Publicity photo taken outside Maxine Elliott’s Theatre
Horse Eats Hat marks its 80th anniversary this fall.
The comedy, co-written and directed by the then 21-year-old Orson Welles, was produced by the Federal Theatre Project. It was Welles’ sophomore Works Progress Administration effort, a risque followup to his highly successful “Voodoo” Macbeth.
The script, by Edwin Orr Denby and Welles, was an adaptation of the French farce The Italian Straw Hat. Virgil Thomson suggested the play to Welles and partner John Houseman. He recommended Denby as the adaptor, and Paul Bowles as composer.
Horse Eats Hat premiered at the Maxine Elliott Theatre on West 39th Street in New York on September 26, 1936 and it ran for 10 weeks. The comedy starred future Mercury Theatre stalwart Joseph Cotten with Welles; his wife, Virginia Nicolson; and Arlene Francis among Cotten’s co-stars.
Joseph Cotten and Arlene Francis
Welles’ theatrical career is known for its powerful and engaging stagecraft, and Horse Eats Hat took this to the limit; Welles made the actors, props, and scenery fully engage with the audience, who were not to forget that they were watching a play. Actors would speak to the audience and make purposefully wrong entrances, scenery would crash down at inopportune times, props would malfunction, and even the intermission became an opportunity to keep the action going, as Welles employed distractions then as well.
It was titled Horse Eats Hat in order to distance it from the film adaptation made in the 1920s by Rene Clair, as well as to make a point of it being a new production.
Welles made sure to point out that the content of the play was not indicative of the U.S. government’s views, and that it had been studied in schools since its debut, thus giving the farce some academic cachet as well.
Those attempts to cover the play didn’t work, as several critics lambasted Welles and Denby for the perceived excessive crudity of the action. Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen’s wife viewed the play, and complained to her husband, who publicly labelled it “salacious tripe,” which certainly wasn’t going to hurt the box office.
Government representatives also viewed the play, and presented a list of 30 items that they felt required changes, ranging from offenses such as a hand being placed on a woman’s leg to the removal/alteration of the line “it’s nice to see a pretty little pussy,” but whether the changes were actually undertaken is another matter.
Arlene Francis, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles at a rehearsal
Welles had intended the play to be racy and shocking, feeling that audiences, kept from seeing any number of “salacious” things onscreen by the motion picture code, would lap up some of the same forbidden fruit if it were presented onstage.
Some 35 or so years later, Welles would tell film director and author Peter Bogdanovich that “Horse Eats Hat was the best of the Mercury shows — and, though successful, it divided the town. The press was mixed, yet it was always packed, and had an enormous following. Some people went to it every week as long as it ran.”
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