Too much time has passed, dear reader, since I last wrote a post. Sorry for leaving you hanging, and thanks for all the comments about Shows for Someday so far! After a torturous out-of-town tryout, Goodbye Charlie opened on Broadway four days after its last out-of-town preview, losing designer Mainbocher along the way (did he take Bacall’s khaki slacks with him?).

Opening night was at the Lyceum Theatre east of Broadway December 16, 1959 (just in time for those peak holiday audiences). In addition to Bacall and Chaplin, the cast included Sarah Marshall (the replacement Rusty), Michelle Reiner (the 4th actress hired as Franny and the 3rd to play the role), Frank Roberts (the second Greg), Clinton Anderson (Irving), and Dan Frazer (Mr. Shriber). The play received unanimous pans in all seven daily papers, prompting a filler AP piece entitled ‘Goodbye Charlie’ Can Go, Critics Say. The actors received excellent to rave notices, particularly the kind of backhanded raves specially reserved for actors in plays that get panned. Here’s a sample:

Bacall and Chaplin Delightful, But Goodbye Charlie Dwindles Away

“Goodbye Charlie makes for a longish evening, for Axelrod’s capacity for invention seems to have failed him soon after he got his original funny idea. His dialogue is smartly turned and often it has the glint of real wit—but, once Charlie is returned in the guise of Miss Bacall, he hasn’t been able to make much happen. He soon loses the drive of his play in conversation.”

-- John Chapman, New York Daily News, Thursday, December 17, 1959

“One has to admire George Axelrod’s ingenuity. It cannot have been easy to make an entire Broadway play out of a single dirty joke. I take that back…there is no joke…what is wrong with the enterprise, and turns it after a while into a form or refined theatrical torture, is the fact that the switcheroo does not switch, the gimmick has glass ankles, the very foundation on which the fantasy rests isn’t funny. Mr Chaplin, let me say loudly, is excellent. Someone else who is excellent as the curious evening rolls by is Sarah Marshall. Miss Bacall herself is faced with an insoluble problem.”

–Walter Kerr, New York Herald Tribune

“Granted that Goodbye Charlie is inherently hopeless as a story…Miss Bacall gives a good, slam-bang performance…Sydney Chaplin is a first rate leading man.”

–Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times

“When a movie star lends her drawing power to the fabulous invalid, you’ve got to wish her well. Despite our good wishes, however, we’re afraid Lauren Bacall hasn’t much of a vehicle in Goodbye Charlie…the script must have read better than it plays.”

–Robert Coleman, New York Mirror

New Play Has One Joke and It Isn’t Enough

“It is revealed early and after that there is nothing except a couple of likable performances by Lauren Bacall and Sydney Chaplin.”

--Gaver, UPI

Leland Hayward’s damage control team swung into place with a widely syndicated post-opening piece (Dec 22, 1959) to let us know officially that Lauren Bacall’s jitters had disappeared, and that Axelrod’s wife and Bacall had known each other in high school.

Whitney Bolton didn’t have a ton of praise for the play, but he did take time to rave about the performances, saying on December 23, “Bacall and Chaplin give the best two comic performances in the theatre of New York today, and this is no easy feat.”

And this in his column on New Year’s Eve, 1959:

“If it were not for the superlative performances by Lauren Bacall, Sydney Chaplin, and Sarah Marshall, I fear Axelrod’s little bonbon would have faded out fast…The jokes are sprinkled jokes, like upending a pepper shaker, rather than inherent jokes. Miss Bacall is perfection as Charlie…truly funny and a treasure in the play. Chaplin proves once again that he is at the top of today’s young leading men, a farceur, a slick clown, a great “listener”, an error-proof timer. Miss Marshall is, like Miss Bacall, heaven’s gift to the play. You cannot think of another young actress who would be so right for it. You will not find Goodbye Charlie an exceptional play, but you will find a great deal of it shatteringly funny, you will sit before three unusually skilled performances, and you may not even find the theme troublesome and disturbing.”

Kilgallen took the time to twist the knife in her January 6, 1960 Voice of Broadway column, saying “Topic A on Broadway is the dreariness of the new George Axelrod play Goodbye Charlie. It has turned out to be monumentally unfunny and drearily vulgar.” This from the woman who only the August before had written “show folk invited to a run through say it’s bound to be a hit—it’s not only dirty, but funny.”

Though Sarah Marshall received a Tony nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Rusty Mayerling, Goodbye Charlie only ended up lasting 109 performances on Broadway, closing three months after opening on March 19, 1960. This was nowhere near the smasheroo run ofAxelrod’s The Seven Year Itch ( 1,141 performances, a very long run of nearly three years, especially for a play, at that time) or the happy success of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (444 performances, 13 months).

Asked in 1962 if the critics’ pans of Charlie taught him anything, Axelrod replied, “No. Failure never helps anybody. It sent me back to my analyst, shook me up for a while, and it took me a year before I could write anything again.” He quickly moved on to writing screenplays for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962, also producer) but never wrote another Broadway play.

But just as Charlie Sorel himself had an afterlife, so too did Goodbye Charlie…which we’ll talk about in our next Shows for Someday post.