as a "Mad Man" when the publicity about this award caused his bosses to realize that he spent most of his time at the office writing plays, and not ad copy. It was made into a movie in 1955, again starring Jose Ferrer, but with June Allyson playing the character of his wife. The opening title sequence features a pair of huge sharp scissors, snipping away, menacingly - I mean the Freudian castration symbolism could not be more, um, well, let’s say “on the nose.”

The play, as far as I know, is never performed anymore. Likely because its theoretical basis in psychology is now very outdated, and also because the play comes off as more than a bit misogynistic to modern eyes. So therefore Joseph Kramm is, these days, among the most obscure of all Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights. But nonetheless, on the list of Philadelphians (or former Philadelphians) who won the prestigious literary award, he joins George Kelly (1926), Charles Fuller (1982), Quiara Alegria Hudes (2012) and James Ijames (2022).

Unlike all these other playwrights, however, Joseph Kramm never had much further success. And he never really recovered from the loss of his wife Isabel, who died three years later in Los Angeles. In 1955, Isabel Bonner suffered a sudden stroke onstage - while playing the role of Ann in a touring production of The Shrike.

March 7, 1955: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had its premiere at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia. The producers of the show, The Playwrights Company, were so confident of its success that Philadelphia was the only out of town engagement, before it moved to the Morosco Theatre in New York for its Broadway debut later that month.

Barbara Bel Geddes, Burl Ives, Ben Gazzara and Mildred Dunnock were the leads in the company. Now, we actually have a clip of Gazzara and Bel Geddes performing a scene from the play, which was shown on national TV.

[NOTE: Dialogue from play not transcribed. Copyright to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Estate of Tennessee Williams]

The two weeks the show spent in Philadelphia were mainly to prove to the cast that the rewrites of the third act that the director Elia Kazan had demanded of Williams were working. Later, of course, after the play had won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Williams would publish the play with both his original conception for Act III, along with the version that was actually staged.

But all that is fairly well-known territory in Theater History. I thought it might be good to highlight the achievement of the designers of the show. There was Jo Mielziner (who did the lighting and set) and Lucinda Ballard (who did the costumes).

Ballard had also designed the clothes for A Streetcar Named Desire when it had opened at the Walnut Street Theatre eight years before, and would also design his Orpheus Descending in 1957. Although of course it’s that revealing slip that Maggie the Cat spends most of the first act lolling around in that people would remember, Ballard also designed the gown that Maggie makes her entrance in at the very top of the show - the briefly-seen party dress that has already been ruined by a stain caused by the "No-neck monsters" - Gooper’s kids - out in the dining room.

For his part, Jo Mielziner, although born in France, had actually studied in Philadelphia as a young man, spending a long time at the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts on Broad Street. One of the giants of 20th Century American theater design, Mielziner’s sets and lights for this play are particularly notable - the way the light filtered through the walls of the slatted shutters that surround the bedroom of Maggie and Brick, the jutting floors that angled out towards the audience, and the ceiling where two painted little cupids mockingly look down on the couple’s bed, where as Big Mama says, "all the trouble lies."

You can see examples of Mielziner’s designs. We’ll post copies of them on the blog on our website: www.aithpodcast.com

In his glowing review of the show, Philadelphia Inquirer critic Henry Murdock wrote that the show "holds its viewers in thrall with its long passages of ominous quiet and its short, sharp shocks of action and every moment of its length is greeted by attention that is rapt and respectful." In the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, R.E.P. Sensenderfer reported that at the final curtain on opening night, the audience was more than applauding, it was cheering - “not only for the play but for the transcendent playing, the impeccable direction and its imaginative staging. . .

September 12, 1955: Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? has its first week of out-of-town tryouts at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia. Though the show was by the newly successful playwright George Axelrod, and the cast included such established stars as Martin Gabel and Walter Matthau, all press attention that week seemed to be about the presence of the beautiful young actress in the show, Jayne Mansfield.

