Shows for Someday: REMAINS TO BE SEEN (Part 4)

PART 4: THE AFTERLIFE

It’s our last post about our first show in the Shows for Someday series, Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse’s Remains To Be Seen. Today we discuss the play’s life after Broadway.

One sheet film poster for Remains To Be Seen (1953).

FILM VERSION:

The movie sale of Remains To Be Seen to MGM put the Broadway production firmly into the “hit” column financially. Initial reports said studio boss Dore Schary acquired the piece as a vehicle for Debbie Reynolds (then age 20), with Louella Parsons reporting it would be “a lavish Technicolor musical with all the trimmings.” In the end, it was a lower-budget MGM film, written by future bestselling novelist Sidney Sheldon and directed by journeyman Don Weis, who went on to direct a lot of television. It starred June Allyson (then age 35) and Van Johnson in the final of their five screen pairings. It lost over $400K at the box office. Also in the cast were Angela Lansbury as the mysterious Valeska, Louis Calhern as Benjamin Goodman, and Dorothy Dandridge in a special appearance as a nightclub singer. There are three musical sequences: “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” (replacing “Somebody Stole My Gal” or the public domain variation “Frankie and Johnny” in the stage script), “Too Marvelous for Words”, and Dandridge’s “Taking a Chance on Love.”

I Love Lucy fans will be delighted to see Kathryn Card (who played Lucy’s mom) in a small role, and fellow Lucy vets Charles Lane (as a medical examiner) and Frank Nelson (as an undertaker).

Lobby cards for the film version

The film starts out ok. That’s when it sticks closest to the play and uses lines from the theatre script. It’s well-designed and produced, but as it goes on, this MGM movie gradually lets the air out of all the tires. Coming in at 84 minutes, the pace still feels draggy with so many story elements removed. We don’t get any of the great “curtain” moments from the play.  It doesn’t represent the piece L&C wrote at all. The racy elements of the script are all scrubbed clean due to the censorship constraints of the era, so what was a fun suspense-and-shenanigans stage play becomes a murder mystery played basically straight.  The film is miscast in several crucial roles: Allyson, hoarser than usual, is ladylike and lacking the earthy quality that helped Janis Paige score such a great personal Broadway success. They take a side trip to a nightclub to get in a singing appearance by Dorothy Dandridge (!). She’s wonderful, as always, but has nothing to do with the freight-train plotting of the actual play.

MGM’s tagline was “it’s frightfully funny”…it kinda isn’t. Nonetheless, the  PR department did its job, resulting in all kinds of enjoyable artwork and copy for the film.

British pressbook. “Shiver, shudder, and shake with MGM’s fright-fully funny mirthquake! Mystery-comedy at its best! Meet these two swing-happy sweethearts who dish out hot rhythm as a cold blooded killer haunts their penthouse! A riot of fun!”

NATIONAL TOUR:

Officially speaking, the Broadway production closed so the show could go on tour. The closing and the tour were announced March 6, 1952. Audience for the show was clearly winding down. RTBS had some losing weeks in its final month on Broadway.

Two days after the Broadway closing, Cooper and Paige opened a 3-stop tour that played Cleveland’s Hanna Theatre the week of March 24, the Cass Theatre in Detroit for a week starting March 31, and Chicago’s Erlanger for two months starting April 7.

Quote ad from Chicago stop of national tour

Some tour review quotes:

“A rowdy, noisy, funny mixture of chills and laughter in which there’s practically no arsenic but a lot of black lace. You never have too long a wait between laughs. Miss Paige is exactly what the play needs in equal parts titian brassiness, bright humor, and a kind of joyous sexy charm.”

–Spaeth, Cleveland News, March 25, 1952

“ If you like a boisterous, rollicking, crude farce melodrama, very well acted, this is your dish. Lindsay and Crouse threw everything but their shirts into it. A theatrical romp…the authors must have had fun writing it and they give fun to properly receptive theatergoers”

–McDermott, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, March 25, 1952

Remains To Be Seen is Jivy, Full of Laughs

“L&C have outdone themselves in the wild comedy Remains To Be Seen. It is the obvious sort of comedy that warms the heart because it places no burden on the brain. There is an offstage murder which involves just about every type of person that ever walked the pavements of a big city, before it bumps on to its riotous conclusion. Comedy of this kind is its own excuse for being. One needs seek no deeper than that for its success. It can almost be guaranteed you will have a good time.  In the matter of casting, a grand job has been done. One of the zaniest comedy situations ever made lies in his crescendo of drum beats whenever the amorous Jody runs her hands through [Waldo’s] hair. If it’s laughs you’re seeking, the Cass Theatre is your shop for this week.”

