Its 1962 production marked the Broadway debut of 19-year-old Barbra Streisand, who was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

The production starred Evan Pappas as Bogen, Carolee Carmello as Ruthie, Jim Brachitta as Teddy, and Vicki Lewis as Miss Marmelstein.

He will stop at nothing to get to the top: he lies to his mother and his long-suffering girlfriend, Ruthie Rivkin, who try to help him become a better person, but he embezzles company funds from Apex Modes and betrays his friends and partners.

As an inducement to Rome [Goddard] Lieberson offered to record the twenty-fifth anniversary version of his International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union show Pins and Needles.

As theatre historian Ken Mandelbaum noted, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying had opened five months earlier with a similar, but more palatable, story.

J. Pierrepont Finch is a much more "cuddly betrayer... and audiences were less willing to confront Wholesale's unflinching portrayal of Harry's little world of "men and ulcers on parade... that shouldn't detract from the fact that it was a daring and distinctive musical.".

[11] Howard Taubman of The New York Times wrote that the show generated a "lot of momentum" and added, "It is spirited in its appreciation of the garment-trade milieu, and both winning and tearfully sentimental in its treatment of Jewish folks and some of their Bronx folkways."

Saving the most lavish praise for last, he wrote that Streisand was the "evening's find... a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh.