Featured artists:  Olsen & Johnson

Title of Show:   Laffing Room Only (Note:  The name of the show does not appear on the cover.  It does appear starting on page 15.)

Theatre:    National "America's First Theatre"

Date:    The show ran for the week beginning Monday evening, June 3, 1946, with matinees on Wednesday and Saturday.

The program has 24 pages, including the covers.  It is staple bound and measures a little over 9 inches tall by a little over 7 inches wide.

John Sigvard "Ole" Olsen and Harold Ogden "Chic" Johnson became a vaudeville team back in 1914.  They also entertained on stage, on radio, and in films.  They are best known for their 1938 revue Hellazpoppin which was an enormous success on stage and, in 1941, on film.  Laffing Room Only was a two act vaudeville review with music and lyrics by Burton Lane.  It opened at the Winter Garden Theater, in New York, on December 23, 1944 and ran for 232 performances, closing on July 14, 1945.  In the program I am selling, portions of five pages are devoted to Laffing Room Only (pages 15, 17, 19, 21, and 22).  The top portion of page 15 reads (in part) as follows:

NATIONAL THEATRE

E Street Corporation, Lessee

Edmund Plohn, Manager    Telephone NAt. 0501-02-03

The Mssrs. Shubert and Olsen and Johnson

present

OLSON AND JOHNSON

in

"LAFFING ROOM ONLY"

with

FRANK LIBUSE

Willie West & McGinty      Harrison & Fisher

Music and Lyrics by Burton Lane

Book by Olsen and Johnson and Eugene Conrad

with

Mary La Roche    Eleanor Tennis   Margo Brander

Billy Young   Shannon Dean  Joe Young  Harry Burns

(List of other actors)

Ben Yost Singers

Staged by

John Murray Anderson

The first several pages of the program is devoted to articles about a coming attraction, scheduled to begin on June 17, 1946.  This was the play "Voice of the Turtle".  This play was not new to the National Theatre.  On January 29, 1944, it had been produced as a Presidential Command Performance.  [In actual fact, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not attend that night.  But First Lady Eleanor and their children did attend.  And sixty thousand dollars was raised for to benefit the fight against infantile paralysis (polio).]  This play had opened on Broadway in 1943 and had run for an impressive 1,557 performances.  It was later made into a movie starring future President Ronald Reagan.

The National Theatre was founded in 1835 and has hosted every President since Andrew Jackson.  It is located only a few blocks from the White House.  During the 1940s, there was much controversy surrounding the Theatre, which was - at the time - a segregated facility.  In 1948, management went so far as to close the playhouse rather than integrate.  It did not open again until 1952, but was then an integrated facility.

This program also has some great period ads that shows how the upper crust of Washington DC entertained themselves during the immediate post-War era.

Please see above for full description on condition and for photos.  Sold as is.