Melvyn Douglas on "Call Me Mister" in The Sunday Times

Melvyn Douglas, best known to the public as a stage and screen actor, was co-producing "Call Me Mister" with Herman Levin. (Note error in the show's date in this link). His article on the genesis of the project ran on the first page of The Sunday Times entertainment section.

Douglas wrote that if dedications were the practice in the theater as they were in publishing, he would dedicate this musical revue to the combat journalist Ernie Pyle, who died in 1945 while covering the War. Although the show was a lighthearted entertainment, they had tried "to interpret the joys and tribulations of GI Joes as they become ex-GI's, with the same affection, understanding and humor that Pyle put into his reports of them while they were fighting."

Douglas wrote that the idea for the show had come to him while he was directing the Army's Entertainment Production unit in the China-Burma-India theater. These Army shows were not performed by USO units but by the soldiers themselves. Sometimes real talent emerged from the soldier-actors and directors, Douglas wrote. The Army's Special Service Entertainment Branch "factory" in New York sent mimeographed packaged material of sketches and songs to them that was often brilliant. He took particular notice of the songs of Corp. Harold J. Rome and the sketches of Sgt. Arnold Auerbach, whom he later met while on leave in New York waiting for word of "the Jap surrender." It turned out that they also had been thinking about doing a show celebrating the homecoming and had been working with Herman Levin, Rome's financial and legal advisor. Rome was hardly an unknown talent. He had previously written the score of the long-running surprise hit "Pins and Needles" and the revue "Sing Out the News."

Douglas wrote that every man in the cast had been in the service, as had the directors, scene designers and other production staff. All of "the lovely girls" in the show had been in one of the services or had entertained in USO shows, at hospitals or canteens. But, he hastened to add, this was not one of those shows put on by the Army to raise money as in wartime. This was strictly a commercial venture with proceeds "going to the relief and benefit only of those associated in the production, not forgetting Herman Levin and me."