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Happy Birthday
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by Anita Loos
Directed by Scott Alan Evans
October 7, 13 & 14, 2002
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street
NYC
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| SYNOPSIS |
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The Jersey Mecca cocktail lounge in Newark, NJ really starts jumping one rainy evening when Addie Bemis, a soft-spoken librarian, decides its time to live it up. Originally produced by Rodgers & Hammerstein at the Broadhurst theatre in 1946 |
| CAST/CREW |
Cynthia Darlow
Gail Hosmer
James Prendergast
Dad Malone
Alexander Alioto
Gabe Darcy
Margaret Nichols
Bella Lane
Jenn Thompson
Addie Bemis
Larry Keith
Judge Hollister
Richard Ferrone
Policeman
George C. Hosmer
Mr. Bemis
Richard Ferrone
Mr. Nanino
Dawn Dunlop
Production Stage Manager
David Toser
Costume Coordinator
Dana Kroman-Barney Assistant Director |
| PRESS |
The Washington Post
NEW YORK - Going on a public bender doesn't generally end well for single ladies, even in a friendly... [ read more]
New York Calling
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
By William Wolf
One of the season's finest performances by an actress can be... [ read more]
Time Out New York
Critics Pick
Four Stars
The delights of this revival of the 1946 Anita Loos charmer Happy... [ read more]
Broadway World After Eight
It's been a happy time for NY theatregoers.
Happy Hunting, revived at the Musicals in Mufti... [ read more]
BroadwayWorld.com
In 1946, Helen Hayes, tired of playing dramatic and melodramatic roles, asked her friend Anita Loos... [ read more]
Times Square Chronicles
Time to go to Newark, New Jersey, circa 1946 for TACT's (The Actors Company Theatre) revival of... [ read more]
Filichia on Friday
March is coming in like a lion for Rodgers and Hammerstein.
When most people think of Dick and... [ read more]
New York Theatre Wire
A charmer and good fun, albeit dated, Anita Loos' 1946 play tracks the lives of the denizens of a... [ read more]
The Huffington Post
When First Lady of the American Stage Helen Hayes was looking around for a change-of-pace property... [ read more]
Backstage
It's always dangerous to do a star vehicle without a star, and not just any star, but the right one... [ read more]
The Wall Street Journal
TACT/The Actors Company Theatre, which mounted flawless Off-Broadway revivals of Brian Friel's... [ read more]
The New Yorker
The Actors Company Theatre specializes in the rediscovery of "neglected" works; while this kind of... [ read more]
The Epoch Times
This zany romantic comedy by Anita Loos offers many delights.
Loos, early in her life, enjoyed a... [ read more]
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| DRAMATURGY |
Screenwriter, playwright, and novelist, Anita Loos, (a.k.a. ?Nita? to her friends) was a remarkable literary and social figure of Hollywood and Broadway. Her productive career lasted over half a century and her talent and celebrity allowed her to work and hobnob with decades of movie stars, literary giants, and showbiz greats.
Born on April 26, 1888 (though some sources say 1893) in the sleepy town of Sissons, California, the precocious Loos began working early as a child actress, treading the boards of theatres across the West Coast. But it was her quick wit and talent for snappy repartee that was to lead her toward a career as a writer. She began contributing sketches and articles to various periodicals. Her wry humor and fresh perspective gained her some early, though moderate, success. By a stroke of luck she was introduced to actress Mary Pickford after submitting a story that would become one of Mary?s last films for D.W. Griffith, The New York Hat (Biograph, 1912). The New York Hat was a hit, and Anita?s new career as a screen writer was launched. She continued working with Griffith, writing many notable early moving pictures for the then new and dynamic star, Douglas Fairbanks.
All through the silent movie era Loos was in great demand and her career took on a legendary luster when she was still quite young. The writer of over 60 films (many of them in collaboration with her director husband, John Emerson), Loos also wrote a good deal for the theatre. Though her first two plays, The Whole Town?s Talking (1923) and The Fall of Eve (1925) were only somewhat successful, her next (in 1926) was a play called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and it was a sensation. Based on her own novel about Miss Lorelei Lee, the flapper?s flapper, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes defined the roaring twenties and the party girls that made it so memorable. Loos adapted the play for the screen in 1928. The film version, produced by Paramount, starred Ruth Taylor as Lorelei and Alice White as her practical pal, Dorothy. The success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes made Loos an international celebrity and was to become her defining work.
