Dream Girl

Dream Girl (1945), a comedy by Elmer Rice. [Coronet Theatre, 348 perf.] Georgina Allerton ( Betty Field), who writes unpublishable novels and runs a small bookshop, wakes up to confront the likelihood of another awful day. To escape from her mundane existence, she daydreams. The moment she flicks on the radio and hears the voice of a broadcasting psychiatrist, she imagines she is on the air with him, pouring out her problems. All through the day, a word here, a gesture there, send her into fantasy land. Her life changes only when she meets a young man, Clark Redfield ( Wendell Corey), who reviews books he doesn't read and hopes to be a sportswriter. They fall in love and will probably marry, “as long,” Clark insists, “as you run your dreams, instead of letting them run you.” She promises to try, because this newfound reality seems “some wonderful dream.” The Playwrights' Company produced the show, one of Elmer Rice's few ventures into light comedy. Its principal part required the heroine (played by Rice's wife) to be on stage all but two minutes of the performance. A musical version, Skyscraper (1965), starred Julie Harris as Georgina and featured a score by James Van Heusen (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics). It met with mixed notices and ran 248 performances in the Lunt‐Fontanne Theatre.