Booth Theatre (Broadway)

This warm, intimate theatre was a joint venture of the aristocratic producer Winthrop Ames, owner of the even smaller Little Theatre, and impresario Lee Shubert. Their aim was to offer theatregoers a cozy house for the viewing of dramas and comedies. It was named the Booth in remembrance of another Booth Theatre in Manhattan (named for actor Edwin Booth), in which Mr. Ames's father had held financial interest.

The 668-seat Booth Theatre on West Forty-fifth Street was back-to-back with the Shubert Theatre and shared Shubert Alley with it. According to newspapers at the time of the Booth's opening, the theatre was designed by architect Henry B. Herts in early Italian Renaissance style "with designs in agrafitto in brown and ivory, colors which harmonize with the exterior of the theatre, which is yellow brick and ivory terra cotta." An unusual feature of the Booth was a wall that partitioned the entrance from the auditorium, preventing street and lobby noises and drafts from coming to the interior of the house. Woodwork and walls were in neutral tints of driftwood gray; draperies, upholstery, carpeting, and the house curtain were in various shades of mulberry. Chandeliers and appliques along the wall gave the impression of candlelight. The theatre contained many Booth souvenirs, including the actor's favorite armchair, a statue of him, and many handbills and posters of Booth's appearances.

The Booth opened with fanfare on October 16, 1913, with the first American production of Arnold Bennett's play "The Great Adventure," dramatized by him from his novel "Buried Alive." The stars were Janet Beecher and Lyn Harding and the fascinating plot dealt with a famous artist who is pronounced dead and who decides to go along with the erroneous obituary. Unfortunately, the play lasted only fifty-two performances.

The Booth's first hit was "Experience," an allegorical play with music in which William Elliott played a character who symbolized Youth. It ran for 255 performances in 1914-15. This was followed by another success, "The Bubble," starring Louis Mann, which had a run of 176 showings. On February 5, 1917, the distinguished producer/director Arthur Hopkins piloted a hit called "A Successful Calamity," by Clare Kummer, starring William Gillette, Estelle Winwood, Roland Young, and William Devereaux. Later that year, "DeLuxe Annie," with Jane Grey and Vincent Serrano, proved to be another good show.

The year 1918 started out with a huge hit for the Booth. Ruth Gordon, Gregory Kelly, Paul Kelly, and Neil Martin appeared in a delightful adaptation of Booth Tarkington's "Seventeen." There were two hits the following year: Janet Beecher and Lowell Sherman in a mystery called "The Woman in Room 13," and a comedy called "Too Many Husbands."

The Roaring Twenties at the Booth began rousingly with a lively melodrama, "The Purple Mask," with Leo Ditrichstein, Brandon Tynan, and Lily Cahill in one of those cloak-and-dagger masquerades set in Napoleon's time. Alexander Woollcott loved it and wrote in the New York Times that so would Tom Sawyer and Penrod. This swashbuckler was followed by a charming play, "Not So Long Ago," a nostalgic Cinderella tale set in early New York, with Eva Le Gallienne giving an enchanting performance as a poor girl who marries a rich boy. She was supported by Sidney Blackmer and Thomas Mitchell. Back to melodrama went the Booth in November 1920 with a rousing adaptation of Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper," with actress Ruth Findlay playing the dual roles of the title and William Faversham and Clare Eames in other choice parts.