Jane Mansfield had recently been featured on the cover and the centerfold of the newly-launched Playboy magazine. Mansfield was being touted, in fact, as the "next Marilyn Monroe" - who had also been featured in the pages of Playboy. Interestingly, it was also a bit of a homecoming for Mansfield, as she had been born in the suburb of Bryn Mawr. (Her name at birth was Vera Jayne Palmer. However, her mother had  remarried after her father's unfortunate early death, and Mansfield had mostly grown up in Texas, and had studied acting there.)

Now, Marilyn Monroe, of course, had recently been featured in the Billy Wilder movie The Seven Year Itch - whose screenplay was by George Axelrod, based on his 1952 play of the same name - which had, yes of course, first tried out in Philadelphia. Monroe's reputation in the movie business was beginning to falter, however, due to her increasingly unreliable behavior on set. Jane Mansfield was seen as perhaps being a successor to Monroe, and she had been hired for the show Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? to play a character that was obviously based upon her - including the breathy alluring voice:

Mansfield (as Rita Marlowe): “Well it’s room temperature now, but the room temperature is changing - if you get my cruder meaning. . . “

Axelrod, for his part, was still basking in his good fortune and success, and like many writers had done before him, had written his second play about his experiences in Hollywood.

“Rock Hunter” in the title (an amalgam of the names of Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter) was not a character in Axelrod's play, that was the name of a magazine article that a young writer named "George MacCauley," played by the comedian Orson Bean, has produced for a fan magazine of the starlet. A literary agent, played by (Philadelphia born) Martin Gabel, offers this writer instant success - with a catch. Of course the agent is actually the Devil, and only wants to make a Faustian bargain for his soul in return. (In another obvious literary joke, Mansfield's character was named "Rita Marlowe".) Walter Matthau played a character named "Michael Freeman", a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who had *not* sold his soul, but is nonetheless jealous of MacCauley's sudden and undeserved (as he thought) success.

As the production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? arrived at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia, it did have two problems. One was a prop issue. An Oscar statuette was required in the action of the play as a murder weapon, but producer Jule Styne (who had earned one for his song "Three Coins in a Fountain") would not use his award for the show, and the Academy of Motion Pictures refused to loan one to the production. So a rubber replica had to be quickly produced.

The second issue was a labor dispute. The Musicians Union was striking against Philadelphia theater owners that week, and its members set up a picket line outside the Forrest Theatre on opening night - even though the show was technically a non-musical. However, the strike did not seem to deter Philadelphia theatergoers or the critics, who mostly stepped around the pickets, and seemed to enjoy the play despite this labor protest.

In a glowing review in the Camden Courier-Journal wrote: "Orson Bean covers himself with theatrical glory in the role of the incredulous George MacCauley, while Walter Matthau as Michael Freeman has a part tailor-made for his unusual talents. Martin Gabel as the grinning Irving LaSalle does a remarkable job. As Rita Marlowe, Jayne Mansfield gives a Monroe-like performance which, added to her natural charm and beauty, makes her just about  perfect for the part." In fact, the ploy of putting Mansfield and other starlets on the stage (in very little clothing) during the play completely succeeded with this critic. "The pulchritude quotient of the production is considerably enhanced by the minor but quite necessary roles portrayed by Tina Louise, Barbara Wilkin and Carol Grace." (Grace, by the way, would later become Mrs. Walter Matthau - they met during this tryout run in Philadelphia.)

If Axelrod had made a pact with the Devil, well the Devil was making good on his part of the bargain. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? went on to be a smash hit on Broadway, and ran for over a year. By May of 1956, Hollywood was indeed calling Mansfield, and she had signed a six-year picture deal with 20th Century Fox. 

September 15, 1955: The Diary of Anne Frank had its World Premiere at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. As we have discussed previously, in those years the Walnut was still controlled by the Shuberts, and they used this theater as their principal venue for try-out runs of prestige dramas that were bound for Broadway.

