21, 1934, The Post sent both its theater critic and “one of its best news reporters” to the Alvin (now Neil Simon) Theater, where “celebrities dotted the crowd like raisins a rice pudding.” When “Anything Goes” opened on Broadway on Nov. But they came and had a great time, and so did a lot of other people.” “They wrote the last scene on a train up to Boston, where it was trying out. “I think they wrote the new book in two weeks, if that,” Crouse says. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t a bad title. Someone - Marshall thinks it was the leading man, William Gaxton - yelled, “At this point, anything goes!” The new writers had yet to drum up a second act, and the cast kept asking them what was going to happen. “Cole played them a lot of songs, but not the title song,” Crouse says, “because they didn’t have a title yet.”Īt first the show was called “Crazy Week,” then “Hard to Get,” then “Bon Voyage.” (“I liked ‘Crazy Week’ myself,” says Weidman, who has written the books of several Sondheim shows.) Porter came to Lindsay’s apartment and someone brought in a neighbor’s out-of-tune upright piano.

“And that turned out to be my father, Russel.” I need someone to help me,’” Crouse recalls. He had a chunk of the score, the actors were signed, the theater booked - and he didn’t have a script.” Freedley turned to his director, Howard Lindsay, and told him to do it. “And Freedley couldn’t get them to rewrite. “A key element of the plot was a fire aboard ship,” says Crouse. Then the Morro caught fire off the New Jersey shore, at Asbury Park. Wodehouse of “Jeeves” fame, then the highest-paid writer in the world. The idea came from producer Vinton Freedley, the Harvey Weinstein of his day, who put together a surefire package: score by Cole Porter, big-name cast and book by Britain’s Guy Bolton and P.G. “The only thing they have in common is they take place on a boat and have ‘Anything Goes,’ ‘You’re the Top’ and ‘I Get a Kick Out of You.’ Everything else is completely different.”

“There are so many versions of this show,” Marshall says. Here’s a look back at one of the ditziest, de-loveliest musicals ever made. Countless stage, TV and film versions later, it’s just sailed back to Broadway in a Roundabout Theatre Company revival helmed by Kathleen Marshall, with a book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman. Yet “Anything Goes” opened to giddy reviews. Set aboard a London-bound oceanliner, Cole Porter’s merry little musical ran into an iceberg just two months before it opened in 1934: a fire aboard the real-life SS Morro Castle that took 137 lives.Įven with a burgeoning star like Ethel Merman at the prow, the shipboard farce seemed sunk. For a show that’s a hit parade in itself - “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “It’s De-Lovely” and the title song - “Anything Goes” nearly didn’t.

Anything goes script online