From Broadway To 52nd Street

The musical opened in pre-Broadway tryouts in New Haven and Philadelphia in October 1937. Two months later and three days before Christmas on December 22, 1937 Between The Devil opened at the Imperial Theatre. Though it only ran for 93 performances, the play produced by the Shuberts rendered two songs composed by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz that were destined to become jazz standards, By Myself and I See You Face Before Me. The play starred Jack Buchanan, Pierre Antoine, Evelyn Laye, Adele Dixon and Charles Walters.

The Story: The original plot had an English leading man, Peter Anthony, marrying two women at the same time. However, the plot was changed to have Peter Anthony marry the second wife only because he thought his first wife had died.

Broadway History: The Theater Works Project was placed in the hands of Hallie Flanagan, an instructor and creator of an experimental theater at Vassar. She had studied theater in Europe and Russia in the 20s on the first Guggenheim scholarship awarded to a woman, and was fully aware of what Le Gallienne had proposed. Flanagan differed, however, in that she was willing to oversee the development of a national program with chapters throughout the country. New York, with the greatest number of unemployed theater people, would develop six chapters, with other cities developing chapters relative to the number of displaced workers. In an unexpected moment of charity and good will, both George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O’Neill offered rights to their respective works to the Project for the nominal sum of $50.00 per week while they were in production.

More Posts: broadway