Life With Father

Life With Father
Written by	Clarence Day, Jr. Howard Lindsay Russel Crouse
Date premiered	November 8, 1939
Place premiered	Empire Theatre New York City
Original language	English
Genre	Comedy
Setting	The morning room of the Day house on Madison Avenue. The late 1880s.

Life With Father is a humorous autobiographical book of stories compiled in 1935 by Clarence Day, Jr., which was adapted by Lindsay and Crouse in 1939 into the longest running non-musical Broadway play in history, which was, in turn, made into a 1947 movie and a television series.

The book

Clarence Day wrote humorously about his family and life. The stories of his father, Clarence "Clare" Day, Senior, were first printed in the New Yorker magazine. They portray a rambunctious, overburdened Wall Street broker who demands that everything from his family should be just so. The more he rails against his staff, his cook, his wife, his horse, salesmen, holidays, his children and the inability of the world to live up to his impossible standards, the more comical and lovable he becomes to his own family who love him despite it all. First published in 1936, shortly after his death, Day's book is a picture of New York upper-middle-class family life in the 1890s. The stories are filled with affectionate irony. Day's understated, matter-of-fact style underlines the comedy in everyday situations.^[1]

Broadway play

Postcard showing cast featuring Dorothy Gish

The 1939 Broadway production ran for over seven years to become the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway, a record that it still holds.^[2] It also held the title of the longest running Broadway play of any type of all time from 1947 to 1972.^[3]

It opened at the Empire Theatre on November 8, 1939 and ran at that theatre until September 8, 1945. It then moved to the Bijou Theatre where it ran until June 15, 1947, and finished its run at the Alvin Theatre on July 12, 1947, for a combined total of 3,224 performances. The play was produced by Oscar Serlin, staged by Bretaigne Windust, with setting and costumes by Stewart Chaney. It starred Howard Lindsay, his wife Dorothy Stickney, and Teresa Wright.^[4] James Christie, a young red-headed actor, was also a long-running member of the cast. James (or Jimmy) Christie, at 15 years old, began playing Whitney (the third son) in 1939 on Broadway at the Empire Theatre and remained during most of its 7-year run, playing both Whitney and John (the next to eldest son) as he aged through the play's run.

Opening night cast

Katherine Bard as Annie Dorothy Stickney as Vinnie John Drew Devereaux as Clarence            Richard Simon as John Raymond Roe as Whitney Larry Robinson as Harlan Howard Lindsay as Father Dorothy Bernard as Margaret

Ruth Hammond as Cora Teresa Wright as Mary Richard Sterling as the Reverend Dr. Lloyd Portia Morrow as Delia Nellie Burt as Nora A. H. Van Buren as Dr. Humphreys John C. King as Dr. Somers Timothy Kearse as Maggie

Film and television

Leon Ames and Lurene Tuttle in the television version, 1954.

The play adaptation of Life With Father was made into a film in 1947, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring William Powell and Irene Dunne as Clarence and his wife, supported by Elizabeth Taylor, Edmund Gwenn, ZaSu Pitts, Jimmy Lydon and Martin Milner. Six years later, the film was itself adapted into a television series, starring Leon Ames and Lurene Tuttle, which ran from November 1953 until July 1955 on the CBS Television network.^[5] The series was the first live color program for network TV to originate in Hollywood.^[6] The film (not the series) and its audio entered the public domain in 1975.^[7]

References

Notes

1. Barnes and Noble book information and synopsis
2. New York Times review and production information
3. (19 June 1972). Fiddler on the Roof longest running show, Ottawa Citizen (Associated Press)
4. Internet Broadway Database listing for Broadway production ibdb.com
5. tv.com listing for Life With Father television show
6. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present. Ballantine Books. p. 685. ISBN 0-345-45542-8.
7. New York Times, Life With Father

Bibliography

• Skinner, C. Otis (1976). Life With Lindsay and Crouse. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

External links

• Life With Father at the Internet Broadway Database
• Life With Father (television series) at the Internet Movie Database