Although it initially received poor reviews—with the notable exception of The New York Times, which reviewed it favorably[1]—the Broadway play was a commercial hit, running for 2,327 performances between May 23, 1922, and October 1, 1927. At the time, this was the longest run in Broadway theater history, surpassing the record 1,291 performances set by the Winchell Smith and Frank Bacon 1918 play, Lightnin'.[2][3] The show's touring company had a similarly long run and held the record for longest-running touring company for nearly 40 years, until that record was broken by Hello, Dolly! in the 1960s. The touring company's male lead was future Hollywood star George Brent, in his first major role; the female lead was Peggy Parry.
Abie's Irish Rose was revived on Broadway in 1937 and again, in an updated version, in 1954.
A weekly NBC radio series, Abie's Irish Rose, replaced Knickerbocker Playhouse and ran from January 24, 1942, through September 2, 1944. Faced with listener protests about its stereotyped ethnic portrayals, the radio series was cancelled in 1945.[4] Nichols wrote the scripts. Axel Gruenbert[6] and Joe Rines directed the cast, which starred Richard Bond, Sydney Smith, Richard Coogan and Clayton "Bud" Collyer as Abie Levy. Betty Winkler, Mercedes McCambridge, Julie Stevens, Bernard Gorcey, and Marion Shockley portrayed Rosemary Levy. Solomon Levy was played by Alfred White, Charlie Cantor and Alan Reed.[7]
Others in the radio cast include: Charme Allen (as Mrs. Mueller),[8]Richard Gordon, Roger DeKoven and Martin Wolfson (Rabbi Samuels, aka Dr. Samuels),[9][10][11][12]Walter Kinsella (Patrick Murphy), Menasha Skulnik (Isaac Cohen), Anna Appel (Mrs. Cohen), Ann Thomas (Casey), Bill Adams (Father Whelan), Amanda Randolph (maid) and Dolores Gillenas (the Levys' twins). The announcer was Howard Petrie, and Joe Stopak provided the music. The opening theme music was "My Wild Irish Rose" by Chauncey Olcott.[7]
Plot
Nichols' original Broadway play has the couple meeting in France during World War I. The young man is a wounded soldier and the girl a nurse who tended him. The priest and the rabbi from the wedding are veterans of the same war, and recognize one another from their time in the service.
The rest of the plot was summarized by Judge Learned Hand in his opinion on the copyright lawsuit filed by Nichols:
"Abie's Irish Rose presents a Jewish family living in prosperous circumstances in New York. The father, a widower, is in business as a merchant, in which his son and only child helps him. The boy has philandered with young women, who to his father's great disgust have always been Gentiles, for he is obsessed with a passion that his daughter-in-law shall be an orthodox Jew. When the play opens the son, who has been courting a young Irish Catholic girl, has already married her secretly before a Protestant minister, and concerned about how to soften the blow for his father securing a favorable reception for his bride, while concealing her faith and race. To accomplish this he introduces her to his father as a Jewish girl in whom he is interested and conceals the fact they are married. The girl somewhat reluctantly agrees to the plan; the father takes the bait, becomes infatuated with the girl, insists that they must marry. He assumes they will because it's the father's idea. He calls in a rabbi, and prepares for the wedding according to the Jewish rite.
Meanwhile the girl's father, also a widower who lives in California and is as intense in his own religious antagonism as the Jew, has been called to New York, supposing that his daughter is to marry an Irishman and a Catholic. Accompanied by a priest, he arrives at the house at the moment when the marriage is being celebrated, so too late to prevent it, and the two fathers, each infuriated by the proposed union of his child to a heretic, fall into unseemly and grotesque antics. The priest and the rabbi become friendly, exchange trite sentiments about religion, and agree that the match is good. Apparently out of abundant caution, the priest celebrates the marriage for a third time, while the girl's father is inveigled away. The second act closes with each father, still outraged, seeking to find some way by which the union, thus trebly insured, may be dissolved.
The last act takes place about a year later, the young couple having meanwhile been abjured by each father, and left to their own resources. They have had twins, a boy and a girl, but their fathers know no more than that a child has been born. At Christmas each, led by his craving to see his grandchild, goes separately to the young folks' home, where they encounter each other, each laden with gifts, one for a boy, the other for a girl. After some slapstick comedy, depending upon the insistence of each that he is right about the sex of the grandchild, they become reconciled when they learn the truth, and that each child is to bear the given name of a grandparent. The curtain falls as the fathers are exchanging amenities, and the Jew giving evidence of an abatement in the strictness of his orthodoxy."[5]
There have been some variations of the plot, as to setting, or how the characters meet, in later versions of the play or in adaptations for film.
