Thanks for joining us again for Shows For Someday: Remains To Be Seen (Part 3). This post focuses on the play’s Broadway run. One of the most striking things—with my producer hat on—is how much faster Broadway plays were produced back then. Granted, these were established artists and producers at the peak of their success, but still…so fast. Here’s the timeline:

first draft submitted: March 2, 1951

star cast announcement: mid-April

first rehearsal: August 13

4 weeks tryout (in two locations): September 6

no preview period on Broadway

Opening night: October 3, 1951

Granted, Lindsay & Crouse had been kicking the idea around a while, but when it was time to go…zoom! First draft to opening night on Broadway in 7 months. This simply would not happen in today’s Broadway.

Broadway windowcard (printed prior to the run)

Which brings us to the all-important opening night. Suspense plays are a natural fit for the fall, and an October opening for RTBS was a smart move. How fun would it have been to go to a show called Remains To Be Seen on Halloween?

In 1951 even more than today, shows lived or died by their opening night reviews (particularly The New York Times).

REVIEWS

The first reviews available were from New York City’s seven daily papers. Three of them were raves (headlines in bold):

“Remains” a Smash, So’s Janis Paige

“Destined for a long, happy life at the Morosco. The show is a neat and rollicking job. But it is also a blessed event, in that it brings a girl and a part together in the happiest union we have seen in years and years. Janis Paige is going to have the town at her melodic feet, if it is not already there by today…It is a finely tailored show, with several of the cutest curtains ever dreamed up. By the end of the evening the customers were as hysterical as the actors onstage where a riot was going on. If this season seemed slow getting on the right track, it was worth it to have a royal sendoff like ‘Remains To Be Seen.’”

--Hawkins, NEW YORK WORLD-TELEGRAM and THE SUN

“Remains To Be Seen” Hits the Mark for a Hit

“They turned the trick with Arsenic and Old Lace and now they’ve done it again. A rousing hit. Packs some of the lustiest laughs you're likely to enjoy this season. If you want to roar and shiver, you’d better rush to the Morosco box office before the line gets too long this morning. Broadway has been needing a rousing hit and now it has one."

--Robert Coleman, NY DAILY MIRROR

The Drama Season is Looking Up

“Lindsay & Crouse came to the rescue of the belated drama season last night with a bright and lively murder extravaganza. Their latest ingenious concoction is certainly no important contribution to playwriting, and it doesn’t try to be, but as a shrewd and adroit show, attractively acted, expertly directed, and filled with all the pleasant tricks of the mystery melodrama, the music hall, and the spoof of the old-time thriller, it is thoroughly entertaining. It is the unashamed popular theatre at its most professionally expert, never taking itself or its audience seriously. [It’s] more of a show than a play. This, however is meant to describe it, not to be scornful of what it achieves. There is certainly a welcome place in a well-balanced theatre for such intelligent ingenuity. It is particularly welcome when it is staged and acted so deftly. A 3-ring circus of excitement and fun. Everything about the production seems so right that the result is continuous fun."

--Richard Watts, NEW YORK POST

Jackie Cooper as Waldo Walton and Janis Paige as Jody Revere.

One was mixed-positive:

Janis Paige, Jackie Cooper Put Hilarity in ‘Remains To Be Seen’

“Chiefly because a young lady from Hollywood, Janis Paige, has bounce, brass, good looks and a friendly personality, there is much to recommend in RTBS…this new play’s one handicap is that it doesn’t get going till the curtain falls on the first act. This act ending is ingenious and unique; it is the only beginning of an intermission I ever witnessed which heightened interest in the play. The performance of one-time film-lad Jackie Cooper as the drum-daffy super is superior. One must be patient with RTBS. The authors, having started with a good general idea, appear to have had considerable first-act trouble. They have found it necessary to squander many valuable minutes in setting up all the props for a farce…when a really first-class farce should tee off at the rise of the curtain. But Acts II and III are brisk enough and often hilarious. Miss Paige should be something of a Broadway find…she is rather like, but in no way an imitation of, Judy Holliday in ‘Born Yesterday.’ I had a feeling last evening it was the actors themselves who finally managed to take RTBS away from its authors and director and really get it rolling.”

