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| Subways Are for Sleeping | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Original cast recording | |
| Music | Jule Styne |
| Lyrics | Betty Comden Adolph Green |
| Book | Betty Comden Adolph Green |
| Basis | Edmund G. Love's article inHarper's[1] and subsequent book[2] |
| Productions | 1961Broadway |
Subways Are for Sleeping is amusical produced by David Merrick with book and lyrics byBetty Comden andAdolph Green and music byJule Styne. The originalBroadway production played in 1961–62.[3]
The musical was inspired by an article aboutsubwayhomelessness in the March 1956 issue ofHarper's magazine and a subsequent 1957 book based on it, both byEdmund G. Love, who slept on subway trains throughout the 1950s and encountered many unique individuals. With the profits from his book, Love then embarked on a bizarre hobby: over the course of several years, he ate dinner at every restaurant listed in theManhattanyellow pages directory, visiting them in alphabetical order. A previous adaptation of theHarper's article was aired August 3, 1956 onCBS Radio Workshop.[4]
Angie McKay is a magazine writer assigned to write a story about a group of well-dressed homeless people sleeping in the New York subway system. Their leader is Tom Bailey, a one-man employment agency who finds other drifters odd jobs and sleeping quarters. To help research her story, Angie goes undercover and pretends to be a stranded girl from out-of-town. Trouble ensues when Tom discovers her real identity.
After two previews, theBroadway production, directed andchoreographed byMichael Kidd, opened on December 27, 1961 at theSt. James Theatre, where it ran for 205 performances. The cast includedOrson Bean,Sydney Chaplin,Carol Lawrence,Gordon Connell, Grayson Hall, and Green's wifePhyllis Newman (whose costume, consisting solely of a towel, was probablyFreddy Wittop's easiest design in his distinguished career), with newcomersMichael Bennett andValerie Harper in the chorus.
Subways Are for Sleeping opened to mostly negative reviews. The show already was hampered by a lack of publicity, since theNew York City Transit Authority refused to post advertisements on the city's buses and in subway trains and stations for fear they would be perceived as officially sanctioning the right of vagrants to use these facilities as overnight accommodations.
ProducerDavid Merrick and press agentHarvey Sabinson decided to invite individuals with the same names as prominent theatre critics (such asWalter Kerr,Richard Watts Jr. andHoward Taubman) to see the show, and afterwards used their favorable comments in print ads. Thanks to photographs of the seven "critics" accompanying their blurbs (the well-known real Richard Watts was notAfrican American), the ad was discovered to be a deception. It was pulled from most newspapers, but not before running in an early edition of theNew York Herald Tribune. However, the cleverpublicity stunt allowed the musical to continue to run and it eventually turned a small profit.
Newman won theTony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, and nominations went to Bean for Best Featured Actor and Kidd's choreography.
Anoriginal cast recording was released byColumbia Records. A revival production was briefly mounted in 2009.
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