So Rich the Rose

Abie's Irish Rose is still a bad play, I don't think it will last forever.

The late Heywood Broun made this resigned observation in the fifth year (1927) of Abie's staggering Broadway run.* Last week it seemed as if nothing short of an Axis victory could make Broun's prophecy come true.

For Abie's Irish Rose, made over into a serial, was on the radio. It had been on the air 56 times and was going strong. One of the top 20 shows on the U.S. air, it is broadcast coast to coast by 125 stations of the NBC network (Sat., 8-8:30 p.m. E.W.T.). It has listeners in some 5,000,000 homes.

Radio, the habitual borrower, was a long time getting around to Anne Nichols' indestructible comedy. The comic-strip farce of the Levys' and the Murphys' painful acceptance of their children's marriage had played all over the U.S. (once 16 road companies were hard at it) and throughout most of the civilized world. It had even lasted eight months in Berlin just before Hitler.

Mommele, Poppele. Abie was a natural for radio when Anne Nichols persuaded Soapmaker Procter & Gamble to put it on the air last year. Playwright Nichols, who bats out the serial with the assistance of a writer named Alford Van Ronkel and the cast, hoarded her material so carefully that a year passed before she exhausted the three acts of her play. The strident squabbles continue with the newlyweds subordinated to their united families. Babies belch, actors say "oi" and "certainel," call each other "mommele," "poppele," and "schlemihlich shpalpeen."

For this masterwork Miss Nichols is paid an estimated $6,000 a week. She is used to making money from Abie: she has lived off it for 21 years. In that time it has earned her some $2,000,000 in royalties--plus a half million or so from the movie version. At present, she says, several Hollywood studios are again bidding for Abie. She hopes that this time they will do many installments--like the Andy Hardy series.

Percy Is Pained. Now about 47, Miss Nichols is a soft-voiced, moist-eyed, zoftig (means what it sounds like) blonde with a reputation for good will and the buying of drinks for the house. After turning out Hollywood scripts at $10 apiece, Miss Nichols decided to write herself a real acting part. She produced an earnest work called Humanity which made Brooklyn audiences split their sides. A dozen plays (including Linger Longer Letty) later. Miss Nichols hit a gusher with Abie's Irish Rose.

Contrary to legend, some Manhattan drama critics received it with considerable cordiality. The late Alexander Woollcott found merit in it. The late, great Percy Hammond intoned: "Later in the day I shall probably meet an acquaintance and he will ask me, as is the practice of a reviewer's acquaintances, what, if anything, I think of Abie's Irish Rose. Whereupon I shall oppress him with a sullen silence and pass upon my gloomy ways."

*Only Broadway play to top its record 2,327 performances was Tobacco Road, with 3,182.

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