--John Chapman, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Janis Paige (as Jody Revere) and Howard Lindsay (as Benjamin Goodman, Esq.)

One was mixed-negative:

No Arsenic, Some Lace

“L&C have attempted to write a murder mystery comedy…the mystery angle falls flat for the most part, but in the romance, they fared better. Janis Paige is delightful…she has the warmth and vivacity to convince you that the most important thing in the world is to catch that plane…Jackie Cooper has the toughest row to hoe and he couldn’t have done much better had International Harvester been backing him. For some reason, Mr. Lindsay found it necessary to cast himself in the role of the deceased’s rather pompous executor who takes a middle-aged shine to the band singer. It is a stock role at best, and the fact that the co-author of the play and an actor of Mr. Lindsay’s stature is playing it tends to throw matters out of focus. In the light of the miserable offerings which have characterized the first month of the theatrical season, it is a temptation to give the L&C comedy more than it really deserves. One thing is sure. They did not succeed in what they set out to do. Their murder mystery generates little or no suspense and only spasmodic moments of comedy. What enjoyment is to be derived from the evening stems from the winning ways of Miss Paige and Mr. Cooper, plus a couple of hectically contrived farce scenes.”

--Bert McCord, NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE

And then there were the pans:

Showmanship Better Than Playwriting

“If Remains To Be Seen’ represents anything, it represents the triumph of showmanship over playwriting. The ‘new comedy’ Lindsay & Crouse have manufactured, that Leland Hayward is selling at the Morosco, goes along after getting off to an uncertain start. Everybody does better than the dramatists…the playwriting gradually gives way to the showmanship. And, after its fashion, RTBS grows not unfascinating to behold. Janis Paige as the leading lady is almost as right as the press agent claims. Contrived as their doings are, [Paige and Cooper] are fun to watch as they dress and undress, scare and unscare, love and are loved throughout the evening. Backed by a worthy cast, RTBS may be in the Broadway bag. Everything you ever heard of happens. There is nothing altogether wrong at the Morosco. And nothing altogether right. The whole thing is expert, slick, and uninspired. No, I thank you.”

–Robert Garland, JOURNAL-AMERICAN

Most damningly, the most important review--Brooks Atkinson’s in The New York Times--was an out-and-out pan:

Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse Have Written a Mystery-Comedy Entitled ‘Remains To Be Seen”

“Tasteless and labored…it looks embarrassingly frantic. It looks as though it were made up of incidents that do not belong together and cannot be made to lead from one natural crisis to another. The authors have driven their comedy so hard that it is gasping most of the time, and the performance…is humorlessly desperate and tiresome. With some difficulty this column refrains from making a mean pun out of the title.”

–Atkinson, THE NEW YORK TIMES

So…some raves, but panned in the Times. The reviews in aggregate told audiences Remains To Be Seen was a bit of a letdown next to Arsenic and Old Lace, still in a 1951 theatregoer’s recent memory.

Unlike today, where critics are spread across multiple days of preview performances, most of the critics back then attended the actual opening, and several reviews note that the opening night performance didn’t quite click. The World-Telegram opined, “Last night’s audience took to the first act with a certain amount of caution, missing laughs which will have less self-conscious crowds roaring.” And the Saturday Review confirmed, “the first-night audience…was on the chilly side.”

And yet, there is every indication that as the run went on, Remains To Be Seen made the audience-at-large happy.

Further reviews of the Broadway production, from national outlets:

“A good mystery comedy at last. For years playgoers have been complaining no one writes good mystery plays anymore. Last week, two of Broadway’s ablest showmen, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, who produced the last good mystery-comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace, brought in their cure for the complaints, Remains To Be Seen. [It’s] scary, merry and the theatre season's first bright event."

--LIFE Magazine (in a multi-page spread with 9 black-and-white photos)

"Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse have written Remains To Be Seen and they are proving once again that murder cannot only be fun but funny. They have written a thriller which is a farce. Although it has its shuddery scenes and ingenious twists, its sole aim (and a very commendable one, if you ask me) is to provide entertainment. It does this by standing the usual 'whodunit' on its gory head and by extracting laughter readily from a killing!"

