IfParis Is Out!had been a smash, we might be living in a different America.
Yesterday we revisited the musical Its a Bird … Its a Plane … Its Superman.
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This is an audience play, Black told Seff at the time.
I dont trust the critics.
I dont want them to see it till the audience tells them they love it.
As Seff, now 92, told me, it was a concept which I should never have permitted.
But I did, I did.
This was the kind of concession a reluctant playwright made for a chance to debut on Broadway.
It was the first play credited to Richard Seff, butParis Is Out!wasnt Seffs first play.
That wasThe Whole Ninth Floor, produced under the pseudonym David Phillips, and it closed out of town.
It was not a genuine smash, and there were no big names, but people liked it.
But he wasnt working for Lew Wasserman as an agent!
For his first time out under his own name, Seff like Simon mined his family for source material.
The plays conflict, typical of a domestic comedy of that era, is on the gentle side.
Hortense and Daniel (stand-ins for Seffs own parents) bicker about vacation plans.
Hortense dreams of Europe.
Their son and daughter have problems of their own.
Charlotte is recently widowed with a teenage son.
Their son, Roger, is ending marriage No.
2, adamant that he wont be charmed into wedlock a third time.
High jinks and hilarity are supposed to ensue.
(One example: When Arlene says, I mean Roger, Moby-Dick was not even a person.
He was a whale.)
Natwick wasnt available, but Molly Picon was, and she was a clear theatrical name.
The Paramus theater was run at the time by Robert Ludlum, years beforeThe Bourne Identitymade him famous.
After all,Come Blow Your Hornhad led to the far more successfulBarefoot in the Park.
Changes, however, were necessary before the transfer at the beginning of 1970.
The new name wasParis Is Out!
Then there was the matter of the cast.
Black also decided that Roger and Arlene needed to be recast.
Black also needed cash to mountParis Is Out!to the tune of $140,000.
Donald J. Trump hadnt been announced.
He showed up in a single-minded pursuit, hoping to take Black to lunch.
They went to the Metropolitan Club.
Trump had heard aboutParis Is Out!and, apparently, got hold of a copy of the script.
He had done his homework, and that was unusual, Black said.
Black remembered Trumps investment as 70 grand; Seff thinks it was lower, closer to $50,000.
Somewhat less characteristically, Trump kept well away from the creative side of the production.
Seff and Trump exchanged hellos and not much else.
(Union rules, of course.)
And at one point he came in and said, Our poster is behind one of the other posters.
(Black, through his assistant, declined a request to comment for this story.)
Trump, however, had little say in Blacks decision to forgo a proper opening night.
Dictating to critics when they might be permitted to see a Broadway play portended disaster.
Blacks decision helped to seal the plays fate.
The non-opening at the Brooks Atkinson was on February 4, 1970.
Well, he has those eyebrows and that shrug.
Glovers criticism paled next to the judgment of the New YorkTimes Clive Barnes.
He called the play as harmless as it is pointless, its scenarios pitiable, the acting forgettable.
There were a few good reviews.
Some people go to escape.Paris Is Out!…
is for people who go to the theater to meet themselves.
The show was not a closed-in-one-night disaster.
Seff preferred to characterize the play, generously, as a nervous hit.
The producers, including Trump, lost their whole investment.
Seffs play didnt disappear for good.
Seff attended a dinner-theater production in Pennsylvania just two years ago.
When I saw the set, I thought it was better than the one we had on Broadway.
Black recalled in 2016.
I said, Why dont you try real estate?
If my play had been a big hit, I guess he wouldnt be president.
