‘I figured it out’
How love across the picket lines became a big Broadway hit
A musical about a union dispute? In the United States in 1954 it was certainly an unlikely premise—though, only the year before, Australians had welcomed New Theatre’s Reedy River, a musical built around the 1891 Queensland shearers’ strike.
The Pajama Game had its genesis in a novel, 7½ Cents, which author Richard Bissell based on his experiences in his family’s pajama factory in Dubuque, Iowa. Broadway producers Hal Prince and Robert Griffith saw the story’s musical possibilities and snapped up the rights, but persuading people to work on the project proved far more difficult.
Legendary Broadway director George Abbott was sceptical—until he conceived the idea of a sub-plot built around Hines’ jealousy. Bissell agreed to work with him on the book, and Frank Loesser’s protégés, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, came on board to write the score—their first Broadway ‘book’ musical. The producers took other chances. They gave a brilliant young dancer, Bob Fosse, his first choreographic commission, and an equally brilliant young choreographer, Jerome Robbins, his first chance to direct.
Their casting was also adventurous. To play Sid they selected John Raitt (Bonnie’s father); he’d suffered a series of flops after Carousel in 1945; the two leading ladies, Janis Paige (Babe) and Carol Haney (Gladys), had never appeared on Broadway, and ex-vaudevillian Eddie Foy Jr. (Hines) hadn’t been in a major new Broadway show for 20 years. Understandably, with ‘credits’ like these, finding backers for the show was difficult. Eventually several members of the company chipped in, including Abbott himself, who contributed $28,000.
The show’s various elements came together remarkably smoothly, and only one number, “The World Around Us”, was chopped.
Though the New Haven tryout was a triumph, the New York ‘advance’ was so poor it looked as if the show was doomed. The opening at the St James on 13 May 1954 changed all that. The audience cheered and the critics raved: “Broadway looks well in pajamas—a bright, brassy and jubilantly sassy show”, said The Herald Tribune; The Journal American agreed: “The best book show since Guys and Dolls”. Jean-Luc Godard called it “The first left-wing operetta”. The box office exploded.
The Pajama Game notched up 1063 performances on Broadway, while the road company trundled around the country for two solid years. The show garnered three Tony Awards—Best Musical, Best Choreography and, for Carol Haney, Best Featured Actress. It also launched more than its fair share of careers, including Shirley MacLaine, who understudied Haney. Sadly, though, the collaboration of Adler and Ross was short lived. After their second major hit, Damn Yankees in 1955, Jerry Ross died of a long-standing lung condition. He was 29. Adler’s musical future lay in TV jingles.
Babe & Sid (Janis Paige & John Raitt) meet for the first time in the machine room, as Buzz Miller (2nd Helper) looks on. Photo by Friedman-Abeles. New York Public Library, New York,
Warner Bros’ paid $750,000 for the movie rights. Broadway star Janis Paige was bypassed for the more bankable charms of Doris Day—though she was in fact second choice; the producers had wanted the beautiful blonde pop star Patti Page. Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Dean Martin and Gordon MacRae were all considered for the part of Sid, but ultimately John Raitt was contracted to repeat his Broadway role, along with Carol Haney and Eddie Foy. George Abbott co-produced and co-directed the film with Stanley Donen, who had danced in Abbott musicals in the 1940s. Bob Fosse expanded his innovative original choreography, filling the wide screen with breathtakingly complex ensemble work.
The result was an unusually accurate adaptation of the Broadway original, though the songs “Her Is”, “A New Town Is a Blue Town” and “Think of the Time I Save” were dropped, as was a new song, “The Man Who Intended Love”, which Adler had written specially for Doris Day.
Before the movie, however, The Pajama Game had crossed the Atlantic. The London production opened at the Coliseum on 13 October 1955 with a cast headed by Edmund Hockridge (Sid), Joy Nichols (Babe), Max Wall (Hines) and Elizabeth Seal (Gladys). Joy Nichols, an Australian, had cut her professional teeth at the Tivoli and had achieved enormous popularity on radio both here (in The Youth Show) and in Britain (in Take It From Here). And there were other Australian connections: minor roles were filled by Terry Donovan, Myra de Groot and Patricia Vivian-Lall. The Pajama Game scored a 588-performance run in the West End.
Stars of the London production: Edmund Hockridge, Joy Nichols & Max Wall
Private collection
William Newman & Toni Lamond as Sid & Babe in the Australian production
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Towards the end of 1955 J.C. Williamson’s announced that it had secured the Australian rights to The Pajama Game. As usual there was excited speculation about who the stars would be, ‘but’, predicted The Argus on 25 February 1956, ‘they will certainly come from either London or New York.’ To the astonishment of the entire Australian theatre establishment, the predictions were wrong. For the first time for many years, Williamson’s cast a major musical entirely from fresh, young, local talent: Bill Newman (Sid), Toni Lamond (Babe), Keith Petersen (Hines), Tikki Taylor (Gladys) and Jill Perryman (Mabel). The company also included Alton Harvey, Robert Healey, Kevan Johnston, John Newman, Reginald Newson, Patricia Raye, Don Richard, John Sanger, Ron Shand, Frank Sheldon and Ralphine Sprague. The only American in the company was Jack Little, cast as Hasler. Jack had been a 3DB radio personality since 1952, and had played the father in Garnet H. Carroll’s 1956 production of Tea and Sympathy. He was also pretty good as a wrestling commentator.
