Shows for Someday continues with our second entry about the Howard Lindsay-Russel Crouse 1951 comedy whodunit Remains To Be Seen. In this post, we focus on the show’s two out-of-town engagements prior to Broadway.
PART 2: OUT-OF-TOWN TRYOUT
REHEARSAL: Produced by the legendary Leland Hayward (South Pacific, Mister Roberts, Gypsy, The Sound of Music). Remains To Be Seen went into rehearsal in New York on August 13, 1951. The play was staged by director/actor Bretaigne Windust, one of L&C’s closest collaborators. They worked together on Life With Father, Strip For Action, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Hasty Heart, State Of The Union, and The Great Sebastians. Windust had another big Broadway hit with Finian’s Rainbow.
Tryout flyer for the first out-of-town stop, a 3-day engagement at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven. Edmon Ryan’s name is listed here, though he did not play any performances of the show.
The biggest rehearsal drama seems to have been the departure “by mutual consent” of Edmon Ryan (Command Decision, Dream Girl) in the major supporting role of Benjamin Goodman, the staid lawyer. Ryan left the show less than a week before tryout performances began, so Hayward et al were all under pressure to find a replacement very, very quickly. Co-author Howard Lindsay stepped into the role, upping the star wattage of the cast but also spreading himself thinner at a crucial point in the show’s gestation. The replacement was handled in a tasteful, low-key way in the press.
Though at this point in his career Lindsay was certainly regarded as an author-producer-director first, he was also Broadway star of sorts. He began his career performing in hits like Dulcy, and played the title role in the original cast of Life With Father and played the character again in the highly-anticipated sequel, Life With Mother.
Front of Shubert tryout program. Stage manager Hugh Rennie also played the minor role of Clark.
Back of Shubert New Haven tryout program. Note the special credit for the television sequence, which adds excitement to the opening scene and must have been a novelty for theatre audiences at the time.
OUT OF TOWN: The first performance of RTBS’s out-of-town tryout was less than a month after rehearsals began. Beginning Thursday night, September 6 at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, the show played for four performances in three days, where it received promising reviews:
“Lindsay and Crouse have done it again. Remains shapes up for the smash class, and as soon as the first and second acts have the braces tightened, it will be ready to take its place against all comers. The authors have fashioned a thoroughly delightful comedy around a fetching whodunit, which rapidly whirls through bawdy farce and zany light comedy, right into the midst of scary melo, complete with clutching hands in the dark and trap doors. It adds up to completely entertaining theater. It has all the makings of a great show, and the bolstering period between its New Haven bow and the Stem preem should bring this in as a smash. Remains certainly should be seen.” –Golly, Billboard, Sept. 15, 1951
“Lindsay and Crouse have come up with what will probably be a most hilariously entertaining whodunit comedy. A capacity house thrilled to all the old familiar crime story devices which were generously packed with a lot of nonsense. Janis Paige’s work will bring her the enviable distinction which is enjoyed by the top flight young actresses of today. While there remains much general tightening of lines and pointing up of action in the new comedy, it’s a safe bet that Broadway will long enjoy the antics of Miss Paige and Jackie Cooper…its final curtain fell close upon a typical Lindsay and Crouse comedy situation more than slightly resembling general hysteria.” –F.R.J., New Haven Journal-Courier, Sept. 7, 1951
“Sparked by a honey of a title and loaded with entertainment potentialities, Remains To Be Seen should remain to be seen on Broadway for some months to come. A cleverly contrived story, glove fitting cast, and staging of the first water…Play’s anticipated click lies in its wide appeal. There’s something here for whodunit fans, for hepcats, for staid playgoers, and for anybody at all looking for escapist entertainment.” –Bone, Variety
Front of Colonial out-of-town program. You may notice the in-joke of two actors with the same names as the Brewster brothers (Jonathan and Mortimer) in Arsenic and Old Lace. Detective Nolan does not appear in the Broadway script. The character of Detective Watson does appear, but has no lines. Also note the addition of billing for the character of Mrs. Bright, who has three lines from offstage in the final script.
The second and last stop on the out-of-town tryout was Boston’s Colonial Theatre. Remains To Be Seen played three weeks of performances there, beginning Monday, September 10, 1951. Oddly, the reviews take a much tougher tone…almost as if the show had regressed instead of improved. Though, having read an earlier draft of the script, I would say that wasn’t the case at all.
The dean of Boston critics Eliot Norton wrote: “On Monday night, Remains To Be Seen was handicapped by a great clutter of plot: words, words, words. It needs a ruthless pruning and the substitution of action for words. Janis Paige got into form as Jody Revere before the first act was over and from then on played with a brassy gusto that would’ve done Ethel Merman credit.” --Boston Post, Sept. 16, 1951
Elinor Hughes: “There are not enough laughs. The high spots occur between stretches not exactly of dullness but certainly of the doldrums; the melodramatic plot takes itself far too seriously and the atmosphere of combined nonsense and violence so wonderfully arrived at in Arsenic and Old Lace hasn’t yet been achieved. The fun of the play is in the engaging little romance between the murderee’s niece and the superintendent, and the middle-aged lawyer who recaptures his youth for one evening but cannot sustain it…I hope Lindsay & Crouse will do more with them and less with the mystery nobody really cares to unravel.”—Boston Herald, Sept. 16, 1951
Tellingly, Hughes continued: “There’s a difference between known quality and unknown talent. Mr. Crouse and Mr. Lindsay are expected, as though they were George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare, to make a ten-strike every time they open their typewriters. And if what they produce is good but not 200% perfect, there are apt to be grumblings from the auditorium, grumblings of disappointment that would not greet untried authors, but that are, actually, a form of tribute to men from whom only the best is expected.”
This kind of public and critical expectation of the show and its authors—particularly in the wake of Arsenic and Old Lace, which had ended its 3 1/2 year blockbuster run just seven years prior—may have been RTBS’s greatest stumbling block.
Pre-opening ad: Lindsay’s name has replaced Ryan’s in the actor billing, and the Charles Addams art has been replaced with a similar drawing that does not feature The Addams Family.
Three days after the Boston closing, Remains To Be Seen opened on Broadway. How much were Lindsay & Crouse and company able to pull the show up in those three critical weeks in Boston? Well, that remains to be seen. Stay tuned for post #3 in the Shows for Someday series!