The Tender Trap

Philadelphia, PA: Philip Trachtman, Theatrical Publications, 1962. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus [presumably for a Summer Stock tour]. Wraps. Good. Philip Trachtman. 12 pages, plus covers. Illustrations (some color inside). This production was directed by James Hammerstein. A rare item of Red Buttons' and Lee Grant's stage and musical careers. This may be their only joint appearance. The Tender Trap was a 1954 Broadway play by Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith starring Robert Preston, Ronny Graham, Kim Hunter and Joey Faye. It made its debut at the Longacre Theatre on October 13, 1954 and closed on January 8, 1955 after 102 performances. The story: Charlie Reader is a young bachelor in New York who's living the ideal life. Or so it seems to Joe McCall, an old friend of his from Indianapolis. Charlie has an elegant apartment, a good job, and millions of girls—all eager to bring him food, tidy up his apartment and fall in with his every wish. The play was filmed in 1955 in a movie adaptation starring Frank Sinatra. This program includes a narrative on Red Buttons, The History of the Show. With narratives on key cast members, authors, the producers, director, choreographer, musical director, and scenic designer, and there is a synopsis of the show. The last page has photographs of the General Manager, Lighting Director, Production Designer, and Costume Designer. This production toured: Valley Forge Music Fair, Devon, Pa; Camden County Music Fair, Haddonfield, NJ; Westbury Music Fair, Westbury, L.I.; Storrowton Music Fair, West Springfield, Mass.; Painters Mill Music Fair, Owings Mills, Md., and Shady Grove Music Fair, Gaithersburg, Md. Red Buttons (born Aaron Chwatt; February 5, 1919 - July 13, 2006) was an American actor and comedian. He won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the 1957 film Sayonara. He was nominated for awards for his acting work in films such as They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Harlow, and Pete's Dragon. Buttons played the lead role of Private John Steele in the 1962 international ensemble cast film The Longest Day. At sixteen years old, Chwatt got a job as an entertaining bellhop at Ryan's Tavern in City Island, the Bronx, New York City. The combination of his red hair and the large, shiny buttons on the bellhop uniforms inspired orchestra leader Charles "Dinty" Moore to call him "Red Buttons," the name under which he would later perform. Later that same summer, Buttons worked on the Borscht Belt;[1] his straight man was Robert Alda. In 1942, Buttons appeared in the Minsky's show Wine, Women and Song. This was the last classic Burlesque show in New York City history, as the Mayor La Guardia administration closed it down. Buttons was on stage when the show was raided. Lee Grant (born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal; October 31, during the mid-1920s) is an American actress, documentarian, and director. She made her film debut in 1951 as a young shoplifter in William Wyler's Detective Story, co-starring Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker. This role earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well as the Best Actress Award at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. In 1952, she was blacklisted from most acting jobs for the next 12 years. Grant was able to find only occasional work onstage or as a teacher during this period. It also contributed to her divorce. During this time, Grant appeared in plays on stage. She was removed from the blacklist in 1963 and started to rebuild her on-screen acting career. She starred in 71 TV episodes of Peyton Place (1965-1966), followed by lead roles in films such as Valley of the Dolls and In the Heat of the Night in 1967, as well as Shampoo (1975), for which she won an Oscar. In 1964, she won the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress for her performance in The Maids. During her career she was nominated for the Emmy Award seven times between 1966 and 1993, winning twice. In 1986 she directed the documentary Down and Out in America which tied for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and in the same year she also won a Directors Guild of America Award for Nobody's Child. Grant appeared in a number of plays and in a few small television roles during her blacklisted years. In 1953, she played Rose Peabody in the soap opera Search for Tomorrow. On stage, Grant starred in the Broadway production of Two for the Seesaw in 1959, she succeeded Anne Bancroft in the lead female role. That same year, she had a supporting role in the romantic drama Middle of the Night. Murray Hamilton (March 24, 1923 - September 1, 1986) was an American stage, screen, and television character actor who appeared in such films as Anatomy of a Murder, The Hustler, The Graduate, The Amityville Horror and Jaws. For many years both before and during his film career, Hamilton was a prominent dramatic stage actor, earning a Tony Award nomination for his role in the 1965 production of Absence of a Cello. New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson praised his work in the play Stockade, which was based on a part of the James Jones novel From Here to Eternity: "Murray Hamilton is an ideal Prewitt. Modest in manner, pleasant of voice, he has a steel-like spirit that brings Prewitt honestly to life." When the actor was suffering from cancer and found film roles harder to come by, his old co-star George C. Scott helped out by getting him a part in the made-for-television movie The Last Days of Patton (1986).