Pipe Dream is the seventh musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II; it premiered on Broadway on November 30, 1955. The work is based on John Steinbeck's novel Sweet Thursday—Steinbeck wrote the novel, a sequel to Cannery Row, in the hope of having it adapted into a musical. Set in Monterey, California, the musical tells the story of the romance between Doc, a marine biologist, and Suzy, who in the novel is a prostitute; her profession is only alluded to in the stage work. Pipe Dream was not an outright flop but was a financial disaster for Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Broadway producers Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin held the rights to Sweet Thursday and wanted Frank Loesser to compose a musical based on it. When Loesser proved unavailable, Feuer and Martin succeeded in interesting Rodgers and Hammerstein in the project. As Hammerstein adapted Sweet Thursday, he and Rodgers had concerns about featuring a prostitute as female lead and setting part of the musical in a bordello. They signed operatic diva Helen Traubel to play Fauna, the house madam.
As the show progressed through tryouts, Hammerstein repeatedly revised it, obscuring Suzy's profession and the nature of Fauna's house. Pipe Dream met with negative reviews and rapidly closed once it had exhausted its advance sale. It had no national tour or London production and has rarely been presented since. No movie version of the show was made; the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization (which licenses their works) once hoped for a film version featuring the Muppets, with Fauna played by Miss Piggy.
Inception
Following World War II, Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin started producing musicals together. Feuer was the former head of the music department at low-budget Republic Pictures; Martin was a television executive. Having secured the rights to the farce Charley's Aunt, they produced it as the musical comedy Where's Charley?, with a score by Frank Loesser. Among the backers of Where's Charley? were Rodgers and Hammerstein, which helped secure additional investment. The show was a hit and helped establish Feuer and Martin on Broadway—they went on to produce Guys and Dolls.
In the aftermath of Guys and Dollss success, Feuer and Martin were interested in adapting John Steinbeck's 1945 novel Cannery Row into a musical. They felt that some of the characters, such as marine biologist Doc, would work well in a musical, but that many of the other characters would not. Steinbeck suggested that he write a sequel to Cannery Row that would feature the characters attractive to Feuer and Martin. Based on suggestions for the story line by Feuer and Martin, Steinbeck began to write Sweet Thursday.
Cannery Row is set in Monterey, California, before World War II. In Sweet Thursday, Doc returns from the war to find Cannery Row almost deserted and many of his colorful friends gone. Even his close friend Dora, who ran the Bear Flag Restaurant, a whorehouse, has died, and her sister Fauna has taken her place as madam. A former social worker, Fauna teaches the girls how to set a table properly, hopeful they will marry wealthy men. Doc's friends Mack (Mac in Pipe Dream) and Hazel (both men) are still around. They decide Doc's discontent is due to loneliness, and try to get him together with Suzy, a prostitute who has just arrived in Monterey. The two have a brief romance; disgusted by her life as a hooker, Suzy leaves the bawdy house and moves into an abandoned boiler. She decides she cannot stay with Doc, but tells her friends that if Doc fell ill, she would care for him. The accommodating Hazel promptly breaks Doc's arm as he sleeps, bringing the two lovers back together. At the end, Doc and Suzy go off to La Jolla to collect marine specimens together.