Abie's Irish Rose is a well-known comedy written by Anne Nichols. It was first performed on Broadway in 1922. Over time, the story has been shown many times on stage, in movies, and on radio. The plot follows an Irish Catholic girl and a young Jewish man who decide to marry even though their families do not agree with their choice.

Theater and films

At first, the Broadway play received poor reviews. However, The New York Times gave it a good review. The play was very successful and ran for 2,327 performances between May 23, 1922, and October 1, 1927. At that time, this was the longest run in Broadway theater history, beating the previous record of 1,291 performances set by the 1918 play Lightnin' by Winchell Smith and Frank Bacon. The show's touring company also had a long run and held the record for the longest-running touring company for nearly 40 years until Hello, Dolly! broke it in the 1960s. The touring company's male lead was George Brent, who later became a famous Hollywood actor in his first major role. The female lead was Peggy Parry.

Abie's Irish Rose was performed again on Broadway in 1937 and once more in an updated version in 1954.

The play inspired two films. The first film, released in 1928, stars Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Nancy Carroll and was directed by Victor Fleming. A second film from 1946 stars Richard Norris and Joanne Dru, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and produced by Bing Crosby. This 1946 film was criticized for being outdated or even harmful in its portrayal.

The story's premise was copied by others. Anne Nichols sued Universal Pictures for copying her work in the film The Cohens and Kellys, which tells the story of an Irish boy who marries a Jewish girl from feuding families. However, in the court case Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp., the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Universal Pictures, stating that copyright protection does not cover the characteristics of common or stock characters in stories, whether in books, plays, or films.

Radio

A weekly NBC radio show called Abie's Irish Rose took the place of Knickerbocker Playhouse and was on the air from January 24, 1942, to September 2, 1944. The show was discontinued in 1945 after listeners protested its use of stereotyped ethnic roles. The scripts were written by Nichols. Axel Gruenbert and Joe Rines directed the cast, which included Richard Bond, Sydney Smith, Richard Coogan, and Clayton "Bud" Collyer as Abie Levy. Betty Winkler, Mercedes McCambridge, Julie Stevens, Bernard Gorcey, and Marion Shockley played Rosemary Levy. Solomon Levy was portrayed by Alfred White, Charlie Cantor, and Alan Reed.

Other members of the radio cast included Charme Allen (as Mrs. Mueller), Richard Gordon, Roger DeKoven, and Martin Wolfson (Rabbi Samuels, also known as Dr. Samuels), Walter Kinsella (Patrick Murphy), Menasha Skulnik (Isaac Cohen), Anna Appel (Mrs. Cohen), Ann Thomas (Casey), Bill Adams (Father Whelan), Amanda Randolph (maid), and Dolores Gillenas (the Levys' twins). Howard Petrie was the announcer, and Joe Stopak provided the music. The opening theme was "My Wild Irish Rose" by Chauncey Olcott.

Plot

Nichols' first Broadway play takes place in France during World War I. A young man, who is an injured soldier, meets a girl who is a nurse who cared for him. The priest and the rabbi from the wedding are people who served in the same war and recognized each other from their time in the military.

The rest of the story was described by Judge Learned Hand in a court case about a copyright dispute involving Nichols:

There have been changes in later versions of the play or in film adaptations, such as different settings or ways the characters meet.

Critical response

Although the play was very popular with the public, most critics did not like it. Robert Benchley, who wrote reviews for Life magazine, strongly disliked the play. Part of his job was to write short weekly reviews. He called Abie's Irish Rose things like "Something Awful," "Just about as low as good clean fun can get," and "The comic spirit of 1876." He also wrote, "People laugh at this every night, which explains why democracy can never be a success," and "Hebrews 13:8," a Bible verse that says, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Benchley once held a contest for someone else to write a short review, which Harpo Marx won with "No worse than a bad cold."

In a mostly positive review, the New York Times mentioned that the audience enjoyed the play and ended by saying, “We hope to be present at little Rebecca Rachel and Patrick Joseph Levy's second birthday, if not their Hudson-Fulton centennial.”

Writing in The New Yorker about the 1937 revival, Wolcott Gibbs said the play felt like "a repeated nightmare; the one in which I always find myself in an old well, thick with bats, and can't get out."

The Anti-Defamation League objected to the use of Jewish stereotypes in the 1946 film version, saying it "will reinforce, if it does not actually create, greater doubt and keener misconceptions, as well as outright prejudice."

Brooks Atkinson, reflecting on the play's message of social tolerance during the 1954 revival, wrote, "What was a comic strip joke in 1922 is a serious problem today. Every now and then Abie's Irish Rose strikes a sensitive chord. For good will is in shorter supply now than it was thirty-two years ago."

Contemporary scholar Jordan Schildcrout studied Abie's Irish Rose in relation to rising concerns about immigration in the 1920s and events like the creation of the Irish Free State (1921), the British Mandate for Palestine (1922), and the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924. He wrote, "In an era when anti-Jewish and anti-Irish sentiments were common, the play's portrayal of ethnic pride might have made audiences feel empowered, while also offering them a pleasant idea of fitting in and becoming increasingly 'American,' and therefore not subject to old prejudices and ethnic rivalries."

Cultural references

Lorenz Hart shared the feelings of many people in the theater community through these lines from the song "Manhattan": "Our future babies we'll take to Abie's Irish Rose —I hope they'll live to see it close."

The play was popular enough that its title was used in a pun in the Marx Brothers film Animal Crackers, mentioned in the lyrics of Cole Porter's song "Ace in the Hole," included in Stephen Sondheim's song "I'm Still Here," and referenced in the song "The Legacy" from the musical On the Twentieth Century.

Thematic legacy

The play Abie's Irish Rose inspired the comedy of Stiller and Meara (Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara), a husband-and-wife comedy team popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Their routines often included jokes about their different backgrounds: Stiller was Jewish, and Meara was Irish Catholic but later became Jewish during their marriage.

The play also inspired the 1972–1973 television series Bridget Loves Bernie (CBS), starring Meredith Baxter and David Birney. In the show, Birney plays Bernie Steinberg, a Jewish cab driver and aspiring playwright whose parents own a small deli. Baxter plays Bridget Fitzgerald, the Irish Catholic daughter of wealthy parents who falls in love with Bernie and runs away with him, causing problems for both families. (Both actors were Protestant.) The show was criticized by many Jewish groups for showing a relationship between people of different religions, and it was canceled after one season, even though it was the fifth most-watched series of the 1972–1973 television year in the United States.

Twenty years later, as attitudes in the United States changed, CBS produced another television series, Brooklyn Bridge (1991–1993). Created by Jewish writer Gary David Goldberg, the show is based on his own childhood experiences. It follows a romance between a Jewish boy and an Irish Catholic girl. The show ran for two seasons, and the sixth episode of the first season, titled War of the Worlds, explores the challenges of their relationship in a fictional 1950s Brooklyn setting. Earlier, Goldberg created another show, Family Ties, which was also based on his life. In Family Ties, the female lead, who represents his real-life Irish Catholic partner, is played by Meredith Baxter, the same actress who starred in Bridget Loves Bernie.