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Today the names Alien Boretz and John Murray are no longer widely recognized. Seventy years ago, however, they were the celebrated co-authors of the most successful Broadway script ever produced.1 That script-a farce entitled Room Service-remains a staple of the American theatre even now.2 Yet, even while Room Service continues to be a familiar part of the repertoire, its authors might scratch their heads over the many transformations the play has made in its journey from 1930s farce to its most recent Off-Broadway revival in 2007. They would certainly miss the nuanced socialist subtext that was systematically scoured from the story during its successive retellings on film.
Today's Room Service strikes audiences as a comfortable and reliable crowd-pleaser, a nostalgic comedy appropriate for families, perhaps a bit creaky, but charmingly so. It seems difficult to reconcile this present condition of the play with the vitality of its original 1937 counterpart-a runaway Broadway success in which communist co-author Allen Boretz deliberately embedded pro-labor, pro-Russian, and anti-government motifs to be seen by a nation struggling through the darkest days of the Great Depression. In this essay, I explore the play's (and its almost-for-gotten authors') journey through the American canon. I suggest that a pky like Room Service can help scholars trace not only the ways in which political, ideological, or social themes are sometimes hidden in plain sight for American audiences, but also the ways in which those same themes are deliberately excised from later adaptations, recyclings, and re-productions until a play's original meanings become almost impossible to recover.
In 1937 Room Service began its original Broadway run of 496 performances. The production had been directed by the legendary George Abbott, and within a month of its opening, the rights to film it had sold for an unprecedented $255,000 to Hollywood's RKO studios. In 1938 the farce was filmed with the Marx Brothers as its new stars. Then, in 1944, during the closing phases of World War II, it was adapted into a moviemusical-with the new title Step Lively-featuring a young Frank Sinatra crooning in a leading role, and future Republican U.S. Senator George Murphy as the star.3 Each new version proved a new box office success. Later, in 1953, Room Service was revived on the New...