Lindsay and Crouse

Lindsay and Crouse, playwriting team. Howard Lindsay [né Herman Nelke] (1889–1968) was born in Waterford, New York, and educated at Harvard, then began his theatrical career as an actor in 1909. He continued to act and occasionally direct all through the 1920s, but found a more successful métier when he wrote the play She Loves Me Not (1933), then joined Russel Crouse (1893–1966) to rewrite the book for Anything Goes (1934). Crouse was born in Findlay, Ohio, and pursued a journalist career in Cincinnati and then New York. As a press agent for the Theatre Guild he contributed to The Gang's All Here (1931) and Hold Your Horses (1933) before teaming up with Lindsay on Anything Goes. The show was a hit and the twosome worked again on the musicals Red, Hot and Blue! (1936), Hooray for What! (1937), Call Me Madam (1950), Happy Hunting (1956), The Sound of Music (1959), and Mr. President (1962). Their nonmusical collaborations were just as successful, in particular the record‐breaking comedy Life with Father (1939) in which Lindsay played the title character. Among the team's other plays were Strip for Action (1942), State of the Union (1945), Life with Mother (1948), Remains to Be Seen (1951), The Prescott Proposals (1953), The Great Sebastians (1956), and Tall Story (1959). As producers, Lindsay and Crouse's offerings included Arsenic and Old Lace (1941) and Detective Story (1949). Although their works may have had minimal merit as dr matic literature, they were excellent, show‐wise writers whose best plays were consummately theatrical.

Lindsay and Crouse was the writing team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, who collaborated famously from 1935 to 1962 on a succession of Broadway comedies and musicals. Their first collaboration was the rewriting of the libretto of Anything Goes (1935), which became a major hit and has been frequently revived.

Shared work

They wrote the play Life with Father, which opened in 1939 and starred Lindsay and his wife Dorothy Stickney. It ran for over seven years to become the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway.

Other work included the librettos for The Sound of Music, the Cole Porter musical Red, Hot and Blue, the Irving Berlin musicals Call Me Madam, and the production of the play Arsenic and Old Lace. Their last collaboration was the 1962 Irving Berlin musical, Mr. President.

In addition to writing librettos for Broadway shows, they were also "show doctors" who were asked to come improve Broadway shows in out-of-town tryouts, assisting the director and author of the show to improve the script.

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