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.

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