People Are Talking About Broadway
The recent decision by the New York Drama Critics not to designate a Best Play this year was a topic of controversy. The top contenders were Garson Kanin's "Born Yesterday" and "State of the Union," by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, but a bloc of critics refused to vote for either one, so no play got the necessary majority in the final round of voting. Contenders in the earlier rounds included Arthur Laurents' "Home of the Brave," Elmer Rice's "Dream Girl" and Harry Brown's "A Sound of Hunting," which ran only 23 performances but introduced "Burton" Lancaster. Of these three also-rans, only "Dream Girl" was still playing and its star, Betty Field, married then to Rice, was leaving the cast this week. See John Chapman's take on the New York Drama Critics' decision in the April 14 Sunday News. The critics did name "Carousel" best musical.
Melvyn Douglas wrote an article about "Call Me Mister" that appeared in The Sunday Times entertainment section on April 14.
The Lerner & Lowe musical "The Day Before Spring" was closing Sunday after a modest run to make way for "Call Me Mister" at the National. The departing musical was about a married woman at their college reunion who reconnects with the man she almost married. It received decent reviews, but the composing duo had not become the Broadway dynamos they would become after their hit "Brigadoon" opened in 1947. Each of the characters had a dance sequence choreographed by Antony Tudor. Irene Manning and Bill Johnson were in the cast. MGM had provided financing for the production but did not make a movie version. After a brief break, the show with all its principals was opening in Chicago later that month.
Katharine Cornell had added a revival of Shaw's "Candida" to play in alternation with her unsuccessful mounting of "Antigone." One of the grande dames of the Broadway stage, Cornell had been playing this role in several revivals since 1924, most recently in a special charity engagement in 1942. The critics agreed that this production was not quite up to the heights reached by its immediate predecessor, laying much of the blame on promising newcomer Marlon Brando, they felt no match in the role of Marchbanks for Burgess Meredith, who had played the role in 1942. The 22-year-old Brando, who had made his Broadway debut in 1944 as the eldest son in "I Remember Mama," still playing with most of its original cast this week, won a Theater World Award in 1946 as best newcomer for his earthy performance in "Truckline Cafe," which, despite a pedigree that included a script by Maxwell Anderson, Harold Clurman as director and Clurman and Elia Kazan as producers, received scathing reviews and closed in March after 13 performances.
"Carmen Jones" had returned to Broadway for a limited run after its national tour. This Oscar Hammerstein reworking of Bizet's opera "Carmen" was reset in a parachute factory and featured an all-black cast. In his Sunday Times review, Lewis Nichols wrote that it held up very well, with much of its original cast still in it, and with a top ticket price of $2.40 was a "complete and great bargain." Nichols also gave a thumbs up to "Candida," despite a performance from Brando as Marchbanks that he found "more weak than poetic, more sniveling than spirited."
The Sunday Times reported that Clifford Odets, one of the star playwrights of the 1930s, was writing a new play. His "Waiting for Lefty," "Awake and Sing" and "Golden Boy" had been hits for the Group Theatre, but by the 1940s left-wing agit-prop plays had fallen out of favor with theatergoers. His 1941 outing, "Clash by Night," which Lee Strasberg had directed with Tallulah Bankhead, Joseph Schildkraut and Lee J. Cobb in lead roles, had been a failure, although it was later made into a Barbara Stanwyck movie. Two Group Theatre alumni with successful Hollywood careers, Franchot Tone and John Garfield, were mentioned as possible leads in the new play, which was about a decorated officer accused of desertion. Of late, Odets had been working mostly in Hollywood. "Deadline At Dawn," his movie collaboration with another Group Theatre alum, director Harold Clurman, was currently playing in movie theaters in the city.
According to The Sunday Times, Tone was financing a venture by Clurman to find and develop new plays. Another Group Theatre alum, director Elia Kazan, also might become involved. Meanwhile Clurman was planning to open an acting studio with his wife, Stella Adler, who was appearing at this time on Broadway in a revival of the Russian drama "He Who Gets Slapped."
After a long absence, Eugene O'Neill had a new play, "The Iceman Cometh," scheduled for production in the 1946/1947 season. This was a theatrical event worth looking forward to. O'Neill had won three Pulitzers in the 1920s but was in ill health and had last been represented on Broadway in 1934 with "Days Without End." He already had written "Long Day's Journey Into Night," but the searing autobiographical masterpiece would not be performed until 1956, winning the playwright his fourth Pulitzer posthumously.
Tickets had gone on sale for "Annie Get Your Gun," then scheduled for an April 25 opening. It marked the return to Broadway of composer Irving Berlin whose last commercial production was "Louisiana Purchase" in 1940, although his all-Army charity show "This Is the Army" played in 1942. Berlin had taken over as composer from Jerome Kern, who had died in November. Ethel Merman, Broadway's reigning musical comedy star, last seen in Cole Porter's "Something for the Boys" in 1943/44, starred opposite Ray Middleton. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were producing. The book was by the brother-sister team of Herbert and Dorothy Fields, most recently represented on Broadway by "Up in Central Park," which had closed that Saturday after a successful run. Joshua Logan, who had directed a long string of hits, was returning to Broadway to direct after his wartime service. The reviews and word- of-mouth from the New Haven and Boston sell-out runs were spectacular, so this opening was much anticipated. However theatergoers would have to wait another two weeks as the play detoured to Philadelphia while a structural problem with the scenery rigging at the Imperial Theatre was fixed.
Joe Pihodna reported in his column for the Sunday Herald Tribune that Theatre Incorporated, which was managing the upcoming visit of the Old Vic to New York, had been inundated with mail order requests for the run. Most requests were for tickets to all four productions being presented during the six-week season. Since half the orchestra seats were sold to brokers, the company was finding it hard to meet the demand. The Sunday edition of the newspaper included interviews with ingenue Susan Douglas of "He Who Gets Slapped," Julie Haydon of "The Glass Menagerie," and controversial producer Michael Myerberg of "Lute Song," as well as Lucius Beebe's interview with the Spewacks of "Woman Bites Dog." (See links for more on the stories).
Robert Coleman wrote in the Sunday Mirror that Olsen and Johnson, whose recent Broadway hit "Laffing Room Only" was playing in Philadelphia, were planning a new revue for the coming season, hoping to snatch back the Winter Garden, which recently had been converted into a movie theater to the dismay pf the theater world. Walter Winchell, the most influential entertainment columnist in the city, wrote that "Billy Rose's humdinger 'Carmen Jones' hopped into the rumble seat of the departing season for a reunion with theatregoers at the City Centre. The passing of time hasn't dimmed the show's wow and glitter. It received enthusiastic welcome home bravos from the aisle oracles." He plugged the openings of "Woman Bites Dog," which he said "tosses a satirical brick at reactionaries," and "Call Me Mister," writing that both shows had "rated salaams in the suburbs." And he put in a good word for "St. Louis Woman," which he wrote was playing to standees, thanks to two columns from critic George Jean Nathan and nine rave reviews from the dailies. The critical reaction was actually more mixed. In his Sunday column, Herald Tribune critic Howard Barnes expressed his disappointment in the show and its lackluster cast. In the same column, Barnes also decried the absence of a repertory company in New York and urged Katharine Cornell to establish one.