Critical response
Although the play was a tremendous popular success, it was almost universally loathed by the critics. Robert Benchley, then the theatre critic for Life magazine, nursed a particular hatred for it. Part of Benchley's job was to write capsule reviews each week. He described Abie's Irish Rose variously as "Something Awful", "Just about as low as good clean fun can get", "Showing that the Jews and the Irish crack equally old jokes", "The comic spirit of 1876", "People laugh at this every night, which explains why democracy can never be a success", "Will the Marines never come?" and finally "Hebrews 13:8," a Biblical passage that reads, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”[13] He also held a contest for an outsider to contribute the capsule review, which Harpo Marx won with "No worse than a bad cold."[14][15]
In a generally favorable review, the New York Times noted the positive audience response, and closed with: “Personally, we hope to be present at little Rebecca Rachel and Patrick Joseph Levy's second birthday, if not their Hudson-Fulton centennial.”[16]
Writing in The New Yorker about the 1937 revival, Wolcott Gibbs said that "it had, in fact, the rather eerie quality of a repeated nightmare; the one, perhaps, in which I always find myself in an old well, thick with bats, and can't get out."
The Anti-Defamation League protested the use of Jewish stereotypes in the 1946 film version, claiming it "will reinforce, if it does not actually create, greater doubt and keener misconceptions, as well as outright prejudice."[17]
Reflecting on the play's message of social tolerance, Brooks Atkinson wrote about the 1954 revival, "What was a comic strip joke in 1922 is a serious problem today. Every now and then Abie's Irish Rose strikes a sensitive chord. For good will is in shorter supply now than it was thirty-two years ago."[18]
Contemporary scholar Jordan Schildcrout reads Abie's Irish Rose in relation to rising anxieties about immigration during the 1920s, as well as to current events such as the establishment of the Irish Free State (1921), the British Mandate for Palestine (1922), and the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924.[19] He writes, "In an era when anti-Jewish and anti-Irish sentiments were prominent, the play's representation of ethnic pride might have empowered audiences, while also offering them a happy fantasy of belonging and becoming increasingly 'American,' and therefore not subject to the old prejudices and ethnic rivalries."
Cultural references
Lorenz Hart expressed the feeling of many in the theater world in these lines for "Manhattan": "Our future babies we'll take to Abie's Irish Rose—I hope they'll live to see it close."
Abie's Irish Rose prefigured the comedy of Stiller and Meara (Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara), a husband-and-wife comedy team popular in the 1960s and 1970s who often spiked their routines with references to their different backgrounds (Stiller was Jewish; Meara was of an Irish Catholic background but converted to Judaism later during their marriage).
The play also provided the central premise for the 1972–1973 television series Bridget Loves Bernie (CBS), starring Meredith Baxter and David Birney (who later married in real life) in a socio-economic reversal of Abie's Irish Rose: Birney plays struggling young Jewish cab driver/aspiring playwright Bernie Steinberg, whose parents run a modest family delicatessen, and Baxter plays Bridget Fitzgerald, the Irish Catholic daughter of wealthy parents, who falls in love with and elopes with Steinberg to the disappointment of both sets of parents. (Both actors were Protestant.) The show was attacked by a broad range of Jewish groups for allegedly promoting inter-faith marriage,[20] and it was cancelled at the end of its first season, despite being the fifth-highest-rated series of the 1972–1973 year on USA broadcast television.[21]
Two decades later, with social attitudes changing in the U.S., CBS ran another television series, Brooklyn Bridge (1991–1993), the quasi-autobiographical childhood memoir of its Jewish creator, Gary David Goldberg. It features a continuing romance between two teenage characters, a Jewish boy and an Irish Catholic girl. It ran two seasons, and the sixth (two-part) episode of the first season, titled War of the Worlds, explores the tensions of this inter-faith relationship in its fictional mid-1950s Brooklyn setting. Goldberg previously created another quasi-autobiographical television series, Family Ties, inspired by his adult life, in which the female lead, the alter-ego of his real-life Irish Catholic partner, is portrayed by Meredith Baxter, the actress who starred in the ill-fated Bridget Loves Bernie.
Mike Nichols was an American film and theatre director and comedian. He worked across a range of genres and had an aptitude for getting the best out of actors regardless of their experience. He is one of 21 people to have won all four of the major American entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT). His other honors included three BAFTA Awards, the Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010. His films received a total of 42 Academy Award nominations, and seven wins.
Life with Father is a 1939 play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, adapted from a humorous autobiographical book of stories compiled in 1935 by Clarence Day. The Broadway production ran for 3,224 performances over 401 weeks to become the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway, a record that it still holds. The play was adapted into a 1947 feature film and a television series.
Gerald Isaac Stiller was an American comedian and actor. He spent many years as part of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara with his wife, Anne Meara, to whom he was married for over 60 years until her death in 2015. Stiller saw a late-career resurgence starting in 1993, playing Frank Costanza on the sitcom Seinfeld, a part which earned him an Emmy nomination. In 1998, Stiller began his role as Arthur Spooner on the CBS comedy series The King of Queens, another role that garnered widespread acclaim.
Anne Meara was an American comedian and actress. Along with her husband Jerry Stiller, she was one-half of the prominent 1960s comedy team Stiller and Meara. Their son is actor, director, and producer Ben Stiller. She was also featured on stage, on television, and in numerous films and later became a playwright. During her career, Meara was nominated for four Emmy Awards and a Tony Award, and she won a Writers Guild Award as a co-writer for the television movie The Other Woman.
