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

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.

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."

1922. American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, novelist, the Shakespeare of Hollywood, who received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films. His novel, Gargoyles begins: The calendars said-1900. It was growing warm. George Cornelius Basine emerged from Madam Minnie's house of ill fame at five o'clock on a Sabbath May morning. He was twenty-five years old, neatly dressed, a bit unshaven and whistling valiantly, Won't you come home, Bill Bailey, won't you come home? Considering the high estate which was to be his, as the estimable Senator Basine, the introduction savors of malice. But, it must be remembered, this was twenty-two years ago, and moreover, in a day before the forces of decency had triumphed. The Soul of man was still unregenerate. Prostitutes, saloons, hellholes still flourished unchallenged in the city's heart. And Basine even at twenty-five was not one of those aggravating anomalies who pride themselves upon being ahead of their time; or behind their time. Basine was of his time.

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."

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.

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.