Birthday Girl

Oklahoma! turned five. It was possibly the last annual milestone the Pulitzer-cited musical would pass on Broadway; she was still "fresh as a daisy," one critic reported, but her long box-office stride was slackening--as well it might. Oklahoma! had already far outrun (2,134 performances) any other musical in Broadway history*; only a handful of plays (e.g., Life with Father, Tobacco Road, Abie's Irish Rose) had lasted longer.

A road company was still going strong after four years, and a London production was sold out months in advance. Oklahoma! had been seen by more than 8,000,000 people. The show's music had sold more than 500,000 albums, more than 2,000,000 copies of sheet music (both figures are records).

Last week the Theatre Guild gave the old girl a well-deserved birthday party. The Guild, almost broke when it backed Oklahoma!, owes much of its present position as the most prosperous showmaker on Broadway to the success of this show. A lot of people at the party also owed plenty to the birthday girl. For Choreographer Agnes de Mille and for Dick Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, she had set off a firecracker-string of Broadway successes. She had helped boost many of her onetime players (notably Celeste Holm, Joan McCracken, Bambi Linn, Mary Hatcher, Howard Da Silva, Pamela Britton, Alfred Drake) toward Broadway or Hollywood fame. And to her happy angels (among them: Producers Max Gordon and Lee Shubert, Playwright S. N. Behrman) she had paid off 25 to 1.

*Chu-Chin-Chow (1916) holds a longer record for the London stage: 2,238 performances.

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