Al Hirschfeld Theatre (Broadway)

At the time of its opening in 1924, the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (originally called the Martin Beck Theatre) at 302 West Forty-fifth Street was described by the New York Times as the only theatre in America designed in the Byzantine genre. Martin Beck, the vaudeville mogul who built the house, conceived the building's style and entrusted its design and execution to San Francisco architect G. Albert Alnsburgh. The Martin Beck was also located farther west than any other legitimate theatre at that time, being just west of Eighth Avenue.

With a seating capacity of 1,200 and dressing rooms for 200 actors, the house was ideal for musicals and spectacular productions. Curiously, it has in its sixty years of operation housed many distinguished dramatic plays, some of which were definitely not spectacular. One of the Martin Beck's features has been its unusually large foyer and promenade.

The Martin Beck opened on November 11, 1924, with a Viennese operetta,"Mme. Pompadour," adapted by playwright Clare Kummer, but the public was weary of schmaltzy operettas at this time and the show ran for a moderate eighty performances.

The theatre had better luck in 1925 when Captain Jinks arrived. This was a musical version of Clyde Fitch's play "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines," which had made a star of Ethel Barrymore. In this version the marine captain (J. Harold Murray) is in love with a world-famous dancer, Trentoni (Louise Brown). Also in the cast was comedian Joe E. Brown as a hack driver. Five collaborators worked on the musical, and it ran for 167 performances.

One of the most sensational plays ever produced on Broadway, John Colton's "The Shanghai Gesture," made waves on February 1, 1926. It starred Florence Reed as Mother Goddam, the owner of a notorious Shanghai whorehouse. It was her most famous role. Seeking revenge on a Britisher who once dumped her to marry an English woman, she lures him to her brothel, then sells his own daughter off as a prostitute. Then, discovering that the daughter she had by the Britisher has turned into a dope fiend, she strangles her to death. The critics scoffed at this purple melodrama, but audiences loved it and kept the Martin Beck full for 210 performances.

Next, the Martin Beck booked a comedy and it turned out to be its biggest hit so far. It was called "The Shannons of Broadway" and it was written by actor James Gleason, who also starred in it. Playing a vaudevillian, he and his wife (Lucile Webster) have comic adventures when they buy and operate a hotel in New England. The popular comedy ran for 288 performances.

Beginning in December 1928 the prestigious Theatre Guild began producing a number of fascinating plays at the Martin Beck, featuring the famed Theatre Guild Acting Company. Their first production, an anti-war play called "Wings Over Europe," was chosen by Burns Mantle as one of the year's ten best. Next, in February 1929, they presented Eugene O'Neill's unusual play "Dynamo," which pitted religion against science and starred Claudette Colbert, Dudley Digges, Glenn Anders, and Helen Westley. Despite its offbeat attraction, the play lasted only 66 performances. More successful was "The Camel Through the Needle's Eye" (1929), a play about an illegitimate girl (Miriam Hopkins) who meets a rich man (Claude Rains) and makes a success out of him by going into the dairy business with him. The excellent cast also included Henry Travers, Helen Westley, and Morris Carnovsky, and the play ran for 195 performances. The 1930 Theatre Guild productions included a Russian play, "Red Rust" (1929), with Lee Strasberg, Luther Adler, and Franchot Tone, who would soon be prominent in the Group Theatre; Philip Barry's metaphysical play Hotel Universe (1930), in which a group of guests in a French villa recall incidents from their youth that had a profound influence on their lives, brilliantly acted by Ruth Gordon, Glenn Anders, Katherine Alexander, Morris Carnovsky, and others; and Roar China! (1930), a play about a Chinese rebellion in which an enormous British warship occupied the vast reaches of the Martin Beck stage.

In 1931 the Theatre Guild moved its successful production of Maxwell Anderson's "Elizabeth the Queen," starring the Lunts, from the Guild Theatre to the Martin Beck. The Lunts next appeared at this theatre in one of their acting triumphs, Robert E. Sherwood's romantic comedy "Reunion in Vienna" (1931).

Just before the Lunts' triumph in "Reunion in Vienna," the Martin Beck housed the first production of the Group Theatre, made up of younger members of the Theatre Guild who had been responsible for the presentation of "Roar China!" The play was Paul Green's The House of Connelly and it was produced under the auspices of the Theatre Guild. It was chosen as one of the year's ten best, was staged by Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford and dealt with the clash of generations in an aristocratic southern family. The critics were very receptive to the production.

In 1932 the Abbey Irish Theatre Players (including Barry Fitzgerald) played a season of repertory, including such Irish classics as "The Far-off Hills," "Juno and the Paycock," "Playboy of the Western World," and "The Shadow of a Gunman."