The play, which had been adapted by the husband and wife writing team of Albert Hackett and Francis Goodrich from the book of the same name, was almost guaranteed an enormous amount of attention. By then, everyone already knew how Anne Frank (along with her mother, her father, her sister and four other people) spent two years huddled in a secret hiding place in Amsterdam, hoping to escape detention, deportation and death at the hands of the Nazis. And of course, everyone also knew the sad ending of the story, when the hiding place was finally betrayed and invaded, and its poor inhabitants sent off to their deaths - except, as it turned out, for the father, Otto Frank, who survived the camps and returned to the house after the war to find that the manuscript of his younger daughter’s diary had been preserved. Published in book form in 1947, as the post-War world attempted to understand the full extent and horror of the Holocaust, this poignant story of a young girl's inner life during her confinement was already a classic text.

The Hacketts, former actors themselves, who had become well-established and successful Hollywood screenwriters, had obtained permission from Otto Frank to turn the book into a play. Known for their work on such movies as The Thin Man, Father of the Bride, and It's a Wonderful Life, this was certainly the most serious project the Hacketts had ever undertaken. Starting their work in America, they had journeyed to Amsterdam and vistied the tiny space where the events of the story had originally taken place, and then had revised the script even further. Though they were allowed a certain artistic license, by their agreement with Otto Frank, their final draft had undergone an examination by the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation for “factual accuracy.”

But the Hacketts apparently didn’t mind this thorough vetting so much, they admitted in an interview with the Philadelphia journalist Barbara Wilson. It was much less grueling than the usual interference from the Hollywood studio system, they said. Plus, they liked that in the theater world they could have a say in the casting of the show. “The first day of rehearsal  . . . we sat in the theater and it was like being in a dream world watching all these wonderful people work. And knowing that we had been responsible for some of it. .  . And of course it does let us come to Philadelphia,” Goodrich told Wilson, pandering to the local crowd a bit - but perhaps (let’s say) sincerely.

The cast assembled included Joseph Schildkraudt, the great Austrian-American actor, as well as other Broadway stalwarts such as Gusti Huber, Lou Jacobi and Jack Gilford. The key role of Anne Frank herself went to Susan Strasberg, the 18 year-old daughter of the famous acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Although she had some experience in film and television already, this was her stage debut. Producer Kermit Bloomgarden had hired Garson Kanin to direct, Boris Aronson to do the sets, Helene Pons to do the costumes, and Lee Watson the lighting. All in all, the opening night crowd at the Walnut had every reason to expect great things.

And in his review of the show the next day, the Inquirer’s Henry Murdock (already a friend of the podcast) confirmed that expectations had been met: “There are times when the theater reaches a higher plane of entertainment that lifts the spectator’s eyes, not just in appreciation, but in something close to awe. Such is the case with ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ an overwhelming bit of human documentation which held its audience in intense communion at the Walnut last night.”

The play, with very little further revision, went to the Cort Theatre in New York, where it had its Broadway premiere three weeks later. And of course, in 1959, it would also be released as a major motion picture directed by George Stephens, with its score (which we hear here) by the composer Alfred Newman. Several of the original cast were in the movie, including Schilkraudt and Huber, although there was the addition of our old friend from the Vaudeville episode, the Philadelphian Ed Wynn, now playing Mr. Dussel. Some of the scenes were even shot on location at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. 