Unlike many Hollywood luminaries, Loos easily made the transition from silent pictures to sound. She was right there penning such films as D.W. Griffith?s last production, The Struggle (United Artists, 1931); San Francisco (M-G-M, 1936), starring Clark Gable; The Women (M-G-M, 1939) starring a catty all-gal cast; and Susan and God (M-G-M, 1940), starring Joan Crawford.
In the mid 1940?s, Loos, who was fed up with the California sunshine and frustrated by the censorship of the movies, came to New York. One day at lunch with her dear friend, Helen Hayes, Loos mentioned an idea she had for a play. Hayes, who was fed up with hoop skirts and wigs, loved the idea and encouraged Loos to write the script. Loos began, keeping her pal, Hayes, firmly in mind for the leading role, and by 1945 a draft of what was to become Happy Birthday was ready. The play highlighted all sorts of talents Loos knew her friend Hayes had but had never had the opportunity to employ on the stage (Hayes, for instance, was an excellent ballroom dancer and could sing with the best of them.) Hayes loved the first draft, but realized it would require a very special production. So she sent the script to Richard Rodgers, whom she had heard was looking for a project to produce. Rodgers showed it to Hammerstein and they quickly bought the option. For a director, they originally wanted Robert Mamoulian, who had directed Oklahoma, but his film commitments wouldn?t allow it. Their second choice wasn?t too bad either: the great Joshua Logan. Loos says the play went through many revisions and an equal number of titles, among them: Cocktail Bar; Cinderella Girl; and The Birth of Addie Bemis. It was Helen Hayes? husband, playwright Charles MacArthur, who finally came up with Happy Birthday.
The play, about a reticent Newark librarian who falls for a handsome young bank clerk, opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in October 1946 after a rocky tryout in Boston. It became the popular hit of the season playing 563 performances before it closed a year and a half later in March 1948.
Loos went on to write more plays both for the stage and screen. At the age of 65, after her last screenwriting assignment, (appropriately enough the 1953 musical remake of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for 20th Century-Fox, starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell), Loos began to write her autobiographies. With the wit of Dorothy Parker, resourcefulness of Robinson Crusoe, and the longevity of a Sphinx, Loos? scandalously vivid stories about all her famous friends still make for enthralling reading and a fitting capper to her successful and glamorous life.
TACT
October 2002, NYC
SELECTED PLAYS AND FILMS
Lorelei ( Musical 1974)
Ch?ri (1959)
Gigi (1951)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(Musical 1949)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY (1946)
Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A (1945)
I Married an Angel (1942)
When Ladies Meet (1941)
They Met in Bombay (1941)
Blossoms in the Dust (1941)
Susan and God (1940)
Strange Cargo (1940)
Return of the Thin Man (1939)
Women, The (1939)
Saratoga (1937)
Mama Steps Out (1937)
San Francisco (1936)
Riffraff (1936)
Biography of a Bachelor Girl (1935)
Girl from Missouri, The (1934)
Barbarian, The (1933)
Red-Headed Woman (1932)
The Social Register (1931)
Struggle, The (1931)
Ex-Bad Boy (1931)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1926)
The Fall of Eve (1925)
Learning to Love (1925)
Three Miles Out (1924)
Dulcy (1923)
The Whole Town's Talking (1923)
Polly of the Follies (1922)
Red Hot Romance (1922)
Mama's Affair (1921)
Perfect Woman, The (1920)
Dangerous Business (1920)
Branded Woman, The (1920)
Love Expert, The (1920)
In Search of a Sinner (1920)
Virtuous Vamp, A (1919)
Isle of Conquest, The (1919)
Temperamental Wife, A (1919)
Getting Mary Married (1919)
Come On In (1918)
Hit-the-Trail Holiday (1918)
Let's Get a Divorce (1918)
Reaching for the Moon (1917)
Wild and Woolly (1917)
In Again, Out Again (1917)
Daughter of the Poor, A (1917)
Laundry Liz (1916)
Wharf Rat, The (1916)
Matrimaniac, The (1916)
Calico Vampire, A (1916)
Social Secretary, The (1916)
Little Liar, The (1916)
Intolerance (1916) (titles)
Stranded (1916)
Half-Breed, The (1916)
Wild Girl of the Sierras, A (1916)
His Picture in the Papers (1916)
Deacon's Whiskers, The (1915)
Mixed Values (1915) (scenario)
Deceiver, The (1914) (scenario)
Gangsters of New York, The (1914)
For Her Father's Sins (1914)
Nearly a Burglar's Bride (1914) Hunchback, The (1914)
Lady in Black, The (1913)
Pa Says (1913)
Widow's Kid, The (1913)
New York Hat, The (1912)
Musketeers of Pig Alley, The (1912) |
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