Light Up the Sky (play)

Hart began writing the play in April 1947, spending nearly a year on it.[6] It was produced by Joseph M. Hymen and Bernard Hart, the author's younger brother. Others with a financial interest in it were George S. Kaufman and Max Gordon.[6] Casting began in June 1948, which is also when Frederick Fox was contracted to design the play's setting.[6] There were four weeks of rehearsals in September 1948,[6] with Moss Hart doing the stage direction.[2]

Starting October 8, 1948, it had a three performance tryout in New Haven, Connecticut.[7] The production went to Boston's Plymouth Theatre (not the Colonial as in the play) on October 11, 1948.[2] The critic Cyrus Durgin proved a forthright reviewer,[fn 3] identifying a major flaw with the second and third acts, where the hilarity of the fast-paced opening is followed by long self-pitying diatribes from the young playwright, the abrupt change in mood confusing the audience.[2] Elliot Norton of the Boston Post said the original version of the play was much more serious than what it would become.[8]

Hart took the criticism seriously; he rewrote the second and third acts while in Boston,[9] replacing five minor characters with three new ones. The new second and third acts now played as comedy, complete with a deus ex machina in the form of a Shriner from Indiana.

The reworked play then went to Philadelphia for two weeks, opening November 1, 1948.[10] Only one cast change occurred from the Boston tryout, when J.J. the live parrot was replaced by a stuffed namesake and a hidden microphone.[11]

The lead and supporting characters were portrayed by the same actors from first tryout through the Broadway closing. The featured roles underwent changes with the tryout rewrites as shown below.

The Broadway premiere was at the Royale Theatre on November 18, 1948. An advertising blimp hung over 45th Street with a lighted sign on it displaying a good luck message for the production just below.[13] Billy Rose and his wife, Eleanor Holm, two of the personalities satirized in the play, were there as invited guests of Moss Hart. Gertrude Lawrence, another of the disguised characters, sent a cable from London to Moss Hart, with a salutation of "Dear Hideous".[5] According to producer Bernard Hart, the "long line at the box office the next day and for the next week was a sure sign we had a hit".[14]

The title of the play was a theatrical term often associated with successful shows. For outsiders however it suggested a quotation from some other literary work, and the program guide obliged with one on the title page:

"Mad, sire? Ah, yes, -- mad indeed, but observe how they do light up the sky."—Old Skroob in The Idle Jeste.

This was a bit of foolery from Hart. Both quote and play were imaginary, aimed at Brooks Atkinson, drama critic for The New York Times, who in his review the next day gave the complete quote (but not the speaker's name) and dryly said the play cited "is unknown to this department".[15]

Brooks Atkinson declared it "a loud, broad, tempestous comedy that is acted at top speed by a wonderful cast".[15] Calling the actors "runners in a comic steeplechase", Atkinson said "Under Mr. Hart's excitable direction the performance races around the stage like a volcanic circus, everybody shouting, everybody making exits and entrances and slamming doors".[15] Atkinson said the cast was superb, and praised each lead and supporting actor individually.

John Chapman at the New York Daily News was nearly as enthusiastic about the play, calling it "a noisy and rollicking comedy about the art of drama".[16] He said "it is no model of play construction",[16] but judged it entertaining, well-acted, and adroitly directed.[16] He also wrote a follow-up article on how Light Up the Sky paralleled the fictional play within it, in that the Boston critics had recommended changes to make it successful.[8]

A covertly critical response to the play concerned the parrot. Originally named J.J. in suggestion of a certain theater-owning magnate,[1] a newspaper column reported, shortly after the premiere and without explanation, that it had been renamed to Orson.[17]

One dissident critic was George Jean Nathan, who wrote a plaintive column, more about his bruised ego than the play, which he described as "crude and pretty vulgar".[18] Nathan, perhaps reacting to Miss Lowell in the play accusing the squawking parrot "Who do you think you are, George Jean Nathan?", suggested it was human nature to laugh at another's embarrassing predicament.[18] Nevertheless, he felt Hart had crossed the line with this play, particularly since Hart himself was notoriously thin-skinned.[18]

The original Broadway run closed on May 21, 1949, for a total of 214 performances.[19] During the last weeks of the production Moss Hart had declined his royalties as author and director so that the "angels" (stage lingo for sponsoring producers) could get their original investment back.[20] Business had fallen off with the warming weather,[20] and as was usual for that time there were rumors of chicanery by the ticket brokers.[21] Bernard Hart told reporters that the investors had made a profit of only $10,000, which led them to sell the national touring rights to another producer.[14]

The only two principals from the Broadway run who were willing or able to commit to it were Sam Levene and Glenn Anders. Lynn Bari was signed for the Irene Livingston role, while a surprising but inspired choice, the scandalous burlesque artist Margie Hart, was cast for the Frances Black role.[23] That role was actually a supporting one, but Margie Hart was given star billing along with Levene, Bari, and Anders.

The Ford Theatre was due to broadcast a live performance of Edward, My Son, but MGM, which was about to release a movie version, objected.[25] Instead, a live version of Light Up the Sky was performed, using whichever original actors still happened to be in New York at the time. The script was cut drastically for the one-hour running time and adapted for live television. Sam Levene, Glen Anders, Barry Nelson, Audrey Christie, and Phyllis Povah all reprised their parts,[26] but Virginia Field had already left town. Her role was taken by Carol Goodner, while Carl Frank played Owen Turner.[27] CBS broadcast the performance on June 13, 1949.[28]