The Body Beautiful: History and Key Facts

The Body Beautiful is a musical with a book by Joseph Stein and Will Glickman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and music by Jerry Bock.

The first collaboration by Harnick and Bock, and the only one to have a contemporary setting, its plot focuses on a wealthy Dartmouth College graduate who aspires to be a prize-winning boxer and the girl he loves who disapproves of his ambitions. His fight manager must cope with uninspired fighters, two ex-wives and a new girlfriend.

After a tryout at the Erlanger Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Broadway production, directed by George Schaefer and choreographed by Herbert Ross, opened on January 23, 1958, at The Broadway Theatre, where it ran for 60 performances. The cast included Mindy Carson, Steve Forrest, Jack Warden, Barbara McNair, William Hickey, Brock Peters, and Alan Weeks.

Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen and her husband Richard Kollmar co-produced the short-run musical, along with Albert W. Selden. Kilgallen, very visible due to her appearances as a panelist on network TV's What's My Line?, and her fellow panelists made mention of The Body Beautiful on various episodes of the game show during this time period.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from The Body Beautiful by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.