''The Fabulous Invalid'' is a 1938

stage play A play is a work of drama, usually consisting mostly of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and intended for theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Reading (process), reading. The writer of a play is called a playwright. Pla ...

George S. Kaufman George Simon Kaufman (November 16, 1889June 2, 1961) was an American playwright, theater director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals for the Marx Brothers and others. ...

and

Moss Hart Moss Hart (October 24, 1904 – December 20, 1961) was an American playwright, librettist, and theater director. Early years Hart was born in New York City, the son of Lillian (Solomon) and Barnett Hart, a cigar maker. He had a younger brother ...

following the oscillating fortunes of a fictitious

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

theater, the Alexandria, in the period between 1900 and 1930. The play's title has since entered the vernacular as a synonym for the theater.

Production history

In 1937, Moss Hart conceived the notion for ''The Fabulous Invalid'' after acquiring hundreds of back issues of ''Theatre'' magazine and immersing himself in the magazine's documentation of a vanished theatrical era. With his frequent collaborator George S. Kaufman, Hart began to develop an historical pageant that traced the evolution of the American theater from the 1700s to the present, potentially starring

Alfred Lunt Alfred David Lunt (August 12, 1892 – August 3, 1977) was an American actor and director, best known for his long stage partnership with his wife, Lynn Fontanne, from the 1920s to 1960, co-starring in Broadway theatre, Broadway and West End thea ...

and

Lynn Fontanne Lynn Fontanne (; 6 December 1887 – 30 July 1983) was an English actress. After early success in supporting roles in the West End, she met the American actor Alfred Lunt, whom she married in 1922 and with whom she co-starred in Broadway and We ...

. (When told of the project, Lunt was reportedly most excited about the prospect of wearing

blackface Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...

in a section devoted to

minstrel shows The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spe ...

.) Kaufman and Hart soon scotched the project due to structural issues; upon further research, they also discovered "that the early days of the American theatre were not permeated with much apparent romance and that the plays then produced were appallingly and incredibly dull.""'The Fabulous Invalid,'"
''The New York Times'' 30 Oct. 1938. In the spring of 1938, the team revived the idea in a scaled-down form, deciding that it would follow the fortunes of a single Broadway theatre, the fictitious Alexandria, during the 30-year period between 1900 and 1930. Over the course of the play, the Alexandria devolves from a legitimate playhouse to a movie theater to a

burlesque A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

hall before it is climactically rescued from the wrecking ball by a young repertory company that resembles the

Mercury Theatre The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also ...

.Atkinson, Brooks
"Moss Hart and George Kaufman Celebrate the Theatre in 'The Fabulous Invalid,'
''The New York Times'' 10 Oct. 1938. The passage of time in ''The Fabulous Invalid'' is illustrated by a

Living Newspaper Living Newspaper is a term for a theatrical form presenting factual information on current events to a popular audience. Historically, Living Newspapers have also urged social action (both implicitly and explicitly) and reacted against naturali ...

-style cavalcade of scenes from 26 plays and musicals, including ''

Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines ''Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines'' is an opera in three acts by Jack Beeson written in 1975 to a libretto by Sheldon Harnick after the 1901 play of the same name by Clyde Fitch. The play had previously been adapted for a 1916 silent film. Th ...

'' (1901) by

Clyde Fitch Clyde Fitch (May 2, 1865 – September 4, 1909) was an American dramatist, the most popular writer for the Broadway stage of his time (c. 1890–1909). Biography Born in Elmira, New York, and educated at Holderness School and Amherst College (cl ...

, ''

Little Johnny Jones ''Little Johnny Jones'' is a musical by George M. Cohan. The show introduced Cohan's tunes " Give My Regards to Broadway" and " The Yankee Doodle Boy." The "Yankee Doodle" character was inspired by real-life Hall of Fame jockey Tod Sloan. Bac ...

'' (1904) by

George M. Cohan George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudev ...

, ''

The Lion and the Mouse The Lion and the Mouse is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 150 in the Perry Index. There are also Eastern variants of the story, all of which demonstrate mutual dependence regardless of size or status. In the Renaissance the fable was provided w ...

'' (1905) by

Charles Klein Charles Klein (January 7, 1867 – May 7, 1915) was an English-born playwright and actor who emigrated to America in 1883. Among his works was the libretto of John Philip Sousa's operetta, ''El Capitan''. Klein's talented siblings includ ...

, '' Within the Law'' (1912) by

Bayard Veiller Bayard Veiller (January 2, 1869 – January 16, 1943) was an American playwright, screenwriter, producer and film director. He wrote for 32 films between 1915 and 1941. Biography He was born on January 2, 1869, in Brooklyn, New York to Phi ...

, ''

Anna Christie ''Anna Christie'' is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. It made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921. O'Neill received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this work. According to historian Paul Avrich, the orig ...

'' (1921) by

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

, and '' What Price Glory?'' (1924) by

Maxwell Anderson James Maxwell Anderson (December 15, 1888 – February 28, 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist, and lyricist. Background Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to ...

and

Laurence Stallings Laurence Tucker Stallings (November 25, 1894 – February 28, 1968) was an American playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, literary critic, journalist, novelist, and photographer. Best known for his collaboration with Maxwell Anderson on the 1924 pl ...

