Previously we gave an overview of George Axelrod’s third play, Goodbye Charlie, as it headed for its Broadway in 1959. In this post we’ll examine the out-of-town reviews from the play’s rather long tryout period (5 stops in under 2 months). Ace producer Leland Hayward’s press machine was slowly winding up, surely in part to put positive word out about the show.

Sam Norkin drawing from the Pittsburgh tryout features in the background Bert Thorn, Cara Williams, and Allan Frank…none of whom would make it to the Broadway opening night. Bacall and Chaplin are in the foreground.

First stop: Pittsburgh, PA (1 week, October 19-25, Nixon Theatre)

The show opened with a cast of nine. An excerpt from some of the reviews:

“A rather embarrassing affair for those on both sides of the footlights. For Miss Bacall, there must have been the crushing awareness that not all was right with Mr. Axelrod’s script. For the audience, the sophistication soon turned to dirt. Once more Mr. Axelrod has blessed himself with a racy unique idea, and once more he has been content to stick with the idea per se and let it get nowhere. When the joke is pulled and stretched thin over three acts of yak-yak, one wonders if “stars” like Bacall and Mr. Sydney Chaplin have not saved the author from being hissed right out of the place.”

–John Vargo, Indiana Gazette

Vargo goes on to cite “the abundance of four letter words” and “the unfortunate choice of epithets to hurl at the Deity.” And then both prophetically and grudgingly, that “Axelrod knows enough craft to patch his party story into a reasonable play before it hits New York. Then perhaps it can…have a nice run, and get all of us out in two summers tripping over each other to see the first stock theatre production. Some of the fur-bedecked, heavy-smoking first nighters loved every nasty word of it, and they can have it.”

Another critic opined:

“For about ten minutes after the curtain goes up on Goodbye Charlie things couldn’t look better…Mr. George Axelrod gives Mr. Chaplin one of the funniest eulogies on record to deliver. The happy feeling persists when the crowd disperses and Cara Williams, who had been…one of Charlie’s mistresses [explains] the circumstances of Charlie’s glorious exit. Then the handsome and husky voiced Miss Bacall drifts in…and Axelrod manages to get some amusement out of the situation, but it is quickly obvious that something is going out of Goodbye Charlie. Mr. Axelrod’s promising comedy begins to run downhill and only rarely after that recaptures any of its early bounce. The differences between a man and a woman have rarely been so explicitly or so laboriously detailed since Christine Jorgensen first went to Copenhagen. The major failings at the moment are not in Mr. Axelrod’s staging, but in his writing. Although two months of pre-Broadway engagements remain for him to apply his surgical skills on the play, this has all the earmarks of a major operation.”

–Harold V. Cohen, Pittsburgh Post Gazette

And:

“Since they have eight weeks to apply the old polishing cloth…Goodbye Charlie may have an outside chance of making the grade. But if it does, everybody is going to have to hurry. Axelrod has a prodigious task on his hands. It flirts with blasphemy in a place or two, and the profanity is overly abundant, often seeming to be used simply for shock value. When Axelrod takes the easiest and oldest way out in the annals of fantasy to resolve his curious hodge podge, he has compounded his errors. Miss Bacall does an adroit job with a demanding role—in fact, an almost impossible role. Mr. Chaplin has a busy evening, and a fairly rewarding one, considering all the circumstances. The biggest and most deserved hand goes to Miss Williams.”

--Karl Krug, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph

In spite of the reviews, the show did bang-up business, sometimes even breaking box office records, and soldiered on to…

Second stop: Detroit, MI (2 weeks, October 27-November 7)

The reviews were a little better here but still not good. On October 31, Kathy Carlyle was mentioned in the columns as joining the cast (in the role of Janie Hyland) though she was already on the cast list in Pittsburgh.

