The Body Beautiful, 1958

The run closed March 15, 1958

Opened

January 23, 1958

Closed

March 15, 1958

Performances

60

Previews

—

Theatre

Broadway Theatre

Of the 705 productions we hold that opened in the 1950s and record a performance count, this is the 286th longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.

Other stagings of The Body Beautiful 1 more that season

Who was in it47 named

Tony Atkins
Mace Barrett
Armand Bonay
Richard Chitos
Richard de Bella
Jack de Lon
Ethelyne Dunfee
Shellie Farrell
Kathie Forman
Edmund Gaynes
Bette Graham
Buzz Halliday
Tommy Halloran
William Hickey
Patsi King
Louis Kosman
Mary Louise
Mara Lynn
James Mcanany
Ralph Mcwilliams
Mitchell Nutick
Yvonne Othon
Stan Papich
Albert Popwell
Thomas Raskin
Nora Reho
Bill Richards
Jeff Roberts
Harry Lee Rogers
Jane Romano
Joe Ross
Lonnie Sattin
Helen Silver
Knute Sullivan
Robert Weinsko

12 of these 47 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 35 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 Schaefer

Choreographer

Herbert Ross, Herbert

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

In The Body Beautiful, Warden knocked out the critics with a classic scene in which he tries to conduct a business interview in a steam bath. Fully dressed in a business suit, he fails miserably in his attempts to deal with the heat and the steam by drinking ice water, putting his hands in an ice pitcher, wiping his face with his shirt, mopping himself with a sheet covering a nearby naked man, and… The Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals Dan Dietz Hardcover 2014 Rowman Lit, p. 680

• A new musical, The Body Beautiful with a score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, went nowhere, and closed to make room for Les Ballets de Paris, the Beryozka Russian Dance Company, and the Old Vic, imported by Sol Hurok, doing Henry V, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet. At This Theatre 100 Years of Broadway Shows Stories and Botto Louis Viagas Rober, p. 210
• The two songwriters collaborated for the first time on a book musical, The Body Beautiful, which premiered on January 23, 1958. Unfortunately, the show ran only 60 performances, but the score was well received and appreciated by Bock and Harnick’s contemporaries. Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 94
• Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s first collaboration was The Body Beautiful (do you go around humming tunes from that one?). Broadway Musicals the 101 Greatest Shows of All Time Bloom Ken 1949 Vlastnik Fra, p. 45
• This was followed by a big out-of-town flop, the 1951 Nancy Walker-starrer Month of Sundays, which caused Shevelove to set down his rhyming dictionary for good. Selden rebounded in 1955, writing music and lyrics and producing an even bigger out-of-town flop, The Amazing Adele (scripted by Anita Loos, with Adele played… More Opening Nights On Broadway A Critical Quotebook of Compiled By Steven Suski, p. 966
• He first collaborated with lyricist Sheldon Harnick on The Body Beautiful (1958), which was followed by four Harold Prince-produced musicals: Fiorello! (1959), Tenderloin (1960), She Loves Me (1963), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). More Opening Nights On Broadway A Critical Quotebook of Compiled By Steven Suski, p. 1089

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 The Body Beautiful at all.
• Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.