–J. Dorsey Callaghan, Detroit Free Press

“Chicago hasn’t had a real gusty farce in several years, and this comedy fills the slot in good fashion.” –Zabe, Variety

“Gags and jive, comedy and corn, love and murder! Lindsay and Crouse have gleefully mixed a witch’s brew and cooked it into a corn popper. But just as you start looking for Olsen and Johnson, they turn a trick so shrewdly timed, a line so hilarious, a situation so skilled, you understand why Leland Hayward staged it with such care.”

–Cassidy, Chicago Tribune  

“Fast-moving mystery comedy with an new twist. Lindsay and Crouse are experts in this kind of happy foolishness and honest hokum.”

–Kogan, Chicago Sun-Times

“Remains To Be Seen welcomed as a hit. Chicago first-nighters had a joyful and often hilarious time.” ---Marsters, Chicago Herald-American

LONDON:

After a five-week pre-London tour, Jack Hylton’s December 1952 London production at Her Majesty’s Theatre with Diana Dors as Jody and Lou Jacobi as Rosenberg received harsh reviews and only ran 5 days: “The indecisive character of this comedy-thriller, in which there is a negligible amount of incident and hardly any suspense, mainly accounts for the play’s questionable prospects. Much of the incidental action…takes on the suspicious look of padding.”

London Programme

AROUND THE USA:

After the brief tour, the show made the regional and stock rounds in the USA.

1)  Norwich Summer Theatre, starring Marilyn Maxwell in her stage debut: “Miss Maxwell is a good actress who can make you laugh almost as well as she can make you drool. The play is very funny and would be worth the price of admission even if its leading lady remained fully attired.”

–Seymour Katz, New London Day

2) La Jolla Playhouse, starring Monica Lewis & Carleton Carpenter

3) United Nations Theatre/Alcazar, starring Sally Forrest & Roddy McDowall & Craig Stevens with several reviews saying the production seemed underrehearsed but should settle in soon.

“A dandy farce” – San Francisco News, Aug. 13, 1952

“Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse have by no means concocted another Arsenic and Old Lace, but Remains To Be Seen is a sufficiently funny whodunit that mixes homicide and sex in equal parts.”

–Hogan, San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 1952

“Reviewed from the standpoint of audience reaction, it’s a zinger. One gets the idea while watching the hysterical shenanigans that the playwrights were deliberately striking back at the plethora of depressing and sordid heavy dramas that have glutted the stage for a couple of seasons…that their motto was “let’s send ‘em away laughing.” And send ‘em away laughing, they do! A cinch to capture an audience. As it stands it is all out fun.” –Morton, San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 14, 1952

“Lindsay-Crouse Sequel To Arsenic Proves Hilarious” –Soanes, Oakland Tribune, Aug. 14, 1952

4)  Westhampton Playhouse, starring Eileen Barton & Conrad Janis

5) Princeton Summer Theatre, starring Jackie Cooper & Fran Warren

6) Kenley Players, starring Jackie Cooper and Veronica Lake, summer 1952

7) Playhouse on the Mall and Paper Mill Playhouse starring Gisele MacKenzie w/Hal Linden, Erik Rhodes, and Dick Latessa in 1966.

8) Pheasant Run Playhouse, starring Micky Dolenz in the 70s was the last production with a major star I could find.

As for our heroic authors, Lindsay and Crouse didn’t dawdle. Later in 1952, after RTBS and Call Me Madam had closed, they produced One Bright Day (Lindsay also acted in it). Future stage work included The Prescott Proposals (1954) and The Great Sebastians (1956) both written for the Lunts; the Ethel Merman musical Happy Hunting (1956); the campus comedy Tall Story (1959); the book for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final musical The Sound of Music (1959); and Irving Berlin’s final musical, Mr. President (1963). Crouse died in 1966, Lindsay in 1968 with legacies at the forefront of American theatre. They were winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award, they had written what is still Broadway’s longest-running non-musical play, and they had owned a Broadway theatre (the Hudson). Of their work, Arsenic and Old Lace, Anything Goes, and The Sound of Music are still constantly performed. 

MISCELLANY:

1950s newspapers turn up clippings of all kinds of community theatre productions of the show. Also, there was a radio version in Australia with Rod Taylor & Evie Hayes (that I’d love to find a copy of).

1954 Australian radio version.

Janis Paige has a chapter about the show in her 2020 memoir, Reading Between the Lines. The show had a decent life after Broadway. It’s also cursorily mentioned in Dorothy Stickney’s Life with Lindsay and Crouse.

HOW I FOUND THE PLAY:

I first learned of the play in seventh grade from the Best Plays annual, which has a synopsis and a few dialogue quotes. It drew my attention because I was appearing as one of the children in a production of Lindsay & Crouse’s Life with Father. With my parents, I made a special trip to Flat Rock Playhouse in August 1988 when I found Remains To Be Seen on their schedule, and I loved that production. I didn’t get to read and analyze the Random House/Fireside edition of the full script till a few years later; I found a library copy during my college years.

