Abie's Irish Rose

   Anne Nichols's innocuous comedy of the romance between a Jewish boy and an Irish girl improbably became the longest-running Broadway play of the 1920s, chalking up 2,327 consecutive performances beginning on 23 May 1922 at the Fulton Theatre. Originally titled Marriage in Triplicate, the play spawned modestly successful revivals in 1937 and 1954, motion picture versions in 1928 and 1946, a 1940s radio series, and innumerable imitators of its lighthearted dramatization of an ethnic culture clash caused by the traditional fathers of a Jewish son, Abie Levy, and an Irish-Catholic daughter, Rose Mary Murphy. Abie and Rosie secretly marry, but Abie's strict father, Solomon, believing Rosie to be a Jew ("Rose Murpheski"), arranges for a rabbi to marry the couple. Rosie similarly deceives her father, and he arranges for a priest to perform a marriage ceremony. Rife with ethnic stereotypes and broad comedy, this sentimental play received devastatingly negative reviews, but found a vast audience through its message of reconciliation thanks to Nichols's investment of her own resources to keep it running. When her funds diminished, she found a backer in Jewish mobster Arnold Rothstein, who bankrolled the production until word-of-mouth made it a hit.