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On January 23, 1941, a new musical play titled Lady in the Dark opened at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway. The team that created this musical piece would have had few rivals. The distinguished composer Kurt Weill wrote the musical score, and Ira Gershwin, recovering from the relatively recent death of his younger brother George Gershwin, provided the lyrics. Gertrude Lawrence, the celebrated queen of prewar British musical comedies, played the leading role of Liza Elliott, and two young male performers, Danny Kaye and Victor Mature, supported Miss Lawrence. Moss Hart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist and playwright, well known for his collaborations with such theatrical luminaries as Irving Berlin, George S. Kaufman, and Cole Porter, not only penned the original story, but also wrote the script and served as the director. Replete with a cast of 20 characters, plus 13 singers, 10 dancers, 11 children, a 20-piece orchestra, and a stage crew of 41 individuals, Lady in the Dark proved to be the 1940s equivalent of an Andrew Lloyd Webber blockbuster, running a total of 777 performances on Broadway.
Lady in the Dark will be remembered not only for its rich and tuneful score, its innovative choreography, and its bravura performances, but especially as the first, and still the best, musical about a psychoanalytical treatment. Although modern audiences have become rather blasC about the frequent appearances of mental health professionals in theater, film, and television, Moss Hart's creation proved quite pioneering by providing a sober and well-researched treatment of a subject that many Americans regarded with terrific suspicion, even the literate denizens