Butter and Egg Man, The

Butter and Egg Man, The (1925), a comedy by George S. Kaufman. [Longacre Theatre, 243 perf.] Joe Lehman ( Robert Middlemass) and Jack McClure ( John A. Butler) are two shoestring Broadway producers with a problem: the gangster backer of their new play has been arrested moments before he could sign the check for the money they needed. Even Joe's wife Fanny ( Lucille Webster) thinks so little of the play she refuses to help. In walks Peter Jones ( Gregory Kelly), a yokel from Chillicothe, looking to invest his savings in a play, make a bundle, and return home to buy a hotel. His $20,000 buys forty‐nine percent of the piece. When the play opens out of town to dreadful reviews, Lehman and McClure want to close it, but Jones buys out the producers, repairs the play, and opens it in New York where it is a smash hit. However, Jones is confronted with a lawsuit charging the play has been stolen. Without divulging the legal problem, Jones sells the play back to Lehman and McClure for a whopping profit and returns home with his helpful sweetheart to build his hotel. Kaufman's only important solo effort, the play (produced by Crosby Gaige) was praised by Gilbert W. Gabriel of the Sun as “the wittiest and liveliest jamboree ever distilled from the atmosphere of Broadway.” Malcolm Goldstein, Kaufman's biographer, has noted that the play's underlying theme of a not‐too‐bright young man spurred to success by a sharper woman had been common to all Kaufman's earlier plays as well. The term “butter and egg man” was originated or popularized by nightclub hostess Texas Guinan to suggest a hick from the sticks.