In The Argus of 1 December 1956, Williamson’s production manager, Terry Vaughan, tried to explain why the show would have no imported ‘stars’: ‘Tests have proved that Miss Lamond and Mr. Newman are ideally suited to the roles,’ he said. ‘Why look any further and take a certain amount of risk with artists of unknown ability from America or London?’ Why, indeed?— but what about all the Australian talent that Williamson’s had ignored in the past and, sadly, would continue to overlook in the future?
The only import concession was the director, Fred Hebert. He’d been one of the Broadway production’s two stage managers. Williamson’s entrusted the job of recreating Bob Fosse’s signature choreography to their young resident ballet mistress, Betty Pounder. She spent five weeks in New York watching the show night after night, noting, in her own way, the complicated dance moves.
Australia’s Pajama Game was launched at Her Majesty’s in Melbourne on 2 February 1957. For the gala first night the ushers gamely wore colourful night attire but, noted the press reprovingly, the audience was not as glamorously caparisoned as usual. Nevertheless, the night went with a bang. The Age liked the ‘immense enthusiasm and energy’ and The Herald called it ‘gay, lively and topnotch,’ but The Sun was struck dumb: ‘What can you say about a smash hit, except that it is?’ The Listener In hit the mark: ‘For the first time in theatrical history the JCW management has taken the bit in its teeth and given us an American musical with an all-Australian cast. And its courage has been signally rewarded.’
The Pajama Game was the first major musical staged in this country after the arrival of television, and when GTV Channel 9 commenced transmission on 18 January 1957, Toni Lamond, Frank Sheldon and other members of the company were featured in the opening show. The Pajama Game played more than five months in Melbourne, including a return season. As well as visiting all mainland capitals, there was a gruelling 10-city tour of New Zealand, including one- and two-night stands in Masterton, Wanganui, Timaru and Oamaru. In Auckland members of the company found time to record a 7” EP disc of the show’s highlights. It was released only in New Zealand, and is now a highly prized collector’s item. The show’s “Steam Heat” finally evaporated on 27 July 1958, when the marathon run ended at the Theatre Royal, Adelaide.
‘All our names were made in that show,’ reminisced Toni Lamond. When the run was extended Frank [Sheldon] and I made a down payment on a block of land.’ Their little son, Tony, had travelled with them. By the time the tour finished he was 2½ years old, and knew every song in the show.
While The Pajama Game was barnstorming New Zealand, back on Broadway a new musical called, Say, Darling, had its premiere—but could easily have been called Son of Pajama Game! Just as Richard Bissell had mined his own experiences to create the book 7½ Cents and the musical The Pajama Game, so he used his Pajama Game adventure as the subject of another book Say, Darling, and this, in turn, became a musical. Bissell collaborated with his wife, Marian, and Abe Burrows on the book, Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the lyrics and Jules Styne supplied the music. The cast included Vivian Blaine, David Wayne, Robert Morse, and a very young Elliott Gould. Say, Darling notched up a respectable 332 performances, but has failed to achieve the enduring popularity of the show that inspired it.
Scene from the 1973 revival of The Pajama Game. Photo by Friedman-Abeles. New York Public Library, New York.
In 1973 Adler produced an inter-racial Broadway revival of The Pajama Game. Cab Calloway played Hines and there was a brand new song, “Watch Your Heart”, but the show disappeared after only 55 lacklustre performances. A 1989 City Opera revival met a similar fate, and a clumsily updated Birmingham Rep production by Simon Callow had a short, bumpy run when it played at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London in 1999.
In early 2006 The Pajama Game bounced back on Broadway, bigger, brighter and better than ever. There were three new songs: “The Three of Us”, which Richard Adler had written for Jimmy Durante back in 1964, “The World Around Us”, which had been cut in 1954, and “If You Win, You Lose”, a re-working of the 1973 revival’s “Watch Your Heart”. Harry Connick Jr. was a stand-out as Sid and the cast featured Roz Ryan as Mabel—she was Bloody Mary in the 1993-94 Gordon/Frost Australian production of South Pacific. It garnered the Tony for Best Revival of a Musical.
Not bad for a fifty-year-old left-wing operetta! Figure that out!
Footnote
The above text by Frank Van Straten was first published in the program for the 2006 Production Company revival of The Pajama Game, which played at the State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, 19-23 July 2006. The leads were Pippa Grandison (Babe Williams), Ian Stenlake (Sid Sorokin), Adam Murphy (Hines) and Rachel Beck (Gladys). The pyjamas were supplied by Peter Alexander.
