Word: spewacks
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Women, Kiss the Boys Good-bye). Two other women have made smart collaborators: Edna Ferber with George S. Kaufman (The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight), Bella Spewack with her husband Sam (Boy Meets Girl). At serious drama three women in their day won the Pulitzer Prize: Zona Gale for Miss Lulu Bett (19-20), Susan Glaspell for Alison's House (1931), Zoe Akins for The Old Maid (1935). But Zona
Leave It to Me! (book by Bella & Samuel Spewack; music & lyrics by Cole Porter; produced by Vinton Freedley) is big-name, big-scale, big-town musicomedy: the season's first show to fetch $6.60 on opening night. It tells of simple-souled Alonzo P. Goodhue (Victor Moore), snatched from happy hours of horseshoe-pitching in Topeka, Kans. to be ambassador to Soviet Russia. His one desire is to get fired. He kicks the Nazi ambassador in the belly and the world cheers. He takes a potshot at a stranger who turns out to be a dangerous counter-revolutionary assassin...
Meanwhile, a few blocks away in Boston's Hotel Ritz-Carlton, Authors Bella & Sam Spewack, shuddering at the thought of Broadway critics, were slashing the script of Leave It to Me, rushing off to hammer typewriters. While the audience was holding its sides over Act II, Act II was going, bit by bit, into the Spewack wastebasket. While the audience was filing out after the show, behind the curtain the cast was flopping down on the stage before being handed practically new parts and rehearsing them far into the night...
...production half an hour but was more than deserved by all concerned. Calculated to delight the lovers of gay tunes and sprightly if at times questionable patter, the play offers fifteen songs, most of which do justice to their composer, and a laugh-packed book by Bella and Samuel Spewack...
...five parts at once in one of their screen plays, generally giving the impression of being possessed of a legion of March hares. But when Boy Bruce Lester meets Girl Marie Wilson, an inclination to dawdle sets in. Both versions of Boy Meets Girl were written by Bella & Samuel Spewack. After much thought last week on the question, Was the play better on screen or stage? critics came to no concerted conclusion, felt sentimentally inclined to favor the Broadway version...