Golden Boy
Shows · Golden Boy
For his first offering as a Broadway producer, Hillard Elkins hit upon the idea that by changing the leading character in Clifford Odets’ 1937 drama Golden Boy from an Italian-American boxer named Joe Bonaparte to a Negro American boxer named Joe Wellington, the result would be a musical play of substance and significance. Odets himself agreed to write the libretto but his death during the show’s early stages created…
- Opened
- 1964
- Performances
- 569
- Type
- Musical
- Era
- Golden Age
Productions4 on Broadway
| 1937 | Belasco Theatre Original. November 4, 1937 · Harold Clurman · predates this show | 250 performances |
| 1952 | Anta Playhouse Revival. March 12, 1952 · predates this show | 55 performances |
| 1964 | Majestic Theatre Revival. October 20, 1964 · Arthur Penn | 568 performances |
| 2012 | Belasco Theatre Revival. December 6, 2012 · Bartlett Sher | 53 performances |
Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. 2 of these predate the show itself and are almost certainly a different work of the same name. Shown, marked, not merged. West End runs are not yet held.
Recordings 2 albums held
Licensing 1 entry
| US | Concord Theatricals Concord Theatricals | available |
Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.
36 passages naming Golden Boy, found by keyword across 178 books. It's where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.
the most successful of all, Golden Boy (11/4/37; 248 performances). book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p220
Golden Boy (10/20/64; 569 performances) was a powerful drama by Clifford Odets. It wasn’t an obvious choice for musical comedy, but producer Hillard Elkins convinced the team to take it on. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p528
The 1964 musicals continuing into the new year consisted of Dolly!, Funny Girl, and—from the fall season—Fiddler, as well as ultimate failures Oh, What a Lovely War, Golden Boy, Ben Franklin in Paris, Bajour, and I Had a Ball. book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-a-critical-quotebook-of-compiled-by-steven-suski#p39
Golden Boy (1964), A Time for Singing (1966), Im Solomon (1968)—had been less than overwhelming. book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-a-critical-quotebook-of-compiled-by-steven-suski#p783
His next efforts, though—the Ray Bolger vehicle All American (1962) and the Sammy Davis vehicle Golden Boy (1964)—were unsuccessful. book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-a-critical-quotebook-of-compiled-by-steven-suski#p1108
Golden Boy (1964), A Time for Singing (1966), I’m Solomon (1968)—had been less than overwhelming. book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-steven-suskin#p782
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