Dramas and Comedies
In 1946, the most popular dramas and comedies had runs that rivaled musical hits. In fact the longest-running play on Broadway at the time was "Life With Father," now in its seventh year. Other notable hold-overs included "The Glass Menagerie," "Harvey," "I Remember Mama," and "The Voice of the Turtle." "Born Yesterday" and "State of the Union" headed the pack of non-musicals that had opened that season. Several straight plays were struggling, including a revival of "He Who Gets Slapped" and Katherine Cornell in "Antigone." A new comedy from Sam and Bella Spewack, "Woman Bites Dog," with a cast of veterans and soon-to-be-famous newcomers, opened and closed that week.
In his overview of the season in Best Plays, Burns Mantle cataloged the many flops. Among straight plays, the most notorious was "Truckline Cafe." The critical savaging had set off a controversy after playwright Maxwell Anderson took out ads attacking the reviewers as a pack of boors. John Chapman of the Daily News, for one, called it the worst play he had ever seen.The Playwrights Company and Elia Kazan, who had produced it, and the director Harold Clurman, who himself later became a noted critic, joined in the attack. The ads did not save the play. It closed after 13 performances. It had starred Karl Malden, David Manners, Kevin McCarthy, Irene Dailey and, in his breakout role, Marlon Brando.
Several plays about the war had opened in the Victory Season. None of them lasted very long, including Arthur Laurents' critically acclaimed "Home of the Brave" and the well-received "A Sound of Hunting," in which "Burton" Lancaster had made a big impression. "The Assassin," from Irwin Shaw, based on the wartime Darlan incident in North Africa, was another notable failure. Theatergoers seemed unready to relive the war experience on stage so soon after the war had ended. War movies had almost disappeared from movie screens as well. The public's lack of interest in plays about the recent war led Clifford Odets to put aside the war drama on which he had been working.
John Van Druten, represented on Broadway at this time with two long-running hits, "The Voice of the Turtle" and "I Remember Mama," struck out this season with "The Mermaids Singing." Other disappointments included the dramatization of the popular novel Strange Fruit, Eva La Gallienne and Victor Jory in a new adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin, and S. N. Behrman's "Dunnigan's Daughter," with Richard Widmark, June Havoc and Luther Adler. An adaptation of Franz Werfel's The Song of Bernadette by Walter and Jean Kerr that had seemed so promising when it was produced at Catholic University, lasted only three performances on Broadway. Walter Kerr, then teaching at Catholic University, would become a prominent critic, and his wife, Jean, a popular playwright and author. "You Touched Me," a romantic comedy written by Donald Windham and his then friend Tennessee Williams had a decent run of 109 performances, largely due to interest in Williams, whose "The Glass Menagerie" was enjoying success at this time.
Here are the straight plays on the boards this week: