Chapter Nine

THE CONSTRUCTION OF BOSTON

 

 

Flush with what we thought to be the success of Red Eye of Love, Sam Cohn and I took a year's lease on the Maidman Playhouse. This was a lavish two hundred seat Off-Broadway theatre on West Forty-Second street -- it is now thehome of Playwright's Horizons. Arnold Weinstein had written a musical called Fortuna, based on an Italian play by Eduardo di Fillippi. The composer was a New York socialite named Francis Thorne, and he agreed to put up the $30,000 dollars we estimated the production would cost.

 

Once again, I was the director as well as the co-producer. I did everything I could to make the show come alive, until finally I gave up in exhaustion. Glenn Tetley then took the show over, but all to no avail. Fortuna was a quick failure.  MORE...