1956 - My Fair Lady, the Lerner and Lowe musical based on the George Bernard Shaw play “Pygmalion” made its way from its World Premiere in New Haven Connecticut, to the Erlanger Theater in Philadelphia. Now, I won’t go into much of the story of the creation and development of the show, it’s very well known - and by almost universal acclaim, perhaps the most perfect Broadway show ever created - because, well, really the story really it doesn’t have much to do with Philadelphia, and by all accounts the run here went smoothly, the only bump in the road being that the transfer of the set and props wasn’t complete on time, the producers moved the local press opening from Valentine’s Day, to Tuesday February 14th, to Wednesday, February 15th. That was really the only problem. But once they had seen the show, Philly critics were all delirious with joy in their reviews in the newspapers on the 16th, their heads still spinning from what they had just witnessed. Pretty much what you might expect.  [Fade Music out]

But what I will note is that the old-line Philadelphia establishment types all thought that this show was a perfect occasion to promote World Peace. The Philadelphia World Affairs Council organized a special fund-raising evening at the Erlanger theater for its members and supporters in which they would all go to see the show - and then have cocktails afterwards. The Philadelphia World Affairs Council was one of them new-fangled non-profit organizations, formed to “encourage local interest an individual responsibility for the foreign policy of the United States, headed by a group of public-minded citizens who have varied political affiliations and different points of view in foreign policy” - Now I don’t know exactly what that all means, but I will note the names on the list of board members of this event read like a mashup of old Main Line Philadelphia WASP families, like the Montgomerys, the Scotts, the Thompsons, Mrs. Ruth Weir Mitchell, as well as newly-wealthy Catholics, like Grace Kelly’s dad John B. Kelly, and there were also lots of prominent Jewish family names from Philadelphia, like Mrs. Albert M. Greenfield, the Lowensteins, the Louchheims, Mr. Sol Satinsky and William Goldman, who actually was in the process of taking over full control of the Erlanger Theater from the Shuberts. 

It was one of the first public-spirited social groups I can see that deliberately aimed to break down the old traditional - and now out-moded - social and ethnic boundaries of the Quaker City - although I must admit I don’t know if there were any African-American members (I can’t spot any - if there were some, I’ve missed them). The society columns of all the newspapers in Philadelphia were abuzz about it, anyway.  I guess they figured  that the story of how a Cockney flower girl from the gutters of Covent Garden being raised to the heights of West End Society by Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering was just the thing for both local and international understanding in the city of Brotherly Love.

There were of course other big musicals coming through town in 1956 and ‘57 - including West Side Story and The Music Man (whose Philly tryouts we’ve already mentioned back in Episode 54. The Music Man is also going to be the sole topic of our next episode, number 78 - look for that one in a couple of weeks.) Now of course, I have already skipped over literally hundreds of other tryout plays and musicals that came through Philadelphia in the 1950s. I can’t possibly talk about them all, and I’m trying to bring you the real highlights. So, therefore, let’s move on to one of the most important plays in American theater history, perhaps the most significant play that had been written since Death of a Salesman.

January 26, 1959: Lorraine Hansberry's new play A Raisin in the Sun had its opening night on the Walnut Street Theatre stage in Philadelphia - in preparation for the show moving to New York.

It was not the first public performance of the play - that honor goes to New Haven, Connecticut. The production would go on to one more tryout run in Chicago, before then opening on Broadway in March 1959 - at a theater named after Philadelphia's own Ethel Barrymore.

Directed by Lloyd Richards, and starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, and Claudia McNeil, Raisin would be the first hit Broadway play written by an African American woman. Certainly Hansberry was the first Black female playwright to have her play performed at the Walnut Street Theatre. Lonne Elder, Louis Gossett, John Fiedler, Glynn Turman and Ivan Dixon were also in the cast.

But publicity for the production understandably highlighted the presence of Sidney Poitier in the show. Already well-known for his work in movies, including Edge of the City and The Defiant Ones, Poitier was an up-coming-star. 

In his review in the Inquirer the next day, Henry Murdock praised both the strong cast and its direction by Lloyd Richards. As for the play itself, well, he compared it to the writing of Sean O'Casey in Juno and the Paycock, and John Osborne in Look Back in Anger - but with "the reason for the anger more firmly pronounced."