DEEP THOUGHTS:

Remains To Be Seen’s biggest problem in 1951 was probably that it was perceived as a letdown after Arsenic and Old Lace--a singularly successful, runaway perennial hit that no follow-up could possibly top. The same thing happened to L&C when they wrote Life with Mother after Life with Father’s success.

Quite a few critics note Lindsay & Crouse’s “involvement” in Arsenic well beyond what you would see for typical producers, who are often barely mentioned in reviews. The press treats L&C as though they were the authors of that play. One suspects they may indeed have been. Joseph Kesselring’s only other play, Four Twelves are 48, opened January 17, 1951 and closed the following night.

Also, the film version of Remains To Be Seen being so low profile and thoroughly panned was another setback for the show. Further, the script requires what would have been a complicated set for most amateur groups in the 1950s-80s. It’s worth noting the published Dramatists Play Service Acting Edition of the script includes 5(!) pages of notes for the Director to explain how to accomplish the special effects, reduce the cast size, and tone down or cut the racy dialogue.

In conclusion, Remains To Be Seen is a fragile but fun show. It needs a company that really knows what they're doing. First and foremost, it must have a comedy director with a clear vision at the helm who has a deep knowledge of the period and the comedy and thriller tropes in the script. It’s a satire and burlesque of crime and punishment, an impish role-reversal romance where the experienced girl renounces her purple past for the love of a virginal milquetoast male.

Some issues in the play still ring true: there’s still plenty of censorship in this world, and we struggle to find “a common language” more than ever. And mainstream America continues its love/hate relationship with human sexuality and pornography.

Probably the most difficult aspect of the play is maintaining the right tone at the right time as the play switches back and forth between the earnestness of a thriller and the timing and pace of a farce. The successful comedy thriller is the rarest of theatrical genres (try and name three!).  There’s plenty of sexual imagery and double entendre, and—a Lindsay & Crouse trademark—there are sight gags written into the stage directions, so you have to read them closely. It’s a goofy approach to the grimness of murder that makes it both laughable and lurid.

All this is not to make a claim for Remains To Be Seen as an undiscovered masterpiece. It could use some trimming in terms of length and cast size. Yet, with charming cast of stars and character actors, a simpatico director, and an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to  the production in general, it offers an enjoyable, unique, entertaining evening in the theatre. Copies of the script are fairly easy to come by at online used bookstores. Check it out if you get the chance.

Perhaps John Mason Brown in the Saturday Review summed it up best:

“It is what is known in the trade as an ‘audience’ show rather than a “critics’” show. And audiences, I am told, laugh it up. I do not have in mind the first-night audience, which was on the chilly side {Ed. note: other reviews confirm this]. I mean general audiences. That the farce is nonsense is nothing against it. It was meant to be precisely that. That is its point, its fun, its whole and healthy purpose. My quarrel with those of my confreres who did not happen to enjoy RTBS is not with their opinions but with the almost angry solemnity with which they discussed it. To fire howitzers and mortars at so light and giddy an offering as RTBS strikes me as the height of critical folly and unfairness. I thank L&C for seeking to write a funny play rather than a dull one. I thank them the more because I happened to find it funny, as did many of my fellow reviewers and as I am confident will countless theatregoers whose understandable search is for diversion. 

–John Mason Brown, Saturday Review, Oct. 20, 1951

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this installment of Shows For Someday. Next up: George Axelrod’s gender-bending comedy Goodbye Charlie.

Shows for Someday: REMAINS TO BE SEEN (Part 3)

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.”

Janis Paige and Jackie Cooper

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!

Shows for Someday: REMAINS TO BE SEEN (Part 2)

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!

Shows for Someday #1: REMAINS TO BE SEEN by Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse

This is the first in a series of posts here about “Shows For Someday”—plays and musicals that have lived in my heart a long time, but I’ve never gotten to do in any capacity. Interesting scripts outside the usual regional and stock theatre rotation that met with varying degrees of success on Broadway and beyond.

Many of these shows are by prestigious authors whose work isn’t as known as it may once have been. Some would be difficult to produce because of script requirements or cast size; some might need touching up to bring them more in line with modern expectations and sensibilities; some may not have as much appeal for an open-run mass audience because people just aren’t doing shows like that anymore. Anyway, I think these shows are worth another look, and who knows what may come from using this space to shine a little light them. So, our first show is…

Original out-of-town flyer, art by Charles Addams.

