Russel Crouse (1893–1966)

This is an ingenious criminal comedy with great show numbers sprinkled into it - the main highlight being a grandiose performance at a night club, which by the way is the funniest scene in the play, as there is a tremendous amount of confusion here which mainly afflicts the waiters. There is an impressing amount of very original scenes here, and the dialogue is virtuoso crossfire all the way. The crime business here is also quite a confusion, as the great mystery unfolds of a man already show more dead being stabbed, and it is never quite clearly explained why - it must seem a bit weird for someone to stab an already dead body and difficult to find a reason for it. By all means, he appears to have been an abominable person, his heiress hates him even after his death, while the news of his death is the best news she ever got, while she considers the inheritance the worst. show less

Vivid, witty accounts of twelve once-notorious New York homicides, all unsolved. Crouse, then a well-known columnist for the NY Evening Post, creates setting and character with the skill of a newspaperman/yarn-spinner of the Ben Hecht cohort. Some names you may have seen before (Mary Rogers, Arnold Rothstein), but unless you're a hardcore historian of murder, you won't know most of these stories; and there's a lot of Gotham history to go with the gore. (FYI, the Elma Sands case is alluded to show more in Gore Vidal's novel about Aaron Burr, who partnered with Alexander Hamilton in defending the accused killer; and the Benjamin Nathan case features as well in Edmund Lester Pearson's Studies in Murder, 1924.) show less

Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's political play won the Pulitzer Prize, and it's a good play. But time has made so much of the "sausage-making" revelations about politics far more familiar than they likely were in 1946 that the play seems naïve, which it surely wasn't when new. While well-written and constructed, the play still relies on romantic-triangle tropes to carry the story along, as though the issues considered could not be presented other than in such familiar surroundings. It is show more well worth reading, but I would be surprised if anyone gave much consideration to producing this play anymore. show less

There is nothing like it. More politically aware and socially relevant than the movie, this musical has more heart than one might think a stage can carry.