Scheduled to open January 14, 1960 at the 54th Street Theatre.
On December 8, 1959, producer Paul Gregory announced that the show would shut down in Boston for rewriting and it would go back into rehearsals in March for an April opening. It never happened.
In response to the announcement about rewriting, Ginger Rogers told the press, "It needs more than a face-lift. They better bury it. It had no substance, it was a big nothing. We would have been foolish to face the seven New York critics. They would have shot us out of the water."
Eve Arden was approached to star but an agreement couldn't be reached.
The January 13 performance was to have benefitted Lenox Hill Hospital. The January 28 performance was to have benefitted The Smith College Club. The February 1 performance was to benefit the Masters Childrens' Center and the Masters Nursery. Obviously, none of these benefits ever occurred.
The production was to move to the Erlanger Theatre in Philadelphia for four weeks after the Boston run. But it closed in Boston.
Because of the complexity of the set, the production required two 28-foot boxcars and two cargo planes to move the show from tryout stop to tryout stop. The planes were used to move the double treadmills, which required extra setup time. The treadmills were specifically designed and were much larger than others in use in the theatre. They were 60 feet in length, one being five feet wide and the other being four feet wide. The custom treadmills required a specially-designed power unit.
The treadmills were used to move scenery. In one scene, they became part of the action when Ginger Rogers and Ray Hamilton were made to seem as though they were walking down 5th Avenue. While they were on one treadmill, miniatures of 5th Avenue buildings moved in the opposite direction on the other treadmill.
The total cost of the production was $300,000. Ginger Rogers's wardrobe alone cost $130,000 being designed by Jean Louis (she had 14 costume changes). One of her costumes was a $35,000 fur trenchcoat. One of her gowns was an all-bead dress that required a bead seamstress to travel with it.
Agnes Moorehead got good reviews as Eleanor West. She spent the evening making wisecracks about the people that couldn't see her. She entered disguised as a waitress, stenographer, and a lady cop. She even flew! Moorehead would have a similar role several years later in the TV sitcom Bewitched.
Taking a cue from bad reviews in Detroit (and the bad reviews in San Francisco), the show was given a complete rewrite in the second week of its Detroit run.
Rogers and Moorehead reportedly feuded backstage. The feud made it into newspaper articles. After the articles about feuding were published, they gave each other gifts and were quoted as saying, "If we were feuding, would we have done that?!"
The song list on this page reflects the Boston song list as of December 7, 1959.
Some sources incorrectly list the Cass Theatre as the venue for the run in Detroit. The Detroit run was at the Shubert.