In December 1933 Broadway waited with great anticipation for the return of Katharine Hepburn to the stage in a British play, "The Lake," to be directed by Jed Harris. Miss Hepburn had gone to Hollywood and become a superstar in a very short time and so eminent was she that Mr. Harris forbade the rest of the cast (including many distinguished actors) to speak to her offstage. The play opened, and Hepburn's nervous performance inspired the famed Dorothy Parker crack, "She ran the gamut of emotions --from A to B." The general opinion was that Katharine Hepburn flopped in "The Lake."

Sidney Howard's documentary play "Yellow Jack" (1934), written with Paul de Kruif and adapted from de Kruif's book The Microbe Hunters, opened next. It was based on the true record of Walter Reed and the researchers who located the yellow-fever-breeding mosquito in Cuba. The large cast included James Stewart, Edward Acuff, Myron McCormick, and Sam Levene as marine privates who volunteered to be bitten by the deadly mosquitoes. The play only ran seventy-nine performances but was admired by the critics.

The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company played a four-month season at the Martin Beck in 1934 and was followed by Katharine Cornell as a radiant Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet," with Basil Rathbone as Romeo, Brian Aherne as Mercutio, Orson Welles as Tybalt, Edith Evans as the Nurse, and John Emery as Benvolio. Cornell was hailed for her luminous performance, and the sumptuous production, with magical sets by Jo Mielziner and dances by Martha Graham, ran for seventy-eight performances. Cornell followed her Juliet with two other productions at the theatre: a revival of her beloved gem "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (1935), with Brian Aherne, Burgess Meredith, and Brenda Forbes, and John van Druten's anti-war play "Flowers of the Forest" (1935), with Cornell, Burgess Meredith, and Margalo Gillmore.

A major dramatic event occurred at the Martin Beck on September 25, 1935. Maxwell Anderson's "Winterset" opened and proved to be a fascinating and controversial blank-verse drama. Starring Burgess Meredith, Margo, Richard Bennett, and Eduardo Ciannelli, the tragedy dealt with a son's quest for his father's muderer. The action took place beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and Jo Mielziner's majestic set was one of his greatest designs. The play won the first award as best drama of the season conferred by the newly formed New York Drama Critics Circle. It ran for 178 performances.

On March 9, 1936, Katharine Cornell returned in glory to this theatre in her acclaimed revival of Shaw's "Saint Joan." Brilliantly directed by her husband Guthrie McClintic, who directed all her plays, the production was hailed as a work of art. Maurice Evans was the Dauphin, and the large cast also included Brian Aherne, Arthur Byron, Eduardo Ciannelli, Kent Smith, George Coulouris, and the future film idol Tyrone Power, Jr.

The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company paid a return visit with their repertory in 1936, followed by another Maxwell Anderson play, a fantasy called "High Tor," which won the second best play award conferred by the New York Drama Critics Circle. The fanciful play starred Burgess Meredith, and British actress Peggy Ashcroft, and featured young Hume Cronyn. It was set on top of an actual mountain on the Hudson called High Tor and involved the young man who owned it and who refused to sell it. Ghosts of ancient Dutch sailors waiting for the return of Henry Hudson's boat added comic relief and the refreshing play ran for 171 performances.

The remainder of the 1930s found the Martin Beck occupied by Ina Claire in an unsuccessful adaptation of Trollope's Barchester Towers (1937); a revival of Victoria Regina, with Helen Hayes repeating her celebrated role (1938); another engagement of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (1939); and Helen Hayes again, this time in a modern, murder trial play, Ladies and Gentlemen (1939), adapted by her husband, Charles MacArthur, and Ben Hecht from a Hungarian play. It was a moderate success, running for 105 performances.

In 1940, Lady in Waiting, a dramatization of Margery Sharp's popular novel The Nutmeg Tree, had a sterling comic performance by Gladys George, but ran for only 87 performances. On April 1, 1941, Lillian Hellman's powerful play "Watch on the Rhine," starring Paul Lukas, Lucile Watson, Mady Christians, and George Coulouris stunned audiences with its anti-fascist theme. Directed by Herman Shumlin and brilliantly acted, the play won the best American play award conferred by the New York Drama Critics Circle and ran for 378 performances. John Steinbeck's adaptation of his novel "The Moon Is Down" (1942) was next, but did not achieve great success. The popular comedy hit "My Sister Eileen" moved here from the Biltmore and stayed for four months. The Lunts arrived in "The Pirate" in November 1942, S.N. Behrman's colorful adaptation of an idea in a play by Ludwig Fulda. It gave Lunt an opportunity to walk a tightrope and pretend he was a notorious pirate whom Fontanne idolizes. This bizarre burlesque ran for 176 performances.

