The play's original Broadway performance was produced by Clinton Wilder, staged by Michael Gordon, and starred Robert Preston, Kim Hunter, and Ronny Graham.
Leads Supporting Featured Off stage Charlie Reader lives in a terrace apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, overlooking the Queensboro Bridge.
The fourth and youngest girl friend, Julie Gillis, is equally in pursuit of Charlie but won't fall in line with his suggestions.
Earl Lindquist finds Joe's pills are worthless, so there's no longer a reason for him to stay, but Charlie, under the press of unexpected competition blurts out a proposal to Sylvia.
[6] By June 1954, Paul Morrison had been signed to do the set design, and it was reported rehearsals would start August 30, with tryouts in New Haven[fn 1] and Boston before a mid-October premiere on Broadway.
Columnist Joe Hyams reported that MGM had bought The Tender Trap and planned to mount a Broadway production before making a film of it.
[9] By early August Kim Hunter, Jack Manning, Janet Riley, Julia Meade, and Parker McCormick had been signed for the cast.
[18][19] He felt the strength of the work lay in Shulman and Smith's dialogue and humor, which was superior to most farces; in the control director Michael Gordon kept over the action and in reconciling two such different acting styles as those of Robert Preston and Ronny Graham; and in the general excellence of the cast.
[1][2] John Chapman of the Daily News maintained The Tender Trap was "a skillfully contrived and very enjoyable farce", but suggested the director and authors should cut "twelve minutes out of the comedy, six of them in the last act".
[2] Brooks Atkinson praised the performances of Robert Preston and Kim Hunter, but faulted the writers for what he termed "a ready made comedy".
[3] The play was sold to three new producers (Jay Lurye, Arthur Waxman, and Bernard Simon) who took it on the road starting with Philadelphia's Walnut Theatre on January 25, 1955.