The bride's Uncle Alfie (her guardian) wants an intimate wedding and wages a war of words with the groom's entire family.

The groom's brassy Jewish mother Tillie commandeers the planning, steering it towards a large country club wedding (despite her husband's scolding her for taking over).

Caterers, dressmakers, band leaders, rabbis, florists, photographers and a bossy wedding planner are pushed to the limit by the madcap preparations.

The three collaborators on the show, William and James Goldman, and John Kander, had all been friends for a long time and shared an apartment in New York City.

[5] Hal Prince, a producer who was looking to direct, had read the musical on the recommendation of Stephen Sondheim while working on Tenderloin.

Prince recalled "Berman was in his prime then, but was cast in a subordinate role, the uncle of the bride, unbalancing the project.

The material that I liked so much on paper was impossible to see for the production that was imposed on it, a unit set that looked like a tiered wedding cake...

Still, I remembered the material and if you could simply put back on the stage what I’d read, in focus so we could see it, that alone would have to make an enormous difference.

Prince offered to take over direction and help the show open in New York provided he had complete creative control.

[11] "In a week’s time we substituted eighty new pages for the hundred and ten which comprised the book, and moved on to New York," wrote Prince.

"[13] The Broadway production of Family Affair opened on January 27, 1962, at the Billy Rose Theatre, where it ran for 65 performances and five previews.

It earned a living for those nine weeks but it never made any profit to speak of and to go on longer would have meant to take big losses so it was sensible to close it...

[16] Howard Taubmann of the New York Times said "the writing of A Family Affair is not strong on taste; it resorts to the cliches of Jewish domestic attitudes.

Prince later wrote "there are many reasons why I’m glad I directed A Family Affair," including it being his first collaboration with a number of people whom he would work with again, such as John Kander, James Goldman and Linda Lavin.

However she was proud of the fact she had made a cast album and asked for her song in A Family Affair "My Son the Lawyer" be played at her funeral.