REMAINS TO BE SEEN

a 1951 mystery comedy written by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. There’s so much to share with you that I’ll be breaking up the story into four posts: 1) Background and Pre-Production; 2) Out of Town; 3) Broadway; 4) Film, Afterlife, & Final Thoughts

 PART I: BACKGROUND and PRE-PRODUCTION

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Little remembered with most of their corpus rarely-produced today, Lindsay and Crouse were playwrights, producers, and performers of near-terrifying eminence during their lifetimes. As critically acclaimed award winners who also enjoyed record setting commercial success, their plays included State of the Union (Pulitzer Prize) and Life With Father (still Broadway’s longest-running non-musical play). They wrote four musicals for Ethel Merman: Anything Goes, Red Hot and Blue, Happy Hunting, and Call Me Madam (which was running when Remains To Be Seen opened…and closed). Their most-produced works are The Sound of Music (producers and librettists) and Arsenic and Old Lace (producers and ghostwriters).

Howard Lindsay also performed and directed regularly, including the role of Father in Life With Father on Broadway.  Lindsay and Crouse were prolific and successful producers of their work and that of others, including plays like The Hasty Heart and Detective Story.

PRE-PRODUCTION: The play was originally announced with the title Opus 9 , a humorous nod to the fact that it was L&C’s ninth collaboration. The title was changed when they found people expected that title to be a play with more serious ambitions. They also considered titling it The Hepcat and the Canary, but couldn’t get the blessing of Mrs. John S. Willard, the widow of the author of the famous thriller The Cat and the Canary, so they changed it to the wonderfully evocative Remains To Be Seen.

 Lindsay and Crouse had started work on the play before they wrote Call Me Madam, but did the bulk of the writing starting the November after Madam opened, finishing the first draft Saturday, March 2, 1951. Legendary producer Leland Hayward had announced both Jackie Cooper (in the starring role of Waldo Walton) and the October 3 opening date by mid-April of that year. The role of Jody was turned down by Judy Holliday, and after considering actual band singers like Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney, Janis Paige, who had just finished a contract as a star at Warner Brothers, auditioned in New York and was offered the job on the spot.

SYNOPSIS: There are two stories in Remains To Be Seen: a comic romance between Jody Revere, a jiggly jazz band singer, and Waldo Walton, a virginal apartment house manager/would-be drummer; and a whodunit involving the twice-killed corpse of Travis Revercombe, a hypocritical millionaire guardian of public morals who privately enjoys his pornography and his lady paramours.

As both a spoof and loving homage to its genre, surrounding the story we find instantly recognizable supporting characters common to vintage thrillers: bungling policemen as well as tough cops out of a B movie, a mad doctor, a fanatical scorned mistress, an enigmatic Japanese houseman, a staid lawyer who tries to “get with it” and twists on the old conventions like a medical examiner more interested in the fights on TV than the body he is duty-bound to examine, and undertakers from two different firms competing to land the job of a potentially expensive funeral.

Suspenseful story conventions are in there too: sliding walls and screams on a darkened stage. The chills start right at the top where the room is black except for a TV screen, and we sense a murky figure creeping across the stage.

None of the characters who knew Mr. Revercombe liked him much, and as we try to solve the mystery of who stabbed him after he died, the story takes in murder, suicide, and shooting alongside side-splitting laughs.

As they had done with Arsenic and Old Lace, Lindsay and Crouse mined the humorous side of homicide for Remains To Be Seen, working to create that rara avis of the theatre, a comedy whodunit.

More in Part 2 as we go out-of-town with Remains To Be Seen.

Three shows gone. Keep on keepin' on!

Well, here we are in mid-May with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. It’s affected three shows I was working on:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOUG at Soho Playhouse in New York was forced to end its run prematurely.

THE ODD COUPLE (Female Version) at Judson Theatre Company shut down while it was in rehearsal; a huge loss for JTC.

DEATHTRAP at Millbrook Playhouse was canceled along with the rest of this year’s summer season.

Personally, right now I’m looking at a lot of free time, and how to best use it. Mainly I find myself saying to myself, “you know when you wished things would stop for a few weeks and you could rest and get things done? Well, that time is here.” And it is, for tasks large and small.

Spending time:

—reading the script pile (if you’re interested in script consultation services, email me)

—reading books from the “to be read” shelf

—watching films I’ve always intended to see, but hadn’t

—doing deep data analysis of Judson Theatre Company statistics and making plans for when we’re back

—cooking at home, trying vintage recipes I’ve always meant to try

—maintaining personal fitness (in remote, crowd-free outside areas)

All these things help me stay focused and maintain my mental and physical health. Remember, no one can take away your creativity, and you don’t have to be in rehearsal or performance for a show right this minute to continue being creative.

When the arts come back and we can gather together again to share true theatre, we’ll need your support more than ever. Looking forward to seeing you.

Reach out if you need to or want to—I’m OK, and here as always.

—Morgan