The average play's journey from playwright's study to the Broadway stage is all traffic lights, stalled motors, roads closed for repairs, slowing down on hills, running out of gas. Plays, as the old gag puts it. are not written but rewritten; not sold outright but leased around on options. Even a top-ranking author like Ernest Hemingway, with a spot-news play like The Fifth Column—treating of the Spanish civil war—gets jounced around on the rocky road to Broadway. The play, Hemingway's first,* was finished three months ago. Originally Producer Jed Harris was slated to produce it "after revisions by the author." "Revisions"...
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