Did casting cause the closing of Pipe Dream, the Broadway musical created by the dream team of Rodgers and Hammerstein from John Steinbeck’s novel Sweet Thursday? The movie star they counted on to carry the show, Steinbeck’s friend Henry Fonda, couldn’t sing and wasn’t cast. The opera star Helen Traubel couldn’t act but was, and that caused problems they should have foreseen. Urged on by Richard Rodgers, Julie Andrews signed up for My Fair Lady instead of Pipe Dream, proving that some advice is worth following. In a Playbill magazine piece published to coincide with the anniversary of the show’s opening on November 30, 1955, Bruce Pomahac argues that the fault for its failure lay not with its stars but with its creators. Rodgers and Hammerstein were white bread compared with Steinbeck, and their views on acceptability were not in alignment. By playing down “the more prurient aspects” of Steinbeck’s story, “R&H were doing what they did best,” with the predictable result that “Steinbeck felt Rodgers & Hammerstein had, as he put it, ‘turned my whore into a visiting nurse.’” According to Pomahac, the 2012 off-Broadway revival of Pipe Dream by City Center “provided us with the first real shot at what Pipe Dream might have been since it first played on Broadway in 1955.” According to Theodore Chapin, who heads the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, the adaptors who are waiting in the wings to bring it back agree on one thing. “Put more Steinbeck in” if you want to succeed on Broadway.
Caricature of John Steinbeck by David Levine.
About Administrative Team
I know many who were lucky enough to see the play on Broadway and a few who actually liked it so much that they returned for several showings. I have a CD of the music and sheet music I use to play on the organ and I enjoye it very much.
I’m aware of an opinion expressed by Richard Rodgers following the closing of the play who said “They had Traubel in the second act.” He was referring to soprano Helen Traubel) This may evidence some mis-casting but still those, including a first cousin, enjoyed the musical several times. And it did win awards and favorable reviews.
Given the play dates (1955) perhaps it was already pushing the envelope of baudiness and adding more would have had it banned. I read that of the team (Rodgers and Hammerstein) only Hammerstein (a Right One conservative Episcopalian) resented working on a story that involved a bordello and the sex trade.
I just think for the time it was well done and the music lives on especially due to the arrangements by the masterful Robert Russell Bennet.
I do believe more “Steinbeck” would move the play forward for today’s taste but I believe it may have securely served the audiences of 1955. I still like the music very much.
I’d love to see an update of the play for today’s audience especially one with more “Steinbeck” inspired material but I’m not sure he would be comfortable with today’s attitudes and opinions on such a subject.
If asked for my opinion on an updated musical, I’d commission Christopher Tin to add updated music and arrangements. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH6IT_tsSUI
Wes Stillwagon, North Carolina, USA