Highlights of the 1920s at the Booth included George Arliss as the Raja of Ruka in a lush adventure play, "The Green Goddess" (1921), set in the Himalayas, that ran for 440 performances: A.A. Milne's engrossing play The Truth About Blayds (1922), with O.P. Heggie as Blayds, a famed poet who reveals that someone else wrote all his poems, with Leslie Howard, Frieda Inescort, and Ferdinand Gottschalk helping to keep his secret; Austin Strong's unforgettable "Seventh Heaven" (1922), with Helen Menken and George Gaul as the poor lovers in a Parisian garret, which ran for 683 performances; "Dancing Mothers" (1924), a daring play in which a mother (played by Mary Young) rebels against her flapper daughter (Helen Hayes) and philandering husband (Henry Stephenson) by going wild herself and walking out on them; Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's "Minick" (1924), a gentle study of an old man going to live with his son and daughter-in-law; Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in their fourth play together, Molnar's "The Guardsman" (1924), which was so successful that it moved from the Garrick Theatre to the Booth and delighted Theatre Guild audiences; publisher Horace Liveright's startling modern-dress production of "Hamlet" (1925), with Basil Sydney as the Melancholy Dane in a dinner suit, King Claudius (Charles Waldron) in flannels, and Ophelia (Helen Chandler) in flapper frocks; "The Patsy" (1925), a winning comedy starring Claiborne Foster; Winthrop Ames's 1926 production of a fanciful Philip Barry comedy, "White Wings" (a fancy term for street cleaners), which should have lasted longer than 27 performances; Ruth Gordon, Roger Pryor, and Beulah Bondi in Maxwell Anderson's timely comedy about youth, " Saturday's Children" (1927); Leslie Howard and Frieda Inescort in John Galsworthy's excellent drama "Escape" (1927-28), brilliantly produced and staged by Winthrop Ames; The Grand Street Follies of 1928, an annual topical revue that spoofed current plays and players, with James Cagney tapping and Dorothy Sands stopping the show with her impression of Mae West playing Shakespeare; The "Grand Street Follies" of 1929, again with Cagney, Sands, and others doing parodies; and the last show of the 1920s at the Booth, a contemporary comedy of ill manners called "Jenny "(1929), starring Jane Cowl as an actress who tries to straighten out a wayward family but ends up running off with the father of the house, capitally played by Guy Standing.

During the 1930s some fifty shows played the Booth, many of them quick failures and a number of them transferred from other theatres. Among the most noteworthy tenants were: Margaret Sullavan in her Broadway debut, in a shabby play called "A Modern Virgin" (1931); Rose Franken's drama about family tyranny, "Another Language" (1932), splendidly acted by Margaret Wycherly, Margaret Hamilton, Glenn Anders, Dorothy Stickney, and John Beal; "No More Ladies" (1934), an intelligent comedy about infidelity by A.E. Thomas, starring Lucile Watson and Melvyn Douglas; Gladys Cooper making her Broadway debut with Raymond Massey and Adrianne Allen in Keith Winter's "The Shining Hour" (1934), another play about infidelity; John Van Druten's comedy of women, called "The Distaff Side" (1934), superbly acted by Sybil Thorndike, Mildred Natwick, Estelle Winwood, and Viola Roache; J.B. Priestley's "Laburnum Grove" (1935), in which Edmund Glenn pretended to be a counterfeiter in order to get rid of sponging relatives who wished to borrow money from him; Melvyn Douglas, Cora Witherspoon, Claudia Morgan, Violet Heming, Elsa Maxwell, Blanche Ring, and Tom Ewell--a million-dollar cast--all wasted in a maudlin play called De Luxe (1935), by novelist Louis Bromfield and John Gearon; the radiant Grace George in a chilling drama, "Kind Lady "(1935), about a rich old lady held captive in her own home by a gang of clever thieves headed by Henry Daniell; "Blind Alley" (1935), another thriller, with Roy Hargrave as a gangster who is destroyed when a psychologist (George Coulouris) he is holding captive delves into his mind; a classical Chinese drama, "Lady Precious Stream" (1936), starring Helen Chandler, Bramwell Fletcher, and Clarence Derwent; "Sweet Aloes" (1936), a British play by Joyce Carey, with Miss Carey, Evelyn Laye, and Rex Harrison making his Broadway debut; a rowdy farce about wrestling, "Swing Your Lady" (1936); Kaufman and Hart's Pulitzer Prize comedy "You Can't Take It with You" (1936), with Henry Travers and Josephine Hull heading an insane family of lovable eccentrics, which ran almost two years at the Booth; Montgomery Clift, Jessie Royce Landis, Morgan James, and Onslow Stevens in "Dame Nature" (1938), a sexual drama adapted from the French by actress Patricia Collinge; Philip Barry's arresting drama "Here Come the Clowns" (1938), with Eddie Dowling, Madge Evans, Doris Dudley, and Russell Collins; a bright, richly designed revue, "One for the Money" (1939), by Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis, with Alfred Drake, Gene Kelly, Keenan Wynn, Grace McDonald, Brenda Forbes, and Nancy Hamilton; and bringing the 1930s to a close at the Booth, another Pulitzer Prize play, William Saroyan's daffy comedy The Time of Your Life, with Eddie Dowling, Julie Haydon, Gene Kelly, William Bendix, Edward Andrews, and Celeste Holm.

