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July 14, 1996
- A Thousand Clowns Revival 1996 Opened: July 14, 1996 Closing: August 10, 1996 A Thousand Clowns - 1996 - Broadway History, Info & More
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Meet the original Broadway cast of A Thousand Clowns on Broadway, and find out who was in the Original Cast, what parts they played and more.
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Oct 30, 2003 · Broadway Shows. A Thousand Clowns on Broadway. A Thousand Clowns Overview - The BEST Broadway source for A Thousand Clowns tickets and A Thousand Clowns information, photos and videos....
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Media Adaptations
- Themes
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Compare & Contrast
A Thousand Clowns was first presented at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in New York City on April 5, 1962, with Jason Robards in the role of Murray Burns. Herb Gardner's first full-length play, it was nominated for the Tony Award for best play and was so successful commercially that Gardner, named the most promising playwright of 1961–62, was able to t...
Herbert Gardner was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 28, 1934. His grandfather owned a neighborhood bar, the Silver Gate, in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Gardner attended the High School of Performing Arts in New York City and then the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he studie...
Act 1
Before the lights come up on A Thousand Clowns, the voice of Chuckles the Chipmunk, an inane children's television host, can be heard in the darkness, carrying on a perky conversation about "Chuckle-Chip Dancing" with a screaming crowd of children. The curtain goes up to reveal the cluttered one-room apartment of Murray Burns, every surface covered with clocks, broken radios, hats and other items. Although it is 8:30 on a Monday morning, the only light in the apartment is the light from the t...
Act 2
Act 2 opens in Murray's apartment the next morning, where Sandra has spent the night. While Sandra is getting dressed, Murray's brother Arnold stops by with his daily delivery of a bag of fruit. Arnold is also Murray's agent, and he tells Murray that he has two job prospects for him. Arnold knows that the Child Welfare Bureau is investigating Murray, and he wants to help him get a job so he will look more reliable. Murray refuses to discuss work, and Arnold leaves. When Sandra emerges, they h...
Act 3
About thirty minutes later, act 3 finds Murray alone in his apartment, which he has restored to its original chaotic condition. Arnold comes in and tries to have a serious conversation with Murray about the future. Murray accuses Arnold of having given up all of his youthful dreams, but Arnold insists that he is content with his job, his home, his wife, his children. He refuses to apologize for not living like Murray and proclaims "I am the best possible Arnold Burns." Arnold leaves and Nick...
Albert Amundson
Albert Amundson is a social case worker with the New York Bureau of Child Welfare, sent to investigate Murray's fitness as a guardian for Nick. Albert is a stuffy, no-nonsense man. He takes his job seriously and wants to do it well, but he has no affinity for children and makes no attempt to talk with Nick when he visits the apartment with his partner, Sandra Markowitz. In fact, he suggests repeatedly that Murray send Nick away while they discuss the "case." He is not impressed by Nick's abil...
A Thousand Clowns was made into a feature film in 1965, with Gardner's screenplay receiving an Academy Award nomination. Directed by Fred Coe, it stars Jason Robardsas Murray, reprising his Broadwa...
Self-concept and Selfishness
When Sandra discovers that Murray has been offered two jobs but has not accepted either of them, she expresses her disappointment in a line that expresses the play's central question: "Maybe you're wonderfully independent, Murray, or maybe, maybe you're the most extraordinarily selfish person I've ever met." The line between self-awareness and self-centeredness is the line that Murray must establish as he moves through the play, and it is this line that determines whether other characters fin...
The job of the New York Bureau of Child Welfare in the play is to determine whether or not Murray and Nick function well as a family. They seem particularly interested in the fact that Nick's birth...The Chuckles the Chipmunktelevision show seems to be about equal parts entertainment and advertisement for Chuckle-Chip potato chips. In that regard, do you think television aimed at children has i...A director of a stage play or a film works with the script on the page, but can guide the way an audience interprets a character by choosing who will play the parts and how they will deliver the li...A few years after its Broadway opening, A Thousand Clownswas made into a film. Instead of confining the action to Murray's one-room apartment and Arnold's office, the film was able to move througho...Setting
A Thousand Clownsis set in New York City, specifically in the borough of Manhattan, the cultural and economic center of the city. Gardner and his characters know the city well and use references to its boroughs and neighborhoods as a kind of shorthand. Murray and Nick, for example, live above an abandoned Chinese restaurant in a brown-stone on the lower West Side, an area that in the 1960s was home to struggling artists, writers, and other nonconformists who were attracted to its interesting...
Antihero
The traditional literary hero demonstrates particular virtues, such as courage, nobility, or integrity. The term "hero" is sometimes used simply to mean the central character of a work of fiction (also called the "protagonist"), whether or not this character is more worthy than other characters, but more commonly the term refers to a central character who displays or acquires these heroic qualities. When the protagonist of a modern work lacks heroic qualities, as Murray Burns does, he or she...
Anti-Communism and the 1950s
During the 1950s, there was a widespread belief in the United States that members of the Communist Party posed a serious threat to national security. Although the American Communist Party had existed in the United States since the 1920s as a vocal but ineffectual political force, tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States led many to see communists as allies of the enemy. This in turn led to a restriction of civil rights for those who were members of the Communist Party and even...
The 1960s and Ethnic Comedy
During the 1960s, many writers and executives in the stage, film, and television businesses were Jewish, but few central characters in the media were. It was thought—probably correctly—that the largely Christian middle-class white audiences for these productions would not be interested in Jewish or other "ethnic" characters. One of the most popular television shows of the decade, The Dick Van Dyke Show, which ran from 1961 to 1966, featured a main character who was a white Anglo-Saxon Protest...
1960s: Children's television shows like Chuckles the Chipmunk are produced locally in most major cities. Broadcast live and staged in front of a live audience, they typically feature a male host wh...1960s: Business offices use the latest communications technology. Arnold Burns's New York office has a "special speaker-phone" with a separate speaker attached so others in the room can hear a phon...1960s: An administrative assistant in an office in a large city makes a starting salary of about ninety dollars a week, or less than $5,000 a year. It is enough to support a single person in a smal...1960s: To get relatively up-to-the-minute weather information, residents of cities can dial a local phone number twenty-four hours a day and listen to a recorded message. Another call to another nu...Meet the original Broadway cast of A Thousand Clowns on Broadway, and find out who was in the Original Cast, what parts they played and more.
Though the themes sound serious, A Thousand Clowns sparkles with humor from a script by Herb Gardner, based on his play. Robards re-creates his Broadway role joined by Tony nominated Gordon and play producer Fred Coe, producing and directing the big screen version.
- Fred Coe, Tony Belletier, Dan Eriksen
- Jason Robards Jr.
A Thousand Clowns: Directed by Fred Coe. With Jason Robards, Barbara Harris, Martin Balsam, Gene Saks. A middle-aged iconoclast, doggedly avoiding the tedium of employment and conventional life, faces the prospect of losing custody of his young ward.
A Thousand Clowns is the story of Murray Burns (Tom Selleck), a man who is so tired of the outside world he becomes a recluse, hiding in the apartment that he shares with his nephew.