"We don't know if Miss Hansberry has written a timeless play, but she certainly has written a timely one," wrote Murdock. [CROSSFADE to Miracle Worker film music]

September 20, 1959: There was still a chance for Philadelphians to see the world premiere of The Miracle Worker at the New Locust Theatre. Sales for the show had been brisk, despite the fact that many people had already seen the show when it had first appeared - on the television in 1957 as an offering on the show Playhouse 90.

Anne Bancroft was starring as Annie Sullivan in William Gibson's dramatization of the true story of the woman who managed to teach the blind and deaf (and seemingly mute, and unmanageable) Helen Keller. It was the second Gibson play that Bancroft had appeared in, and had already won awards for her acting in his comedy Two For the Seesaw the previous season.

A young actress named Patty Duke was playing Helen, and Torin Thatcher was playing the role of her father, Captain Arthur Keller. The director was Arthur Penn.

The stage version of The Miracle Worker opened in Philadelphia on Saturday, September the 12th, just three days after the cast had arrived from their rehearsals in New York. Despite this brief preparation, the evening had been a smash success. Notices by the Philly critics in the Monday editions of their respective newspapers were raves. "Electrifying!" wrote the Daily News. "Superb Performances!" proclaimed the Bulletin.

And in the Inquirer, Henry Murdock was ready to declare that the Pulitzer Prize Committee should just give Gibson the prize right now.

The producers of The Miracle Worker had all these rave Philadelphia reviews transcribed into Braille, and sent them to Helen Keller, at her home in Connecticut. (And then later, of course, it was soon made into a movie - amazingly, both Bancroft and Duke were allowed to repeat their roles, even though they were a little old for them by then, at the insistence of Arthur Penn)

Anne Bancroft (as Annie Sullivan): “Step! Mrs. Keller! Mrs. Keller! BELL! Mrs. Keller! Mrs. Keller! Pappa! She KNOWS!”

Alright so we’re almost done here, this has been a longer episode than we planned on, but as our survey of this consequential decade draws to a close, let’s end today’s episode with just one more musical .  . 

Tom Bosley (as LaGuardia): “My friends, come Election Day, put that pencil cross next to the name of Fiorello H. LaGuardia! L.A.G.U.A.R.D.I.A.! Now here’s another name. T.A.M.M.A.N.N.Y . . “

"You just wait until you open in Philadelphia," an old friend cautioned the author and playwright Jerome Wiedman, in October 1959.

Even though Weidman was a well-established novelist and playwright by that point, Weidman had never worked on a musical before. He had been asked to write the book for the new musical Fiorello! about the life and career of New York's popular mayor Fiorello LaGuardia - now mostly known as the namesake of the famous airport - but who had occupied City Hall in Manhattan from 1934 to 1946. The show was widely anticipated to be the hit of the season, but still, as always, so much could still go wrong. Nothing was guaranteed.

So far, Jerome Weidman protested to his friend, his collaboration with the director George Abbott, composer Jerry Bock, and the lyricist Sheldon Harnick had gone well. The producers Robert Griffith and Hal Prince had all been lovely to him. The actors Tom Bosley as the title character and Howard Da Silva as his chief political antagonist were perfect in their parts, he reported, as were the actresses Pat Stanley and Patricia Wilson as his two wives. Doesn't matter, said his friend (whom Weidman identified only as "Harry" - but was likely the wealthy pilot, racehorse owner and newspaper publisher Harry F. Guggenheim). Harry knew showbiz, and he predicted soon there would be theatrical blood all over the floor. Here’s what Harry said (according to Wideman):

"For centuries . . . directors and producers and composers and lyricists and choreographers have spent as much time at each other's throats as they spend at their typewriters and pianos, but all of a sudden it's no longer dog eat dog, tooth and claw, fang and stiletto: All of a sudden it's sweetness and light? The trouble with you, [Jerome], is [that] you're like the guy who goes to the race track for the first time in his life, puts two buck on a horse because he likes the color of its saddle blanket, the horse comes in paying like a hundred and eleven to one, and this boob says: 'Hey, how long has this been going on?' Well the theater has been going on for a long time, and the fact that you haven't seen any blood flowing doesn't mean no jugular veins have been cut. It merely means you're color blind!"