In the 1940s, the Booth had fewer plays than in the preceding decade, but more long-running hits. The decade started out with a sequel to the revue One for the Money called, aptly, "Two for the Show," by the same authors. This edition boasted a memorable song, "How High the Moon," and comic and tuneful performances by Alfred Drake, Betty Hutton, Eve Arden, Keenan Wynn, Richard Haydn, Brenda Forbes, Tommy Wonder, Eunice Healey, and Nadine Gae. On February 12, 1941, a genuine hit called "Claudia" came to the Booth and stayed for a little over a year. Written by Rose Franken, the touching play about a childlike wife made a star out of Dorothy McGuire and brought back to the stage the famed Belasco actress Frances Starr to play Claudia's mother, with Donald Cook as her husband.

Noel Coward's blissful comedy "Blithe Spirit" moved from the Morosco to the Booth in 1942, with Clifton Webb, Peggy Wood Leonora Corbett, and Mildred Natwick, and the merry spooks stayed for a year. Another huge hit, The "Two Mrs. Carrolls" (1943-45), starring Elisabeth Bergner, Victor Jory, Vera Allen, and Irene Worth, thrilled Booth audiences with its homicidal plot and stayed for 585 performances.

A war drama, "The Wind Is Ninety," had a remarkable cast (Kirk Douglas, Wendell Corey, Joyce Van Patten and her brother "Dickie,-- Blanche Yurka, and Bert Lytell) and played for over 100 performances in 1945. "You Touched Me" (1945), by Tennessee Williams and Donald Windham, had fine performances by Montgomery Clift and Edmund Glenn, but was a lesser Williams work. Bobby Clark added burlesque touches to Moliere's The Would-Be Gentleman, with June Knight and Gene Barry; Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's psychological murder mystery Swan Song played for 158 performances; and a revival of Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World" (1946) had Burgess Meredith, Mildred Natwick, J.C. Nugent, Julie Harris, and, making her Broadway debut, Maureen Stapleton.

Additional 1940s hits included: Norman Krasna's farce-comedy "John Loves Mary" (1947), with Nina Foch, Tom Ewell, and William Prince; Gilbert Miller's revival of Molnar's bubbly comedy "The Play's the Thing" (1948), with Louis Calhern, Ernest Cossart, Arthur Margetson, and Faye Emerson making her Broadway debut; James B. Allardice's comedy "At War with the Army" (1949), staged by Ezra Stone, with Gary Merrill giving an excellent performance; and Grace George, Walter Hampden, Jean Dixon, and John Williams in a pleasant religious drama, "The Velvet Glove" (1949).

The 1950s began auspiciously with William Inge's first Broadway play, "Come Back, Little Sheba," with Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer winning Tony Awards for their powerful performances. Beatrice Lillie was the toast of the town in the hilarious revue "An Evening with Beatrice Lillie" (1952), in which she sang some of her most celebrated songs and acted in some of her most outlandish sketches with Reginald Gardiner for 278 performances. A popular comedy called "Anniversary Waltz "(1954-55), directed by Moss Hart and starring his wife, Kitty Carlisle, and Macdonald Carey, moved from the Broadhurst to the Booth and stayed for ten months; "Time Limit" (1956), a taut drama about the Korean War by Henry Denker and Ralph Berkey, starred Richard Kiley, Arthur Kennedy, Allyn McLerie, and Thomas Carlin and played for 127 performances; Gore Vidal's science fiction delight,"Visit to a Small Planet" (1957), starring Cyril Ritchard as a comic extraterrestrial and Eddie Mayehoff as an imbecilic general, ran for a year; William Gibson's Two for the See-Saw (1958-59), an enchanting two-character love story starring Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft, ran for almost two years; and Paddy Chayefsky's "The Tenth Man," about the exorcism of a dybbuk in Mineola, with Gene Saks as a rabbi and Jack Gilford, George Voskovec, Jacob Ben-Ami, and Lou Jacobi giving sublime performances, played 623 times.

