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2026-11-01

Pal Joey: the heel Broadway wasn't ready for

One Musical a Week
One Musical a Week@Ike Morrisons
Pal Joey: the heel Broadway wasn't ready for

On Christmas night in 1940, a musical opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre about a nightclub emcee who lies for a living, sponges off a rich married woman, and lands on his feet. The next morning the most influential drama critic in New York asked, in print, whether you can draw sweet water from a foul well.

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Pal Joey opened on Christmas night in 1940, and the critic everyone read the next morning could not bring himself to enjoy it. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times called it "a joyless book about a sulky assignation" and wrote that it offered "everything but a good time," before asking whether you can draw sweet water from a foul well. 1
Twelve years later the same critic reviewed the same musical again and used the word "brilliant." So this episode is about that gap: why a show built this carefully took a decade to be heard, what happened to it in between, and what every revival since has had to decide about its leading man.
This is a spoiler-light guide. The closing scene, the one the whole show is built around, stays in the theatre.

What the show is

A Rodgers and Hart musical comedy from 1940, with a book by John O'Hara, about a small-time nightclub emcee on the South Side of Chicago who wants a club with his own name over the door and is willing to lie, flatter, and sleep his way to it. O'Hara built it from his own New Yorker stories, which were written as letters from a Chicago performer who signed himself "Pal Joey." 2
It ran 374 performances at the Ethel Barrymore, from Christmas 1940 to the end of November 1941, moving twice. 1 The rights holder calls it the second-to-last Rodgers and Hart collaboration and the first antihero to lead a musical. 3

The people who made it

  • John O'Hara wrote the book, after offering his stories to Rodgers and Hart himself. 2
  • George Abbott produced and directed; Robert Alton staged the dances. 1
  • Gene Kelly played Joey, in his first leading role on Broadway. He was cast as a dancer rather than a singer on purpose. 4
  • Vivienne Segal played Vera Simpson, the wealthy married woman who can pay for Joey's club. She was 43, and O'Hara gave the character her initials. 4
  • June Havoc played the chorus girl Gladys. Gypsy Rose Lee, the subject of the second-act number "Zip," was her sister. 4
  • Stanley Donen and Van Johnson were in the company before either was famous. 2
O'Hara did not go to the Philadelphia tryout, and Abbott rewrote the book on the road. The show kept changing after it opened too: the opening-night programme lists a Vera song called "Love Is My Friend," while the score licensed today carries "What Is a Man?" in that place. 15

The songs

Four survive in regular rotation, and a fifth is the reason to go looking for a recording.
  • "I Could Write a Book" — Joey's best line dressed up as a love song, sung to Linda outside a pet shop.
  • "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" — Vera's, and the best thing in the score. The verse about the bedroom was cut from the 1957 film and from the pop recordings that made it a hit. 6
  • "Zip" — a reporter named Melba doing Gypsy Rose Lee with her clothes on. The 1940 Melba was Jean Casto. 1
  • "Take Him" — Vera and Linda, agreeing that neither of them wants this man any more. The number that makes the case for the show as the first grown-up musical comedy.
  • "I'm Talkin' to My Pal" — a Joey song cut before opening and restored for the 1995 New York City Center concert. 4

What the first-night notices said

The reviews were more divided than the folklore. Richard Watts in the New York Herald Tribune called it "brilliant, sardonic and strikingly original" and "an outstanding triumph"; Wolcott Gibbs in The New Yorker wrote that musical comedy had taken "a long step toward maturity"; Newsweek's John Lardner called it the best musical comedy in two or three seasons. 1
Atkinson's notice is the one that entered the language. Those first-night excerpts are quoted here as they are recorded in Ovrtur's production file and in the rights holder's own history of the show; the newspaper's 1940 page is not reachable in its original form. 2
After that, the score went quiet. For much of the 1940s, songs from Pal Joey were kept off American radio by the licensing dispute between ASCAP and the broadcasters, which is why a Rodgers score this good produced no standards at the time. 4

