The Curse of the Longacre: Part II

My Favorite Flop

It's time to break some legs and keep that "M" word out of your mouths, kids, because Bobby and Kristina are back with Part II of The Curse of the Longacre (dunn, dunn, dunn!!!) to discuss 2013's First Date on Season Two, Episode Two of My Favorite Flop.

ABOUT THE CURSE OF THE LONGACRE

In theatrical history, baseball and Broadway have not been very compatible companions. There are two theories about this animosity. The first is that more theatre tickets are bought by women than men and that women are not overly fond of the sport. The second theory centers on the legendary Curse of the Bambino.

In 1916, a Broadway producer and theatre owner named Harry Frazee bought the Boston Red Sox. He was an avid baseball lover, but he made a fatal error. In 1920, he sold Boston pitcher Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. The Red Sox didn't win another World Series for over 80 years (they won in 2004), leading fans to believe the team was under The Curse of the Bambino. To add insult to injury, when reporters asked Frazee why he sold the immortal Babe Ruth to New York, he replied that he wanted the $125,000 to produce a Broadway musical. The show turned out to be the hit No, No, Nanette, which further enraged Boston. Legend has it that since then, no Broadway show about baseball could succeed. And many haven't.

Of course, there have been notable exceptions that have defied the infamous curse: the most famous being the 1955 smash hit Damn Yankees, starring Gwen Verdon. But even this show started with a jinx. The musical's initial artwork featured Verdon garbed in a drab baseball uniform, and tickets were not selling very well. When producers changed the cover photo to Verdon in sexy black lingerie (after all, she did play a tempting seductress in the musical), the box office suddenly responded. The show won seven Tony Awards and ran for 1,019 performances.

Harry Frazee also famously built Broadway's Longacre Theatre. At first, the large theater was home to a series of hit shows, but after the infamous Baseball trade, it began to struggle. Many plays and musicals have premiere there over the years and the flops have outnumbered the successes. Sometimes the theater stands empty for long periods of time as Broadway producers are notoriously superstitious and it is considered by some to truly be a cursed house and they would rather not mount their show at all than to risk mounting it there.