One of the Martin Beck's biggest hits was S.N. Behrman's adaptation of Franz Werfel's play "Jacobowsky and the Colonel" (1944), starring Louis Calhern, Oscar Karlweis, Annabella, J. Edward Bromberg, and E.G. Marshall. The adventurous story involved a comical and enterprising refugee named Jacobowsky (Karlweis), an aristocratic Polish colonel (Calhern), and a beautiful blonde (Annabella) fleeing together in a car from Nazi-occupied France. The comedy ran for 415 performances.

In March 1945 Tallulah Bankhead and Donald Cook opened in "Foolish Notion," Philip Barry's most foolish play. This misguided venture was followed by the rollicking musical "On the Town," which moved in from the 44th Street Theatre for a stay of five months. Next came the melodious Harold Arlen/ Johnny Mercer musical "St. Louis Woman" (1946), with Pearl Bailey, Rex Ingram, Juanita Hall, and the Nicholas Brothers, directed by Rouben Mamoulian: Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1946), with James Barton, Dudley Digges, E.G. Marshall, Nicholas Joy, Tom Pedi, and Jeanne Cagney; Nancy Walker in a musical, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1947), adapted from his humorous book of the same name by Max Shulman; Katharine Cornell, Godfrey Tearle, Kent Smith, Eli Wallach, Maureen Stapleton, Charlton Heston, Lenore Ulric, and Douglass Watson in a revival of Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra (1949); unsuccessful revivals of Shaw's "You Never Can Tell" and Jerome "Kern's Sally" (1948); Katharine Cornell in one of her poorest productions, "That Lady" (1949), in which she performed with a black patch over her eye.

During the 1950s at the Martln Beck, Helen Hayes appeared in "The Wisteria Trees,"Joshua Logan's adaptation of "The Cherry Orchard" (1950), set in America's deep south; Gilbert Miller unveiled his sumptuous production of "Ring Round the Moon" (1950), Christopher Fry's translation of Jean Anouilh's charade with music; Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, Don Murray, and Phyllis Love shined in Tennessee Williams's "The Rose Tattoo" (1951), with Stapleton and Wallach winning Tony Awards for their performances and the play winning a Tony as the best drama of the season; Maxwell Anderson's "Barefoot in Athens" was a failure in 1951, and Truman Capote's "The Grass Harp" also flopped in 1952; Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" (1953), with Arthur Kennedy, Beatrice Straight, E.G. Marshall, Walter Hampden, and Madeleine Sherwood, focused on the Salem witch hunts and was more successful when it was later revived Off-Broadway.

On October 15, 1953, one of the Martin Beck's most memorable productions opened and stayed for 1,027 performances. It was John Patrick's enchanting comedy "The Teahouse of the August Moon," and it won five Tony Awards, including best actor (David Wayne) and best play. It also starred John Forsythe and Paul Ford and it delighted with its comical depiction of the American occupation of Okinawa Island.

On October 30, 1956, Shaw's "Major Barbara" was successfully revived. The production, directed by Charles Laughton, also starred Mr. Laughton and Cornelia Otis Skinner, Burgess Meredith, Glynis Johns, and Eli Wallach. It moved to the Morosco to make way for the Beck's next tenant, "Candide," a musical version of the Voltaire classic with music by Leonard Bernstein, book by Lillian Hellman, lyrics by Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, Leonard Bernstein, and Dorothy Parker. With these geniuses at the helm, the production (directed by Tyrone Guthrie) should have been a triumph, but it was not.

A minor Tennessee Williams's play, "Orpheus Descending," with Maureen Stapleton, Cliff Robertson, and Lois Smith, lasted only 68 performances in 1957; but a flimsy comedy, "Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?," with Mary Healy, Peter Lind Hayes, and Ray Walston, managed to last 208 times. The final show of the 1950s at the Beck was a Tennessee Williams winner, "Sweet Bird of Youth," with Geraldine Page giving an unforgettable performance as a fading movie star who is living with a young hustler (Paul Newman). It ran for 375 performances.

On April 14, 1960, a jubilant hit came to the Martin Beck. "Bye, Bye Birdie," an exuberant musical parody of the rock-and-roll craze and its gyrating Elvis Presley, was an instant hit and won the following Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Book (Michael Stewart); Best Score (Charles Strouse and Lee Adams); Best Direction and Best Choreography (Gower Champion); Best Supporting Actor (Dick Van Dyke). The gifted cast also included Chita Rivera, Paul Lynde, Dick Gautier (as a Presley clone), Kay Medford and Michael Pollard. It ran for 607 performances.

