Helen Hayes Theater
former Wintrhop Ames Theater | former Times Hall
| former Anne Nichols' Little Theater | nee Little
Theater
240 W 44th Street
between 7th & 8th Avenues
Completed 1912 Architect
Ingalls & Hoffman
Remodeled 1917 Architect
Herbert J Krapp
Theaters became smaller after the
turn of the century; many people who had been dependent on less
expensive upper-balcony seats for their weekly entertainment
turned to the new, even cheaper, movie houses, leaving legitimate
theater seats empty. Producer Winthrop Ames' Little Theater seated
299 people when it first opened in 1912, part of the movement to
intimate 'drawing room' drama typified by Belasco's Stuyvesant
Theater in 1906. The theater's Colonial Revival facade echoes the
domesticity of the Belasco's, a block east. Unlike the Belasco's
neo-Georgian interior, Ingalls & Hoffman used Colonial Revival
themes throughout. In 1917 Herbert Krapp was commissioned to
remodel the theater, a revenue-producing balcony being the
centerpiece of that effort
This is the second theater named to
honor actress Helen Hayes. The first Helen Hayes theater (nee
Folies Bergere)--along with the Astor Theater, the Bijou Theater,
Gaiety Theater and the Morosco Theater--was destroyed in 1982 to
make way for the Marriott Marquis Hotel (working name Portman
Hotel, after its designer John C Portman; aka the Toaster Hotel,
after its shape) on Broadway between 45th & 46th Streets. It
was this destruction that resulted in the landmark designations of
virtually every surviving Broadway theater built prior to 1930.
The then Winthrop Ames Theater was renamed in honor of Miss Hayes
in July 1983
The Little Theater opened March 12,
1912 with a production of The Pigeon. Only a few
distinguished productions appeared on its stage during Ames'
active management and that of Anne Nichols in the early '30s. In
1931 the theater was sold to the New York Times, which used it as
a business conference center called, appropriately enough, Times
Hall. It has also been operated as the home of radio and
television studios, interspersed here and there with legitimate
fare until returning full-time to the legitimate fold in 1983
1920 This is the third house in which
Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Beyond the
Horizon has run. Stars Richard Bennet, Edward Arnold and Helen
McKellar have trekked from the Morosco, to the Coronet and now to
the Little
1920 Rachel Crother's drama He and She
flopped the first time around when it was staged as The
Herefords in 1911. At 28 performances it doesn't do much
better this time
1920 The First Year, a Frank Craven
comedy, runs for 725 performances. It stars Frank Craven
1926 Marc Connelly has a comedy hit, The
Wisdom Tooth, starring Thomas Mitchell and Mary Phillips
1929 Rachel Crother's comedy Let Us Be
Gay is a 363 performance hit. Starring are Warren William and
Francine Larrimore
1931 Katharine Alexander and Merle Maddern
appear in Elmer Rice's The Left Bank
1933 The last production before the
theater goes dark stars Lloyd Nolan in James S Hagan's dramatic
hit One Sunday Afternoon
1963 Just to prove that legitimate shows
did have brief runs at Times Hall from time to time, Langston
Hughes' Tambourines to Glory has just that--a brief run
1977 Robert Picardo and Danny Aiello, two
stars, are featured in Gemini, the Albert Innaurato drama
that racks up 1,788 performances
1982 Torch Song Trilogy cements Tony-winning
author and Tony-winning
star Harvey Fierstein's life role of bringing sympathetic gay
characters to mass audiences
1990 The Craig Lucas drama Prelude to a
Kiss features Timothy Hutton and Mary-Louise Parker
1993 Lynn Redgrave shares the stage with
two men in her one-woman show Shakespeare for My Father.
The spirits of both William and Michael fill the theater
1995 A surprise hit, Rob Becker's comedy Defending
the Caveman fills the theater 671 times
1997 The Last Night of Ballyhoo,
Albert Uhry's drama, stars Dana Ivey, Jessica Hecht and Paul Rudd.
It wins the Tony
for best play
1999 Epic
Proportions, the much expected star vehicle for Kristen
Chenoweth opens September 30th. The Larry Coen-David Crane comedy
can't hold on and closes just shy of the holiday tourist season
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