Stage and Screen Confections … and Something a Little Deeper

Abstract

Betty Comden and Adolph Green returned to lighter fare after Subways Are for Sleeping. They penned a giddy film romp called What a Way to Go! The film starred Shirley MacLaine as an oft-married woman who finds herself, despite her desire to remain poor, getting richer and richer. Neither the writers nor the critics found the movie to be satisfying, but audiences at the time delighted in it. For the stage they also penned a goofy satirical comedy, Fade Out–Fade In, specifically for Carol Burnett. This look at filmmaking in the 1930s delighted audiences as well, but the show struggled when Burnett dealt with chronic health issues. Beyond these two projects Comden and Green also tried to re-team with the men with whom they wrote their first Broadway show (Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins), but the quartet eventually had to part company on this piece: a musical version of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.