During the 1960s, the Martin Beck housed a number of shows that moved there from other houses. Some highlights that originated at the Beck during this decade included Jerry Herman's "Milk and Honey" (1961), about the new Israel; Anne Bancroft, Barbara Harris, Gene Wilder, and Zohra Lampert in a revival of Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children" (1963), staged by Jerome Robbins; Colleen Dewhurst and Michael Dunn in Edward Albee's adaptation of Carson McCullers's "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" (1963); Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, and Robert Shaw in Friedrich Durrenmatt's "The Physicists" (1964), directed by Peter Brook, Buddy Hackett and Richard Kiley in the rowdy musical "I Had a Ball" (1964); the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's mesmerizing production of "The Persecution and Assassination of Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade" (1965); Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Rosemary Murphy, and Marian Seldes in Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" (1966); Leslie Uggams, Robert Hooks, Lillian Hayman, and Allen Case in the Tony Award winning musical "Hallelujah, Baby!" (1967), by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule Styne; the long-running musical "Man of La Mancha," which moved here from the downtown ANTA Theatre (1968).

During the early 1970s the Martin Beck had a run of plays and musicals that did not last very long. The most notable were Edward Albee's "All Over" (1971), with Jessica Tandy, Colleen Dewhurst, Betty Field, and George Voskovec; a musical version of "The Grass Harp" (1971), starring Barbara Cook, and a British import, Habeas Corpus (1975), with June Havoc, Rachel Roberts, Richard Gere, Celeste Holm, Jean Marsh, and Paxton Whitehead. On October 20, 1977, Frank Langella opened in the title role of Dracula, and the Martin Beck became a happy haven for thrill-seekers for 925 performances. Mr. Langella was succeeded by Raul Julia and David Dukes. The much publicized Broadway debut of Elizabeth Taylor in "The Little Foxes" had a sellout run in 1981.

The Martin Beck's most recent tenants have been a baseball musical, "The First" (1981); "Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" (1981), with Cher making her Broadway debut; Angela Lansbury in "A Little Family Business" (1982); and the Royal Shakespeare Company's splendid revival of Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well" (1983).

In 1984, Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivers opened here in "The Rink," a musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander and Fred Ebb. Ms. Rivera won a Tony Award for her performance. The following year, John Lithgow starred in a stage adaptation of Rod Serling's successful TV and movie story, Requiem for a Heavyweight, but it was short-lived. Also doomed was a revival of the musical "Take Me Along" (based on Eugene O'Neill's nostalgic comedy, "Ah, Wilderness"), which closed on its opening night in 1985.

The Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical, "Into the Woods," fared better in 1987 and stayed here until 1989. This was followed by the successful "Grand Hotel" and a Tony Award-winning revival of Frank Loesser's classic "Guys and Dolls," which also won a Tony Award for Faith Prince as Adelaide and the Best Revival Tony.

The most recent productions at this theatre have been Sweet Charity; Wonderful Town; Man of La Mancha; Sweet Smell of Success; Kiss Me, Kate; The Sound of Music; Annie; Moon Over Buffalo; and David Copperfield Dreams & Nightmares.

The Martin Beck Theatre remained in the Beck family until 1966. The theatre is currently owned and operated by Jujamcyn Theatres, which has kept the house in the finest condition. It was renamed the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on June 23, 2003, in honor of the late, great illustrator and chronicler of the New York theatre scene.

Theatre Information:
302 West 45th Street
New York, NY 10036
US

Public Transportation:
SUBWAY: Take the N,Q,R,W or 1,2,3,9 to 42nd Street, walk East on 42nd Street to Eight Avenue, walk North on Eight Avenue to 45th Street, walk West on 45th Street to the theatre; Take the A,C,E to 42nd Street, walk North on Eighth Avenue to 45th Street and

Handicap Access:
ACCESS INTO THEATRE: Theatre is not completely wheelchair accessible. There are no steps into the theatre from the sidewalk. Please be advised that where there are steps either into or within the theatre, we are unable to provide assistance. ORCHESTRA LOCATION: Seating is accessible to all parts of the Orchestra without steps. There are no steps to the designated wheelchair seating location. MEZZANINE LOCATION: Located on the 2nd level: up 20 steps. Please Note: On the Mezzanine level, there are approximately 2 steps up/down per row. Entrance to Mezzanine is behind row C. RESTROOM: There is a wheelchair accessible restroom (unisex) located on the lobby level. There is a men's restroom located on the Mezzanine level. A ladies' restroom is located on the lower lounge (down 18 steps).

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