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About the Show
It all started with the first faint stirrings of Big Business parody back in the fifties. Shepherd Mead wrote the 1952 best-seller, the title of which was eventually carried over to tonight's celebrated musical adaptation. But when the redoubtable team of Abe Burrows and Frank Loesser completed their transformation of the book into musical comedy form, they were faced with - and happily accepted - an atypical American musicomedy challenge.
Shepherd Mead's original sub-title for the book is: "The Dastard's Guide to Fame and Fortune." In certain important and hilarious respects, the "hero" of the finished musical version remains just that - a dastard. Thus the mirthfully Machiavellian rise of J. Pierpont Finch in the World-Wide Wicket Company broke with the vast majority of its theatrical predecessors both in its stylish satirization of Madison Avenue and in its hard-nosed reliance on a most unconventional protagonist.
The critical cartwheels on the occasion of its October 14, 1961 opening included: " .. . stings mischievously and laughs uproariously. It belongs to the bluechips among modern musicals . .. " Howard Taubman, New York Times; " .. . crafty, conniving, sneaky, cynical, irreverent, impertinent, sly, malicious, and lovely, just lovely •. . " Walter Kerr, Herald Tribune. And the Pulitzer Prize bestowed on the show for 1962 with the Critic's Circle Award for the season simultaneously marked a further phase of the American musical theatre's coming of age.
Broadway sage and quipster George S. Kaufman once characterized American stage satire as the production which " ... closes on Saturday night." The Loesser-Burrows success story with HOW TO SUCCEED, with its joyous run of 417 performances, gave the lie to that legend. But that is history and not much fun. We know that you will find the living proof quite positive and extremely pleasant to the taste. And it is all yours to enjoy this evening.
Publication Date
Summer 1975
Language
English
City
Philadelphia
Keywords
Music Theatre
Disciplines
Theatre and Performance Studies
Recommended Citation
La Salle College, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (1975). La Salle College Summer Music Theatre. 21.
https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/musictheatre/21
Rights Statement
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Comments
Director's Notes
Speaking of legends - of both the "show biz" and "big biz" type - consider this scene: a September evening in 1961, the carpeted foyer of Philadelphia's famous try-out site, the Shubert Theatre. A bulky figure dressed for a formal occasion (after all, it is a theatre premiere) is stalking back and forth mouthing silently (most of the time) the very words which are being simultaneously voiced by Robert Morse, Rudy Vallee and the rest of the Broadway-bound company from the stage. And laughs - little ones which are fillers and set-ups and big ones, the punch-lines, boffolas and pay-offs - are being returned to the stage from the crowded first night house.
The little walking and stalking man pauses occasionally in clocking the duration and intensity of the plot lines and the laugh lines, to scribble a quick note without missing a beat or a mimed, well-timed inflection in the actors' - and his very own - lines. Then one notices the sartorial mismatch. He is wearing correct evening dress except for a slightly lop-sided pork pie hat which fits almost all the way down onto his horn-rimmed glasses. That shadowy limbo area behind the last row of orchestra patrons and between the work stations of the ushers on the aisles has become the corridor outside the delivery room and that peculiarly American theatre phenomenon known as the "show doctor" is assisting in the birth of a bona fide "hit". The baby-show - doing nicely, thank you - is How To Succeed . .. , the physician-father in attendance is recognized to be the legendary Abe Burrows.
The little walking and stalking man pauses occasionally in clocking the duration and intensity of the plot lines and the laugh lines, to scribble a quick note without missing a beat or a mimed, well-timed inflection in the actors' - and his very own - lines. Then one notices the sartorial mismatch. He is wearing correct evening dress except for a slightly lop-sided pork pie hat which fits almost all the way down onto his horn-rimmed glasses. That shadowy limbo area behind the last row of orchestra patrons and between the work stations of the ushers on the aisles has become the corridor outside the delivery room and that peculiarly American theatre phenomenon known as the "show doctor" is assisting in the birth of a bona fide "hit". The baby-show - doing nicely, thank you - is How To Succeed . .. , the physician-father in attendance is recognized to be the legendary Abe Burrows.
The call goes out for the trouble shooter, the self-assured one man investment insurance who can pull it all together - "a thousand dollars a day and nobody talks to me" - the efficiency expert who puts himself on a round the clock work day, removes and replaces all the non-functioning, non-moving parts and streamlines it from one working movement to the next - like clockwork. Now there he is, looking more relaxed, taking fewer and fewer notes, mainly smiling now, even lounging there along the back row of the Shubert, tilting the pork pie to a more rakish angle. For, this evening, and for thousands more to follow, How To Succeed ... , like Guys and Dolls before it, is all smoothly working parts, patently succeeding at its polished business. That drawing board notion of turning a slim, breezily impish little book into a musical farce about the corporate world is geared up and dialed now for a durable Broadway destiny for both its delighted stockholders and for that audience which is now sending out to the relaxed doctor back in the shadows the unmistakable symptoms of a successful operation.
Like the old combination of the black jacket, trousers and tie, white stiff shirt front - the concession to artistic formalities - topped off by the impertinent incongruity of the pork pie hat concealing not only Abe Burrows' bald spot but the pragmatic "show biz" brain which is the new motoring powering the event, How To Succeed . .. has become its successful self and something more - another "how to" model of that whole improbable match up of craft, integrity, and tough business acumen which is one of the innately American contributions to a modern theatre tradition. As the director who happily inherits good doctor Burrows' good work, I wish you no work and all play this evening!