Comedy / Characters: 17 males, 5 females

Set Requirements: Interior

An irresistible comedy with thrills and derring do set in the news room. Hildy wants to break away from journalism and go on a belated honeymoon. There is a jailbreak and into Hildy's hands falls the escapee as hostage. He conceals his prize in a rolltop desk and phones his scoop to his managing editor. Their job is to prevent other reporters and the sheriff from opening the desk and finding their story. Some hoods are enlisted to remove the desk, but they get mixed up with a Boy Scout troop and the mayor and a cleaning woman, among others. It's a whirlwind wrap up with Hildy finally making his breakaway, but the cynical managing editor has him arrested before he leaves town for having stolen a watch he planted on Hildy.

"Gorgeously melodramatic. One of the funniest and most exciting of American plays." N.Y. Times.

"Fast, explosive, funny." ABC TV.

Musical comedy

Book and Lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden

Music by Cy Coleman

Based on a play by Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur and also a play by Bruce Milholland

Characters: 17 Principal roles, plus chorus (doubling possible)

Whether performed with elaborate scenery or on a simple scale, this brilliantly comic musical appeals to audiences everywhere. As in the classic original, the story concerns the efforts of a flamboyant theatrical impresario Oscar Jaffe to persuade glamorous film star (and former amour) Lily Garland to appear in his next production while outwitting rival producers, creditors and religious nut Letitcia Primrose. And all this before the 20th Century Ltd. reaches NYC

"Spectacular, funny and elegant...civilized wit and wild humor."-The New York Times

"A perfect musical...A gorgeous show "-New York Post

"A rare delight: a musical that tells a story and does so with delicious wit. A hilarious American sequel to My Fair Lady."-Hartford Courant

Ben Hecht's critically acclaimed autobiographical memoir, first published in 1954, offers incomparably pungent evocations of Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s, Hollywood in the 1930s, and New York during the Second World War and after. "His manners are not always nice, but then nice manners do not always make interesting autobiographies, and this autobiography has the merit of being intensely interesting."-Saul Bellow, New York Times Named to Time's list of All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books, which deems it "the un-put-downable testament of the era's great multimedia entertainer."

In 1921, Ben Hecht wrote a column for the "Chicago Daily News" that his editor called "journalism extraordinary; journalism that invaded the realm of literature." Hecht's collection of sixty-four of these pieces, illustrated with striking pen drawings by Herman Rosse, is a timeless caricature of urban American life in the jazz age, updated with a new Introduction for the twenty-first century. From the glittering opulence of Michigan Avenue to the darkest ruminations of an escaped convict, from captains of industry to immigrant day laborers, Hecht captures 1920s Chicago in all its furor, intensity, and absurdity.

"The columns in "1,001 Afternoons in ""Chicago" are scruffy time capsules of an earlier Chicago, an era that is long gone but still recognizable to readers' imaginations. Michigan Avenue, Lake Michigan, street names such as Dearborn and Adams and LaSalle and Wabansia, places such as the Art Institute of Chicago--they're all here, sprinkled amid Hecht's nervous little haikus of urban life. He calls Chicago 'a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies, ' and his tales capture gorgeous scraps of it, vivid vignettes starring businessmen and hobos and cops and socialites and janitors. . . . Thanks to Hecht, the Chicago of 1922 and the Chicago of 2009 bump into each other, shake hands, exchange greetings. Then, this being Chicago, they go for a drink and talk about old times. New ones too."--Julia Keller, "Chicago"" Tribune"

"The hardboiled audacity and wit that became Hecht's signature as Hollywood's most celebrated screen-writer are conspicuous in these vignettes. Most of them are comic and sardonic, some strike muted tragic or somber atmospheric notes. . . . The best are timeless character sketches that have taken on an added interest as shards of social history."--L. S. Klepp, "Voice Literary Supplement"

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Written at the height of her fame but not published until over a decade after her death, this autobiography of actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) poignantly recounts her childhood as an unwanted orphan, her early adolescence, her rise in the film industry from bit player to celebrity, and her marriage to Joe DiMaggio. In this intimate account of a very public life, she tells of her first (non-consensual) sexual experience, her romance with the Yankee Clipper, and her prescient vision of herself as "the kind of girl they found dead in the hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand." The Marilyn in these pages is a revelation: a gifted, intelligent, vulnerable woman who was far more complex than the unwitting sex siren she portrayed on screen. Lavishly illustrated with photos of Marilyn, this special book celebrates the life and career of an American icon -from the unique perspective of the icon herself."

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1922 Edition.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1922 Edition.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1921 Edition.

'Fantazius Mallare' is the tale of a deranged recluse who declares war on reality. In his world of hallucination and twisted eroticism, Mallare needs a woman to worship him as a god. Aided by his servant, he entices a submissive gypsy girl. 'Count Fanny's Nuptuals' remains one of the rarest and elusive of all decadent texts.

Beautiful phrase. The soul of man, in its struggle toward God knows what, paused elatedly to contemplate the new milestone. Elated as all youth is elated for no other reason than that there is a tomorrow, a tomorrow of unknown and multiple milestones. Elated with the knowledge of progress-that sage and flattering word by which the soul of man explains the baffling phenomenon of its survival. The great men of the day stood staring through half-closed eyes at the calendars. To anticipate by a single day But the future no less than the past remains a current mystery. And the great men-the prophets-confined themselves with stentorian caution to the prophecy-a new century has dawned.