The run closed June 29, 1946
- Opened
- December 21, 1945
- Closed
- June 29, 1946
- Performances
- 220
- Previews
- —
- Theatre
- Neil Simon Theatre
Of the 890 productions we hold that opened in the 1940s and record a performance count, this is the 132nd longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.
Who was in it60 named
Don de Leo
Emily Ross
Shirley van
Lucas Aco
Jeri Archer
Tony Caffaro
William David
Jacqueline Dodge
Robert Edwin
Althea Elder
Peggy Anne Ellis
Future Fulton
Lynne Gammon
Tony Gardell
Harry Gary
Alan Gilbert
Maria Harriton
Fred Hearne
Eddie Hodge
Doris Hollingsworth
Beverly Hosier
Ann Hutchinson
Douglas Jones
Philip la Torre
Joe Landis
Howard Lenters
Cecille Mann
Jim Mitchell
Ray Morrissey
Arthur Partington
Virginia Poe
Franklin Powell
Anthony Reed
Richard Sanford
Betty Saunders
Beth Shea
Bill Skipper
Thelma Stevens
Bill Sumner
David Thomas
Lorraine Todd
Allan Waine
Evelyn Ward
Sydney Wylie
Thomas Hume
Stuart Langley
Rosemary Schaefer
13 of these 60 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 47 are set from the identifier in the cast list, which is a slug of the name — so hyphens and full stops are lost and a few come out wrong. We hold nothing else about them. Nobody here is matched to a character: the cast list records who was in the company and not what they played.
Creative team
- Director
- George Abbott
- Choreographer
- Jerome Robbins
- Orchestrations
- Morton Gould
A producer is one string on this record, however many people or companies it names. Directors and choreographers are held both as text and as identifiers; where an identifier exists the name links to a page.
Around this production
Billion Dollar Baby is a musical with the book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the score by Morton Gould. Comden and Green were fresh from their success with On the Town, and the production team was something of an On the Town reunion: once again, George Abbott directed and Jerome Robbins choreographed. The musical is set on Staten Island and in Atlantic City during the late 1920s. It follows the adventures of an ambitious young woman, Maribelle Jones, in her quest for wealth during the Prohibition era.
- Joan McCracken had starred in the title role of Billion Dollar Baby (1945). Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals the Dan Dietz, p. 22
- Billion Dollar Baby [1945] was also a failure, running for 220 performances. Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals the Dan Dietz, p. 30
- Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Morton Gould combined talents on Billion Dollar Baby, an interesting musical about the Roaring Twenties. Mitzi Green, Joan McCracken, Helen Gallagher, Danny Daniels, William Tabbert, and David Burns gave vivid performances, and the show amused postwar audiences for 220 performances. At This Theatre 100 Years of Broadway Shows Stories and Botto Louis Viagas Rober, p. 290
- Unfortunately, their next outing was not as successful. Billion Dollar Baby (12/21/45; 220 performances), for which they teamed up with composer Morton Gould, was a failure; Irving Hoffman headed his review “Inflation.” Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 133
- He costarred with brilliant vocalists Bette Davis (in Two’s Company) and Tallulah Bankhead (in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1956), but luckily, the Follies closed in New Haven, freeing Burns to go directly into Billion Dollar Baby. Broadway Musicals the 101 Greatest Shows of All Time Bloom Ken 1949 Vlastnik Fra, p. 131
Passages naming this production, found by keyword across 178 books. Where it turns up in the literature, not curated notes about it.
What this page does not know
- No photograph of this staging. 48 of 13,459 productions hold one.
- No character names. We can say who was in the company and not who they played.
- No recording is held for Billion Dollar Baby at all.
- Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.