The decade that caught up

In 1950, "Bewitched" became a pop hit — the rights holder's history counts seven recordings reaching the charts that year, five of them in the top ten — and Columbia's Goddard Lieberson recorded the complete score with Segal and Harold Lang. 2
Jule Styne produced the Broadway revival that followed, opening on 3 January 1952 at the Broadhurst. It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for best musical and three Tony Awards: Helen Gallagher for featured actress, Robert Alton for choreography, and Max Meth for musical direction. 47 The run is usually given as 540 performances, though the licensing page says 542 — the two figures are ten days apart and nobody has reconciled them. 5
The 1957 Columbia film, with Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, moved the story to San Francisco, cut the reporter, kept eight of the fourteen stage songs, added four from other Rodgers and Hart shows, and gave the whole thing a happy ending. 6

Every rewriter has to decide about Joey

This is where the show still lives, because its difficulty is not age. It is that Joey is meant to be charming and not worth your sympathy.
YearProductionWhat the rewriter decided
1957Columbia filmMake him a nice guy with a soft centre and let him get the girl. 6
1995New York City Center, Encores!Restore the cut song and play the score straight, with Patti LuPone, Peter Gallagher and Bebe Neuwirth. 4
2008Roundabout, Studio 54A new book by Richard Greenberg, with Stockard Channing as Vera; four Tony nominations. 4
2023New York City Center galaA new book by Richard LaGravenese, Joey reimagined as a Black jazz singer, co-directed by Tony Goldwyn and Savion Glover. Critics found a Rodgers and Hart jukebox rather than Pal Joey. 8
2026Arena Stage, WashingtonThe same reimagining, retitled Chez Joey, with Myles Frost as Joey; it opened on 13 February and extended to 22 March. 910
Chez Joey was well received in Washington — BroadwayWorld called it "an embarrassment of theatrical riches," and the review roundup Playbill assembled was largely warm. 1112 As of the end of October 2026, Playbill's schedule of announced Broadway shows still lists the reimagining as in the works, with no dates or theatre. 13

If you want to hear it

Start with the 1952 Broadway cast album: Vivienne Segal and Harold Lang, with the score as the revival played it, and the recording that turned the show into a classic. For the original 1940 arrangements and the cut number, the 1995 New York City Center concert recording is the one to find. The 2008 Broadway cast album preserves the Greenberg version, which is a different show with several of the same songs.

References

  1. 1
    Ovrtur — Pal Joey, Original Broadway Production (1940)

    ovrtur.com

  2. 2
    Bert Fink, Breaking Character — Pal Joey: A History

    breakingcharacter.com

  3. 3
    Rodgers & Hammerstein — Pal Joey

    rodgersandhammerstein.com

  4. 4
    Wikipedia — Pal Joey (musical)

    en.wikipedia.org

  5. 5
    Concord Theatricals — Pal Joey

    concordtheatricals.com

  6. 6
    Wikipedia — Pal Joey (1957 film)

    en.wikipedia.org

  7. 7
    The Tony Awards — Nominations / 1952

    tonyawards.com

  8. 8
    TheaterMania — Review: Pal Joey Becomes a Rodgers and Hart Jukebox Musical (2 November 2023)

    theatermania.com

  9. 9
    Playbill — Chez Joey at Arena Stage (30 January 2026)

    playbill.com

  10. 10
    Playbill — Chez Joey Extends Run (4 March 2026)

    playbill.com

  11. 11
    BroadwayWorld — Review: Chez Joey at Arena Stage (17 February 2026)

    broadwayworld.com

  12. 12
    Playbill — What Are Reviews Saying About Chez Joey? (18 February 2026)

    playbill.com

  13. 13
    Playbill — Schedule of Upcoming and Announced Broadway Shows (30 October 2026)

    playbill.com

One Musical a Week
One Musical a Week@Ike Morrisons

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