Such exposure made John Raitt, the original Game player, a hunk for the rest of his days, but Connick has gone on record he’s embarrassed by the press play given his impeccable pecs. He is buff but bashful, and his grin-and-bear-it granite resolve is almost palpable.

When he returns to the stage a minute later for a pretty tumultuous curtain call, he is wearing—as he is in the ads—an undershirt, effectively undoing everything Clark Gable did when he took his shirt off in 1934’s It Happened One Night and revealed a bare chest.

Undershirts and the more unmentionables made a sales comeback 20 years later when The Pajama Game reached Broadway. It was, after all, the repressed ‘50s, and the show’s take on sex was fairly feisty for the time. Like the great musicals (My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, The King and I , you know who you are), it all comes down to a battle of the sexes, pure and not-so-simple. The basic he-she business is here complicated socioeconomically by the fact that he is Sid Sorokin, new to the management side of the ledger, and she is Babe Williams, the curvaceous head of the grievance committee.

O’Hara, who won critical cheers for her “breakout” performance, has the right attitude about the billing inequity. “Well, if they want to see that match, they’ll have to come inside,” she says sweetly, and she’s quick to concede that Connick has a lot to do with keeping her on her mark. “He’s wonderful to work with, just what you’d think.”

There is a good 180-degrees of separation between her Babe and the Tony-nominated performance that she is coming directly from—the brain-damaged, child-like Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza —night and day! And she delights in the contrast.

“I think I’m just finding my way. I think this is very appropriate for me, this role, and I’m living in it. I’m loving it. I am a strong woman, c’mon, and I want to show it. I play ingenues a lot, and I love it, but it’s important to show some underbelly once in a while.”

No underbelly showing on Mr. Nice Guy from N’Awlins, who, in fact, made a mensch of Himself—and certainly a lot of points with his new theatre family—at the after-party in one of the massive ballrooms at the Marriott Marquis. He took the mic on stage and thanked the folks who got him through his first Broadway role—starting with director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall , “everybody on the crew” and “the best cast on Broadway.”

In particular, he praised his leading lady, crediting their on-stage click with regional fumes (he’s from Louisiana, and she’s from Oklahoma). In fact, lest she forget, he gave her a very unique opening-night present he acquired on the Internet from her hometown of Elk City, OK—a tumbleweed!—“so you never forget where you come from, baby.”

They’ll be tumbling along until June 11 and not a day longer. “That’s it!” Connick says emphatically. “I gotta get back to my day job.” His day job is concert-touring and making money. “Well,” he says with That Smile, “you can write that. I didn’t say that.”

Connick’s killer smile was much in evidence as first-nighters arrived at the party. A gigantic ear-to-ear gleam shined down on them from a Longines ad at the ballroom entrance. It seems he is the ambassador and “Icon of Elegance” for the Swiss watch company so they footed the bill for the bash and the branded VIP pre-show cocktail hour. The ad triggered ideas of elegant, expensively stuffed goodie-bags, but none materialized.

The Pajama Game is just Connick’s first time on Broadway as a performer . He was here before— as a composer-lyricist of Thou Shall Not , a New Orleans-jazzed-up retelling of Therese Raquin . On the books, it was not a success. In his head, he’s still euphoric about the experience. He even got Tony-nominated for his efforts, and, like a well-brought-up Southern lad, he wrote notes to the Tony voters, thanking them, turning quite a few jaded heads. Furthermore, he’s not heeding that title commandment.

Fact is, he’s 15 songs along into his next Broadway adventure. “I’ve written just about all the music for another show. It’s called Ben Invention . Now, we have to get the stage play written and move from there. I’ve got the whole thing mapped out in my head. I just have to get it down on paper with the writer, so we’re looking around for one. It’s way, way in the embryonic stage right now. As I say, I have to get a writer to do the book for me.

“It’s about a guy named Ben Franklin, who was raised with no social surroundings, kind of in the middle of a forest, but he happens to be the greatest mind that ever lived. He’s a great inventor. He’s invented everything from an airplane to the piano to the telephone. Anything that you can imagine he has invented. He is just unaware all that was already invented so he’s sorta the ultimate loser in that way—always just a little bit too late.

“We wanted it to be a feature film, but I think I would rather it start on stage. There’s something more organic about that to me. There’s something that’s stronger about that.”

If O’Hara comes across as a woman of strength, consider her director-choreographer. One wonders which act was harder for Marshall to follow: the career-making choreography of Bob Fosse or the indelible co-direction of George Abbott and Jerome Robbins. Whew!

“You have the three titans of musical theatre so, of course, it’s horrifyingly intimidating,” she concedes, “but, in a way, when the masters have been there and paved the way for you, all you have to do is recreate it and make it fresh for a modern audience. You know the show works. You know the songs work, you know the story works, you know the characters are compelling. You have that confidence.”