Barefoot in the Park is a romantic comedy stage play by Neil Simon. The play premiered on Broadway in 1963, starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley. It was made into a film in 1967, which starred Redford and Jane Fonda.
Bridget Loves Bernie is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from September 16, 1972, to March 3, 1973. The series, created by Bernard Slade, depicted an interfaith marriage between a Catholic woman and a Jewish man. It stars Meredith Baxter and David Birney as the title characters. CBS canceled the show after only one season despite very high ratings.
Joanne Dru was an American film and television actress, known for such films as Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, All the King's Men, and Wagon Master.
Keeping the Faith is a 2000 American romantic comedy film written by Stuart Blumberg, and starring Ben Stiller, Edward Norton, Jenna Elfman, Eli Wallach, and Anne Bancroft. This film was released by Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment, in association with Triple Threat Talent, on April 14, 2000.
Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corporation, 45 F.2d 119 , was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit case on copyright infringement by non-literal copying of a dramatic work. The Court held that copyright protection cannot be extended to the characteristics of stock characters in a story, whether it be a book, play, or film.
Anne Nichols was an American playwright best known as the author of Abie's Irish Rose.
Richard Charles Potter Coogan was an American actor best known for his portrayal of Captain Video in Captain Video and His Video Rangers from 1949 to 1950.
Abie's Irish Rose is a 1928 early sound (part-talkie) film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Nancy Carroll, Jean Hersholt, and J. Farrell MacDonald. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The soundtrack was recorded using the Western Electric sound-on-film system. The film based on the 1922 play Abie's Irish Rose by Anne Nichols. The film was later remade in 1946. In the 1930s, author Nichols revealed that her deal with Paramount brought her $300,000 plus half the film's profits.
Menasha Skulnik was an American actor, primarily known for his roles in Yiddish theater in New York City. Skulnik was also popular on radio, playing Uncle David on The Goldbergs for 19 years. He made many television and Broadway appearances as well, including successful runs in Clifford Odets's The Flowering Peach and Harold Rome's The Zulu and the Zayda.
Bernard Slade Newbound was a Canadian playwright and screenwriter. As a screenwriter, he created the sitcoms The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family. As a playwright, he wrote Same Time, Next Year, Tribute, and Romantic Comedy and their film adaptations.
The Voice of the Turtle is a Broadway comedy by John William Van Druten dealing with the challenges of the single life in New York City during World War II. Controversial in its time, The Voice of the Turtle explores the sexual struggles of Sally Middleton, a young woman attempting to reconcile her childhood teachings on the importance of chastity with her newfound affection for Bill Page. The play derives its name from a verse in the Song of Solomon in the Bible, which reads "The voice of the turtle [as in turtle dove] is heard in our land." On December 8, 1943, the show opened at the Morosco Theatre and ran for 1,557 performances, making it the 51st longest-running show and the 9th longest-running play in Broadway history. In 1947, the stage play was adapted into a film of the same name starring Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Parker, Eve Arden, and Wayne Morris.
Tobacco Road is a play by Jack Kirkland first performed in 1933, based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell. The play ran on Broadway for a total of 3,182 performances, surpassing Abie's Irish Rose to become the longest-running play in history at the time. As of 2023, it was still the 20th longest-running Broadway show in history, as well as being the second-longest running non-musical ever on Broadway.
The Cohens and Kellys is a 1926 American silent comedy film directed by Harry A. Pollard and starring Charles Murray, George Sidney, Kate Price, and Jason Robards Sr. The film is the first of the Cohens and Kellys film serials. The film is perhaps best known today as the subject of Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., a copyright infringement case, in which Judge Learned Hand articulated the doctrine that copyright protection does not cover the characteristics of stock characters in a story.
Abie's Irish Rose is a 1946 American comedy film directed by A. Edward Sutherland based on a play by Anne Nichols. The film stars Michael Chekhov, Joanne Dru, Richard Norris, J. M. Kerrigan, George E. Stone, Vera Gordon, and Emory Parnell. The film was released on December 27, 1946, by United Artists. It was a remake of the 1928 film that was based on the 1922 play Abie's Irish Rose by Anne Nichols. The film drew criticism for stereotyping and additional cuts were made after complaints.
Bernard Gorcey was an American actor. He began in Vaudeville, performed on Broadway, and appeared in multiple shorts and films. He portrayed ice cream shop proprietor Louie Dumbrowski in Monogram Pictures' The Bowery Boys series of B movies. He also appeared in Charlie Chaplin's 1940 classic The Great Dictator.
Charles Cantor was an American radio and television actor. Cantor was known for his frequent appearances on radio, sometimes, totaling 40 shows a week, during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Cantor also appeared in nearly 30 television shows between 1951 and 1965.
↑ Herrmann, Dorothy (1982). With Malice Toward All: The Quips, Lives and Loves of Some Celebrated 20th-Century American Wits. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. p.41. ISBN0-399-12710-0.
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