; actors recreated the performances of legendary stage stars such as

Ethel Barrymore Ethel Barrymore (born Ethel Mae Blythe; August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regarde ...

Minnie Maddern Fiske Minnie Maddern Fiske (born Marie Augusta Davey; December 19, 1865 – February 15, 1932), but often billed simply as Mrs. Fiske, was one of the leading American actresses of the late 19th and early 20th century. She also spearheaded the fig ...

, and

Elsie Janis Elsie Janis (born Elsie Bierbower, March 16, 1889 – February 26, 1956) was an American actress of stage and screen, singer, songwriter, screenwriter and radio announcer. Entertaining the troops during World War I immortalized her as "Forces ...

.Brown, Jared. ''Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theatre.'' New York: Back Stage, 2006. 150-2. ''The Fabulous Invalid'' opened on Broadway on October 8, 1938 at the

Broadhurst Theatre The Broadhurst Theatre is a Broadway theatre, Broadway theater at 235 West 44th Street (Manhattan), 44th Street in the Theater District, Manhattan, Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1917, the theater was designed ...

with a 73-person cast that included Richard Gordon, Doris Dalton, Stephen Courtleigh,

Jack Norworth John Godfrey Knauff (January 5, 1879 – September 1, 1959), known professionally as Jack Norworth, was an American songwriter, singer and vaudeville performer. Biography Norworth is credited as writer of a number of Tin Pan Alley hits. He wr ...

, and

Ernest Lawford Ernest E. Lawford (1870–1940) was an English stage and film actor. Biography Lawford made his theatrical debut in 1890 in London at the St James's Theatre in '' As You Like It''. Later he appeared in productions of ''Charley's Aunt'' and ''A Wom ...

. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' deemed the play "too obvious to be affecting," and while ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

Brooks Atkinson Justin Brooks Atkinson (November 28, 1894 – January 14, 1984) was an American theatre critic. He worked for ''The New York Times'' from 1922 to 1960. In his obituary, the ''Times'' called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of his ...

praised Kaufman and Hart's ambition and the sumptuousness of the physical production, he ultimately dismissed it as "a ponderous show that reaffirms the commonplace." ''The Fabulous Invalid'' closed on December 3, 1938 after 65 performances. The play has never been revived on Broadway, and Hart later described it as "unmourned and over-sentimental."

Chock full o'Nuts Chock full o'Nuts is an American brand of coffee that originated from a chain of New York City coffee shops. Its unusual name derives from the 18 nut shops that founder William Black (c. 1902 – 1983) established under that banner in the city ...

was mentioned disparagingly in the play, prompting the company to sue Kaufman and Hart for $24,500 in damages. The suit was dismissed, partly because Kaufman and Hart told the judge that they had previously satirized the likes of

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

and

George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until Death and state funeral of George V, his death in 1936. Born duri ...

without incident. In 2003, a revised version of ''The Fabulous Invalid'' was produced at

Emerson College Emerson College is a private college with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts. It also maintains campuses in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California and Well, Limburg, Netherlands ( Kasteel Well). Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a ...

; the playwright

Jeffrey Hatcher Jeffrey Hatcher is an American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play ''Compleat Female Stage Beauty'', which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just ''Stage Beauty'' (2004). He also co-wrote the stage adaptation o ...

reworked the text to encompass the 100-year history of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Cutler Majestic Theatre The Cutler Majestic Theatre at Emerson College, in Boston, Massachusetts, is a 1903 Beaux Arts style theater, designed by the architect John Galen Howard. Originally built for theatre, it was one of three theaters commissioned in Boston by Eben ...

, and the production featured

Alice Ripley Alice Ripley (born December 14, 1963) is an American actress, singer, songwriter and mixed media artist. She is known, in particular, for her various roles on Broadway in musicals, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Next to Normal'' (2009 T ...

and

Steve Hendrickson Steven Daniel Hendrickson (August 30, 1966 – January 8, 2021) was an American professional football player who was a linebacker in the National Football League (NFL). Hendrickson attended Napa High School where he was an outstanding varsity p ...

as two of the theater's "ghosts."

Legacy

Kaufman and Hart coined the phrase "the fabulous invalid" to describe the resilience of the theater despite continual pronouncements of its demise. In 1940, ''The New York Times'' referred to it as "a fond phrase that will probably stick," and the phrase has indeed entered the vernacular."'Fabulous Invalid,'" ''The New York Times'' 21 Apr. 1940.Siegel, Ed
"A quick-witted gift for the Majestic's 100th,"
''The Boston Globe'' 19 Nov. 2003. In his 2001 biography of Hart,

Steven Bach Steven Bach (April 29, 1938 – March 25, 2009) was an American writer and lecturer on film and a former senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios. Career Starting out at Pantheon Films he worked on ''The P ...

wrote that the play's title was "the most enduring thing about it."Bach, Steven. ''Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart.'' New York: Da Capo, 2001. 168-9.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fabulous Invalid, The 1938 plays Broadway plays Plays by George S. Kaufman Plays by Moss Hart