--John Mason Brown, SATURDAY REVIEW

Debatable Goods on New Show Counters

“Remains To Be Seen represents 6-cylinder commercial playwriting that in its determined effort to satisfy the box office overlooks nothing. It combines murder, mystery, legal and illicit love, low comedy, melodramatic whoop-de-doodle, burlesque cops, trap drumming, and almost everything else short of a ballet.”

--George Jean Nathan, KING FEATURE SYNDICATE

“Remains To Be Seen” Hit For Lindsay and Crouse

“It is one of the most lively honeys you will ever see. It is one of the best of the Lindsay and Crouse shows, always with tongue in cheek. The cast is excellent.”

—ASSOCIATED PRESS

Lindsay and Crouse “Remains To Be Seen” Considered a Very, Very Funny Show

“We have not laughed so long and so loud in years and years at a playhouse as at this cockeyed jamboree which runs the gamut of every sort of entertainment from straight melodrama to roaring farce. Janis Paige is a veritable riot as Jody Revere, a combination of Ethel Merman and Gypsy Rose Lee.”

—Lawrence Perry, NORTH AMERICAN NEWS ALLIANCE (NANA)

Murder-Comedy Should Run for Several Seasons

“As fine a murder-comedy as Broadway graybeards can remember…it should remain to be seen for at least several years. RTBS is an infintely superior effort [to Arsenic and Old Lace] in this curious field of dramaturgy.”

—Bob Considine, INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE (INS)

Though it was not nominated for any Tony Awards,Remains To Be Seen was included in the 1951-52 edition of the annual Best Plays along with Mary Chase’s Mrs. McThing; John Van Druten’s I Am a Camera; Jan de Hartog’s The Fourposter; Joseph Kramm’s The Shrike; and Anita Loos’ Gigi. It was also published by Random House as the February 1952 selection of Fireside Theatre book club, mailed to over 12,000 subscribers.

IT’S A BUSINESS

CAST CHANGES: Playwright Lindsay left the cast soon after opening, replaced in the role of Benjamin Goodman by James Rennie. The rest of the cast (including Ossie Davis and Frank Campanella) seems to have stayed for the full run and the tour.

DOLLARS AND CENTS: The week the show opened, Variety wrote that RTBS was capitalized at $75,000, with production costs of $60,000 and $15,000 in bonds, and no tryout loss.

At first RTBS was definitely a hit, grossing capacity plus capacity standing room in its first five performances. It broke the all-time house record at the Morosco (capacity 912) in its first full week, grossing $25,881. The top ticket price was $6.00, the cheapest seat was $1.80.

The show had a weekly breakeven of around $14K. Weekly payroll was $4,590 (including Jackie Cooper’s 5% of the gross over $15K against a $500 guarantee) on a box office gross of $23,206. Author royalty was a straight 10% and director royalty 2.5%.

However, a later blip in Variety paints the show’s financials a little differently, citing a production cost of $75,263, plus $8,352 tryout loss and $3,802 pre-opening expense. It says the show had earned an operating profit of $40,323 as of November 24 (end of week 7).

By its 17th week, Variety reported the show “had just paid its backers one-third of its $75K investment and is about to return the balance.”

CLOSING

After running nearly 6 months (25 weeks), Remains To Be Seen closed March 22, 1952 after 199 performances, ending its run with three weeks of operating losses and not having fully repaid its capitalization from ticket sales alone. The tour—more on that later—opened in Cleveland with the Broadway cast two days later. Variety’s final published figure was that The B'way prod cost $88,727, not including the $3,500 in operating losses. Nonetheless, the production ultimately ended up in the “hit” column in Leland Hayward’s books. It made a $30,000.00 profit, thanks to the show’s 40% share of the $125,000 movie sale to MGM, and continued to make money as it was produced in stock and amateur theatres.

In the next post, we’ll take a look at the rarely-shown MGM film version of Remains To Be Seen and the play’s life after Broadway. Stay tuned!