Well, wrote Weidman: "Here we are in Philadelphia, and I'm still waiting." All was going well! And in fact all would continue to go well in Philadelphia. The Philly critics, whose opinions were so crucial to creating pre-Broadway buzz, were all positive after opening night.

"Fiorello is a winner!" declared Jerry Gaghan in the Daily News. "A heart-warming and relaxing experience in the theater," said the Camden Courier-Press. Again (our now Very Good Friend) Harry Murdock in the Philadelphia Inquirer was there to give his enthusiastic rave: "The show, and its people, are alive. They breathe, are recognizable, wear their romances like ordinary folk and inhabit their time with conviction. . . . the show is a complete musical; fast, dashing and when the need arises - spontaneously funny."

So, in the end, it turned out that Jerome Wiedman’s friend Harry was wrong to worry at all. Fiorello! went on to be a hit on Broadway, and the book even won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Although the original cast album of Fiorello! Is not, well, a classic for the ages, the Oscar Peterson jazz version of its songs became a huge best-seller. Weidman would be encouraged enough to return to musical theater later on - and Philadelphia - three years later with a musical called I Can Get It For You Wholesale starring somebody named Barbra Streisand.

And Weidman's wealthy friend Harry Guggenheim did just fine, too. He had invested in the show, and got back a nice return. 

Although, unlike ALL the other shows we’ve talked about in this episode - it was never made into a movie. Now I’m sure there were good reasons  for that, but we should note that from this point forward, it wasn’t guaranteed that a hit Broadway show - one that had won a Pultizer Prize! - would have a film version made of it.. But that’s show biz . . 

And that’s our show for today. If you’ve been enjoying this season of the podcast, or have any thoughts or suggestions or compliments, drop us an email at AITHpodcast@gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you! I would love to hear from you. To support this show and to get access to bonus material (like our recent episode about Grace Kelly - I told you I’d come back to it) and special insider information about Philly theater history - go to our Patreon page: Patreon dot com/AITHpodcast. We’d like to thank David, who recently became a top tier VIP Backstage Pass member on Patreon! Thank you, Dave! Please join David there, folks, at any level of support you feel comfortable with.

Or, you know, a free and easy way to support us is to leave a review about the show on Apple Podcasts! I could use some more of those, it would help a lot. Of course, you can follow us on Facebook and on Instagram and on Mastodon, where we post new material about Philadelphia theater history every single day. 

You can also now find us on YouTube, where since the recent demise of Google Podcasts, the great Corporate Gods have directed all of us independent podcasters to directly share our work instead. Our recent episode about Guys and Dolls has been a real hit on that platform, by the way - so, you know, check it out there. I will point out, however, that there’s no video addition to it, it’s just the same podcast sound feed with the single image of the show on it. I’ve gotten certain messages on YouTube saying, hey, you should put a lot more images there, to provide visual interest, and I reply ‘Yeah, I would do that - if that’s what I was making.” Maybe I will in the future. It's a good idea, thank you all for responding   .  I would also like to thank YouTube, of course, for preserving for posterity so many of the clips and Hollywood movie scores that I’ve been able to braid into the soundscape of this episode today.

So, once again - signing off, your self-appointed Philly theater history maven Peter Schmitz, and the sound editing and engineering for this episode were all done by My Humble Self, right here in the comfort of our glittering golden studio in our World Headquarters, high atop the Tower of Theater History, with its clear view of the Glorious Past and its endless prospect of Hope for the Future. 

Thank you all for listening to the show today, and thank you for coming along on another Adventure in Theatre History, Philadelphia.

[AITH END THEME]