- Performances: 1,557.
- Open / Close: December 8, 1942 – January 3, 1948
- Theater: The Morosco Theatre.
- Tony Awards: The play predates the Tonys but it did win 4 Donaldson Awards, including for Best Play, and the female actors, Margaret Sullavan and Audrey Christie won for Lead and Suppering Actress, respectively. Stewart Chaney won for “Settings.”
- Fun Fact: “The Voice of the Turtle” is also the title of a W. Somerset Maugham short story, a musical group, and a well-regarded, very experimental album by American primitivist guitarist, John Fahey.
Podcast
Who could have known that this near-forgotten play from the 1940s would be so relevant in the 2020s?
The title is from the Bible, a verse in the Song of Solomon that actually references a turtledove, not the shelled amphibian: “The time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.” Playwright John Van Druten of “I Am A Camera” fame turned it into a Broadway comedy that was one of the few shows opening during World War II that captured and reflected life during wartime.
“The Voice of the Turtle” may have become infamous for the movie version that starred Ronald Reagan and that sanitized its themes around sexual autonomy. But this story about a single actress who doesn’t want to fall in love is actually a relatively ground-breaking play. My guest, as is often the case when obscure plays are featured, is Jordan Schildcrout, Ph.D., author of “In the Long Run: A Cultural History of Broadway’s Hit Plays,” and we go pretty deep in this discussion, one of the geekiest and, therefore, fun for me, conversations I’ve had in a long time!
Our chat includes short digressions like a review of the life of Virginia-born Margaret Sullavan (who some may know thanks to the TV movie “Haywire” based on a book written by her daughter), the surprising amount of attention given to the cast having only 3 people, and the key symbolic role of the show’s set. Enjoy!