Review excerpts:

“A comedy with a new twist…it flows well, so that the preposterous central idea almost convinces. The dialog is smart and funny, albeit spiced richly by language that is a bit shocking and ideas that skirt the blasphemous. Blessed with an attractive and capable cast, which has been doing wonders with a play that is somewhat short of satisfactory. Bacall has revealed considerable talents aside from her film career. She sustains a character that is essentially male, even while exerting an appeal that is entirely feminine. Sydney Chaplin makes rather more of the plot than would seem possible. Cara Williams is excellent on all accounts. The problem…was the weakness of the ending.”

--J.D. Callaghan, Detroit Free Press (October 27 and Nov 1 columns)

“Employing all the ingredients of profanity, vulgarity, obscenity, and promiscuous sex garnished with ultra-sophisticated, uninhibited, funny to some dialogue…the story is tawdry…there is some very funny dialogue and excellent acting. Just how far Goodbye Charlie will go before the censors catch up with it is problematical. If, by some remote chance, it should hit Broadway, there’s an awful lot of doctoring to be done. In her part, Miss Bacall scored a decided hit. Mr. Chaplin is a very fine actor…Miss Williams virtually stole the honors of the evening. Goodbye Charlie will probably be good box office, as most plays employing blunt language and sleazy structure are. We congratulate [the stars] but we deplore the comedy in which such ability was put to task.”

–John Gardiner, The Windsor (Ontario) Star

Gardiner also favorably mentions June Edwards (as Franny Saltzman).

Changes were underway in Detroit. By the time the show opened in Cleveland, Allan Frank had been replaced in the role of Greg Morris (Charlie’s lawyer) by Frank Roberts.

Kathy Carlyle, who had originated the role of Janie Hyland, departed in either Detroit or Cleveland.

June Williams’ (Franny) departure also seems to have happened around this time.

None of this drama affected Goodbye Charlie’s booming box office.

Title page from the second week in Cleveland.

Stop #3 (Cleveland, OH’s Hanna Theatre, 2 weeks November 9-21)

I couldn’t track down any reviews or gossip from this stop. But after Cleveland, Goodbye Charlie grimly proceeded to…

Stop #4: Baltimore, MD (1 week, November 23-28, Ford’s Theatre)

Goodbye Charlie opened in Baltimore for Thanksgiving week with three of its nine roles played by different actors than those who had opened the show in Pittsburgh.

Interestingly, the Ford’s Theatre program credits actress Gaye Jordan (whose name is never mentioned again in association with this play) as Franny on the cast list, but a few pages later has June Edwards credited with the role in the bios section. And yet, according to the reviews, it was female understudy Sarah Marshall—daughter of Herbert Marshall and Edna Best—who opened as Franny in Baltimore. The reviews also document that the role of Janie Hyland remained in the script as of the Baltimore opening, now played by Michelle Reiner.

Speaking of reviews, they were coming along, but still not wholly positive by a longshot:

“A male wolf reincarnated into a woman is a clever idea, but probably the reason it has never been used before is that, having once thought of it, no playwright could decide what to do with it. Though many of the jokes are funny within themselves—the first nighters seemed to find them uniformly hilarious—they cannot compensate for a lack of action…they tend to exceed the bounds of good taste. The whole play thus amounts to little more than a good first act with a weak and unconvincing resolution at the end. Bacall’s timing is excellent. One thing the play does accomplish is to prove she is as charming on the stage as on the screen. Equally effective is Sydney Chaplin as the friend—the central role in the play, owing to the audience’s inclination to identify with him rather than Charlie—and Mr. Chaplin’s disciplined portrayal is precisely what it needs.”

--R.H. Gardner, Baltimore Sun

“Lauren Bacall has herself quite a role, and she makes the most of it. She is wonderful, and probably unique, as Charlie. She is tops, couldn’t be better. Sydney Chaplin provides just the right foil for Miss Bacall. Cara Williams is outstanding in a major supporting role. The basic idea…begins to wear thin shortly after the midpoint. Some of the lines tend decidedly toward the crude, raw, and vulgar. Some are also very funny. A capacity house, by far the biggest of the season, arrived all set to be entertained to the fullest. They were entertained, to judge by the laughs, but not quite to the fullest.”