Highlights of the 1960s included Julie Harris, Walter Matthau, William Shatner, Gene Saks, and Diana van der Vlis in the continental comedy "A Shot in the Dark" (1961-62); Murray Schisgal's outre comedy "Luv" (1964-66), directed by Mike Nichols, with Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, and Alan Arkin as three miserable creatures who cavort on a bridge, which lasted for 902 performances; Flanders and Swann, the British comedy team, in "At the Drop of Another Hat" (1966), a follow-up to their popular two-man revue At the Drop of a Hat; Harold Pinter's sinister play "The Birthday Party" (1967), his first full-length work; and one of the Booth's most popular tenants, Leonard Gershe's Butterflies Are Free, with Blythe Danner making her Broadway debut and winning a Tony Award for her luminous acting, and with Eileen Heckart (later replaced by Gloria Swanson) and Keir Dullea helping the drama about a blind man, his kooky neighbor, and his overprotective mother to run for 1,133 performances.

In 1972 the Booth housed another Pulitzer Prize play, Joseph Papp's production of "That Championship Season" (1972-74), by actor Jason Miller, which moved from the downtown New York Shakespeare Festival and played for almost two years at the Booth. Other attractions of the decade included Terrence McNally's zany "Bad Habits" (1974), two playlets about therapy, which moved uptown from the Astor Place Theatre; Cleavon Little in Murray Schisgal's" All Over Town" (1974), directed by Dustin Hoffman; a revival of Jerome Kern's 1915 musical Very Good Eddie (1975-76), from the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut; "Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" (1976-78), an exalted program of poetry acted by an extraordinary cast of black artists for 742 performances; and"The Elephant Man" (1979), Bernard Pomerance's enthralling study of a true-life freak of nature, with memorable performances by Philip Anglim, Kevin Conway, and Carole Shelley, which moved from Theatre at Saint Peter's Church to the Booth and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play and three Tony Awards.

In November 1981 "Mass Appeal," by Bill C. Davis, directed by Geraldine Fitzgerald, made a successful transference from Off-Broadway to the Booth. This religious drama, first presented at the Circle Repertory Theatre and the Manhattan Theatre Club, featured excellent performances by Milo O'Shea as a luxury-loving priest and Michael O'Keefe as a rebellious young priest. It ran for 212 performances.

The Booth's most recent productions have included Our Town (starring Paul Newman), Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends; The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe; Dame Edna; Via Dolorosa; An Evening With Jerry Herman; David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood; Jackie Mason’s Love Thy Neighbor; Broken Glass; Having Our Say; Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me; a revival of Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella; the musical Once on This Island; the one-man show Tru; Shirley Valentine; Michael Feinstein in Concert: Isn’t It Romantic; A Walk in the Woods with Sam Waterston and Robert Prosky; Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport, a Tony Award winner for Best Play with Judd Hirsch (Tony Award), Cleavon Little, Mercedes Ruehl; Sunday in the Park with George, the Pulitzer Prize musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine; Al Pacino in David Mamet’s American Buffalo; Richard Dreyfuss in Total Abandon; the British play Good; and Milo O’Shea and Michael O’Keefe in the comedy Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis, directed by Geraldine Fitzgerald.

The Booth Theatre is owned by the Shubert Organization and is one of the Broadway theatres the Shuberts have renovated. In 1979 the famed interior designer Melanie Kahane, who had redone four of the Shubert theatres, was hired to restore the Booth to its original elegance and grandeur. "What I've tried to do with these old houses is get back to the beginning and then modernize them in some way," she told PLAYBILL at the time. "The Booth was a sad old sack. All in brown. I kept the brown below--to anchor--then put light beige on top. The light color brings your eye up, so you notice the detail." Ms. Kahane characterized the Booth as "very Jacobean." She got rid of the delicate French chandeliers, which she felt didn't belong in that house, and restored the elegant old theatre in the short space of three weeks. The Booth has always been--and still is today--an ideal house for dramas, comedies, and intimate musical shows.

Theatre Information:
222 West 45th Street
New York, NY 10036
US

Box Office: Tele-charge: (212) 239-6200/(800) 432-7250
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Public Transportation:
SUBWAY: Take the N,Q,R,W or 1,2,3,9 to 42nd Street, walk North on Broadway to 45th Street and walk West on 45th Street to the theatre; Take the A,C,E to 42nd Street, walk North on Eighth Avenue to 45th Street and walk East on 45th Street to the theatre.

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