This is a partial rerun of a post that ran here on February 21, 2002 but down below, there will be a little line and everything below the little line will be new content. It's about a Broadway show that I have never seen called Subways Are For Sleeping…
A friend sent me this picture of a famous (in Broadway lore) full-page ad that ran only once and only in one edition of The New York Herald-Tribune. Wanna hear the story behind it? Good. In 1961, the notorious Broadway producer David Merrick had a musical called Subways Are For Sleeping that was limping along at the box office, losing business and about to warrant closure. One reason was that the seven major Broadway critics had been indifferent — some, outright negative — about it. So, if only to cause trouble, Mr. Merrick had his staff dig up seven men with the same names as the seven critics. He brought the men in to see the show, wined and dined them, and secured permission to use their names and photos along with quotes about how much they enjoyed what they'd seen.
An ad was prepared and submitted to all seven newspapers…and it would have gotten into all seven, some say, had not a copy editor at one of the papers spotted the hoax just moments before press time. (The tip-off? The photo of Richard Watts. The theatre critic with that name was not black.) The alert copy editor phoned all the newspapers in town and they all pulled it…except that the early edition of the Herald-Tribune was already on the streets. No matter. Merrick secured what he wanted, which was an enormous amount of publicity. The grosses on Subways took an enormous leap upwards and, while the show was never a huge hit, it managed to last out the season and turn a modest profit.
It was a brilliant publicity stunt…and one that Merrick had wanted to do since the idea occurred to him years earlier. What stopped him was that, back then, the critic for The New York Times was Brooks Atkinson…and Merrick couldn't find anyone else with that name. When Atkinson retired, he was replaced by Howard Taubman…and there was an insurance agent named Howard Taubman.
Some called Merrick "The Abominable Showman" and there are those who worked with him who still get migraines at the mention of his name. I don't doubt that all or most of their tales are true…but I do think this ad was a stroke of genius. They don't make them like David Merrick any longer…which is both good and bad.
Okay, that was the little line and this is Mark now writing on 3/3/24. Like I said, most people have never seen the show Subways Are For Sleeping. It opened on Broadway on December 27, 1961 at the St. James Theater in New York and, as I explained back in 2002, received pretty not-good reviews. It closed there on June 23 the following year after 205 performances — not an out-and-out flop but a pretty disappointing number for a show with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and a score by Jule Styne.
The show the three of them had done just before it was Do-Re-Mi, which was a hit and before that, they'd done Bells Are Ringing, which was an even bigger hit and later Comden and Green did On the Twentieth Century with Cy Coleman. Those were three successful shows that I really liked. The director of Subways, Michael Kidd, had plenty of hits to his credit and there were some stars in the cast — Sydney Chaplin, Carol Lawrence, Orson Bean and Phyllis Newman. Ms. Newman's wardrobe for the entire show consisted of a bath towel and you'd think that alone would have sold some tickets.
So what went wrong such that Subways closed so soon and is almost never revived? It was suggested that its basic storyline — about homeless people who used subway cars as sleeper compartments — turned off a lot of New Yorkers. Well, maybe. I'm among those many who've never seen the show and I can't seem to find a copy of the script anywhere. But I do have the cast album and I also have the record below, which was made by Percy Faith and his Orchestra featuring instrumental-only, jazzed-up recordings of the songs from the show. Mr. Faith and that orchestra of his did a lot of records like this and he always made the material sound really good…
While I was ensconced recently in that Rehab Center for my busted ankle, I listened to a lot of music via Spotify and some of it was show tunes from shows I didn't know. I happened upon Mr. Faith's recording of the tunes from Subways and I thought, "Hey, these are great!" — certainly worthy of the good name of Jule Styne. So then I listened to the actual cast album of the show and I thought, "Hey, these aren't great!" I'm not sure what to think.
I expect to get a message from my pal Jim Brochu who knows everything about Broadway shows but I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone else reading this saw it or even performed in a production somewhere of it and can provide some insight. Or a copy of the script.
If you want to listen to the Percy Faith record, it's here on YouTube with a second Percy Faith album attached. It's also here on Spotify. If you want to listen to the original cast album, it's here on YouTube. And here's a tune from the show performed by Judy Garland. Maybe that's what the Broadway production needed: A Judy Garland…
