Next in our Secrets and Lies Salon Season, we bring you Jo Swerling and Edward G. Robinson’s Kibitzer, a delightful comedy about family, playing the stock market, and, of course, kibitzing. The “secrets and lies” of the personal lives, unusual friendship, subsequent fallout, and eventual reunion of the play’s co-authors, however, almost rival the secrets and lies of this play.
To modern audiences, the more recognizable of the two is, of course, Little Caesar (a.k.a. Rico) himself, Edward G. Robinson. Still, the name Jo Swerling is familiar to many, particularly those with a special interest in film – or those who love the musical Guys and Dolls (more on that later). The men had very similar histories and upbringing: both were born within the last decade of the 19th century and were raised in New York City just after the turn of the century; and both came from families who emigrated from Eastern Europe to escape Jewish persecution.
Robinson, born Emanuel Goldenberg, made his past a secret quite early on. He Americanized his name when, while studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, it was suggested a more Anglo name might better suit the entertainment industry. After mulling over many variants, “Edward” and “Robinson” were settled on: the latter was an inspiration from a play, the former, the King of England. He retained the “G” as homage to Goldenberg. New name notwithstanding, Robinson always felt himself to be the Emanuel Goldenberg of his youth.
Prior to Kibitzer, Robinson had had a very respectable theatre career with twenty-seven Broadway productions between 1915 (age 22) and 1927 (age 34) already to his credit. In 1926, Robinson played a supporting character he referred to as a “kibitzer” (which he defines as a bird who pecks other birds’ nests) in Franz Wefel’s Goat Song. During his portrayal of this Jewish role, he received countless letters accusing him, and the play, of anti-Semitism. The play so stirred the New York theatrical community that The Theatre Guild held three Sunday afternoon forums with the cast, the press, and Guild subscribers to discuss the inflammatory show. Robinson later commented that the themes in this piece, perhaps, were an eerie foreshadowing of the times to follow with the rise of the National Socialist Party of Germany.
Though Goat Song drew much attention, the name “Robinson” had yet to headline a marquee. Indeed, in 1927, when young playwright Jo Swerling had finished Kibitzer (only his second play), and turned to the task of finding the right actor to play the lead, Lazarus, Robinson’s name didn’t even occur to him. Although Swerling had seen Robinson numerous times in supporting roles, he would never have considered Robinson had not his good friend and former writing partner, Henry Myers, suggested the talented character-actor. From the moment Myers finished reading through the script, he was certain that there was only one actor, “who could give [it] the various shades and values it needed.” Evidently, Swerling was quite convinced and Robinson got the part playing a character 20-years his senior.
The 1927, pre-Broadway run of Kibitzer at the Mamaroneck Playhouse in Mamaroneck, New York, was not a success. Though admittedly not a playwright himself, Robinson felt that there was good material in the script, but it needed a serious reworking. After the show closed, Robinson began to prod Swerling to rewrite. The play “had a clever first act, a pedestrian second, and a lox of a third,” Robinson later said. But, “I knew there was a good play hidden in there somewhere. What it needed was a thrust that would lead it to an unpredictable finish.”
Though Robinson jumped into his next stint on Broadway, he continued to strongly encourage Swerling. So much so that about a year later, the playwright revealed a new and improved Kibitzer that this time bore Robinson’s name as co-author. When the show opened on Broadway, Robinson’s name was, for the first time, both above and below the title.
This Kibitzer was a success. It opened at the Royale Theatre (now the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre) on February 18th, 1929, and ran for an impressive 120 performances. Even though several reviewers dismissed the play as a showpiece for Robinson, few pretended to dislike the production because of that; he was loved as the kibitzing, cigar smoking, big-hearted and even bigger-mouthed, Lazarus. “The new play, in which Edward G. Robinson is on exhibition,” wrote the New York Times on February 19, 1929, “proves, by virtue of his presence, to be an enjoyable piece of theatre.” The Brooklyn Eagle fully concurred, stating that Kibitzer was, “better than most plays of which an actor is part author. Mr. Robinson acts the chief role and since he is a fine actor that means much.”
Newly christened actor/writer Robinson even got to officially define the play’s title in a syndicated interview, which ran in the Herald Tribune and the Brooklyn Eagle before and after opening. Clarifying that its etymology stems from Flemish-roots, as opposed to the presumed Yiddish ones, Robinson explains how the term ‘kibitzer’ became used to describe the “lookers-on who never participated in the game, but advised the contestants how to move.” These “despicable” characters, he says, often lose the few friends they have whenever a piece of their unsound advice actually get used. Robinson finishes his 700-word explication with the grand existential statement that “we are all ‘kibitzers’ to a certain extent, for we are born looking on; it is the first trick we learn and the last we forget.”
Robinson never aspired to be a writer, or at least so he claimed in his autobiography years later, but he wore this new title with pride and certainly seemed to enjoy the new clout being given to his opinion. But was he entitled to the accolades? It seems only natural that, perhaps, his lesser-known and lesser-praised writing partner might have begun to chafe a bit in the back seat role he’d been given. Indeed, Swerling’s rendition of the evolution of the Kibitzer process with Robinson has more to do with handing him the opportunities the play afforded the actor, not quite a partnership, and certainly not a Robinson-driven process. For Swerling, perhaps, Robinson was more like a “kibitzer” in the play’s creation. Throughout the rest of Swerling’s life and career, he showed a clear distaste for theatre, and one that seems to have arrived shortly after his partnership with Robinson.
Swerling, most known these days for his co-creation of the book for Guys & Dolls (which incidentally, would have gone to Robert Carson had he not been too busy writing the screenplay for the Jimmy Stuart classic, Harvey), did not consider himself a playwright first and foremost either. First a newspaperman, he tried his hand at playwriting on Broadway with The New Yorkers, in 1927, then Kibitzer, in 1929. It was during Kibitzer’s unexpectedly successful run that Swerling was snapped up by Hollywood’s great and powerful arm. And for 20 years in the West he remained. “One of the charter members of the screen-writing fraternity,” as The New York Times referred to him in 1935, Swerling’s incredibly prolific career involved rubbing elbows with the Hollywood elite and the likes of John Wayne, Rita Hayworth, and Anthony Quinn. He was an outspoken and passionate film-only writer, penning 50 scripts in his first five years at Columbia Pictures. Once he turned to film, he openly denounced the theatre, declaring in 1935, “we will live to see the day when the screen will be the theatre and will be better than the theatre ever was.”
Due to conflicting opinions (and contracts) regarding true authorship and who was indebted to whom, and despite its great success, the two men had a falling out shortly after Kibitzer’s close. Though gifted with co-authorship, Robinson was never offered equal rights on the script, and just after the Broadway closing, Swerling sold the movie rights to Paramount without Robinson’s consent. Isolated from the play he thought he’d made a success, Robinson felt betrayed. He and Swerling wouldn’t speak again until years later when they were reunited in Los Angeles on the film, The Whole Town’s Talking. Eventually, he and Swerling were able to bury the hatchet and rekindle the friendship they’d had back in New York.
In spite of the personal dramatics and the secrets and lies happening backstage, Kibitzer was the vehicle that launched both Robinson and Swerling into the realm of celebrity and both went on to have extraordinarily prolific and successful careers.
It’s no lie, however, that TACT takes great pleasure in presenting the first re-airing in over 80 years of this delightful play, which, on February 29, 1929, the Evening Post simply called “an unusually good comedy,” followed by this very sound advice – “Don’t miss it.”