--Hope Pantell, Baltimore Evening Sun

One gets the sense that the play’s edginess was being tempered. Common threads in the reviews include negative comments about the taste level, the profanity/blasphemy, and the weak ending. Repeated mention is also made of the audience loving the jokes and the show playing to capacity audiences.

Clearly, the play was getting shorter, as two roles got the axe. Between Baltimore and Philadelphia, the role of Janie Hyland was eliminated and actress Michelle Reiner was switched to the role of Franny, which she continued in on Broadway.

In spite of having a run-of-the-play contract and getting a good Baltimore review mention, Bert Thorn’s role was also written out. He played Rusty’s husband, Anatole (Alexander) Mayerling, “the typical egotistical Hungarian Hollywood mogul who tries hard to seduce Charlie [the woman] and doesn’t make it.”

Which brings us to:

Last stop: Philadelphia, PA (2 weeks, November 30-December 12, Walnut Theatre)

Goodbye Charlie now had a cast of seven, and two of those seven were replacements. When Michelle Reiner opened on November 30 in Philadelphia as Franny Saltzman, she was the third actress to play the role.

Walter Winchell reported December 8 that the Philadelphia opening featured “an entirely new second act.” The shrinking of the cast seems to have also slimmed down the length of the play from three acts to two.

Here’s what the last set of out-of-town reviews had to say. Excellent notices for Bacall and Chaplin continued, but…

“One of those one-gag comedies. The dialogue has a tendency to flatten into repetitive banalities. There are a lot of amusing, sometimes startling lines. It is virtually a two-character play, and Miss Bacall and Chaplin outlast Axelrod, although this is not a major triumph. Cara Williams helps out in her two scenes.”

--Henry T. Murdock, Philadelphia Inquirer

“The trouble with Goodbye Charlie…is that Charlie didn’t stay away. The opening…was an excellent combination of pantomimed and awkwardly spoken eulogizing. An inexcusably low ebb was reached on several occasions by embarrassing references to God and biblical teachings. There were laughs, but many of the guffaws like the play itself needed to go to the laundry.”

--E.G.C., Courier-Post, Camden, NJ

Also, somewhere during the Philadelphia run, the real hell broke loose.

It was reported December 9 that Cara Williams, who had been getting unanimous raves as Rusty, had left the show, little more than a week before the December 16 Broadway opening. Female understudy Sarah Marshall, who was back to understudying all the women as of the Philadelphia opening, was suddenly onstage full-time in the major supporting role of Rusty.

Another departure made the papers December 14: top fashion designer Mainbocher also left, taking his program credit with him. Prior to doing Bacall’s clothes for Goodbye Charlie , he worked with Hayward on Sound of Music, Call Me Madam and other shows. The rest of the cast’s clothes were initially credited to Florence Klotz, but by the time the show reached Broadway, Klotz’s credit had disappeared too. The only costuming credit of any kind in the opening night Playbill was “Miss Bacall’s second act dress by Scassi.”

Negative gossip had begun to appear in the columns. After an item citing Cara Williams as difficult and another item calling the play “not only dirty but funny…the dialogue is rough enough to bring back burlesque immediately” with a line about “strawberry shortcake” singled out as quotably vulgar (the mind boggles!) Dorothy Kilgallen wrote that Axelrod was publicly taking the blame for “the Goodbye Charlie hassle, but insiders are inclined to give Lauren Bacall credit for the changes that have taken place since the show hit the road.”

Kilgallen also reported a juicy morsel about a clash between Lauren Bacall and radio interviewer Shirley Eder a few days before the Broadway opening. Eder told Bacall she was heard on the air five times a day, to which Bacall averred, “I can’t think of anything more loathsome.” Then, when Eder compared the role of Charlie to Christine Jorgensen—there were further fireworks.

Nonetheless, a film of Goodbye Charlie was practically inevitable. It was reported as early as August 1959 that the show’s film rights had already been sold to producer Buddy Adler with an escalator clause to push the price to around $500,000.00 if the show hit it big. So the pressure was on Axelrod to get it right.

How did Goodbye Charlie fare with the Broadway critics? Watch this space for the next post and find out!