The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, Nov. 26, 1945

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Their backgrounds differ also. New York State-born Lindsay, 56, has been close to the footlights since he gave public recitations as a child, of such ditties as When You See a Man in Woe, Walk Right Up and Say Hello. Carrying a spear, working in tent shows, Shakespeare, burlesque, he found his feet in the '20s as a director (Dulcy, Gay Divorce), founded his fortune in the '30s as a playwright (She Loves Me Not). Eighteen years ago he married delicate, blond Dorothy Stickney (the original Mother in Life With Father), whom a wag once described as a "butterfly with teeth."

Ohio-born Buck Grouse, 52, hopped at 17 from high school to cub reporting, eventually became a columnist on the New York Evening Post, an author of nostalgic Americana (Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives, It Seems like Yesterday). He swung over to Broadway as pressagent for the Theatre Guild. Bawled out for not getting enough publicity for Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge, he retorted that he'd managed to get George Washington's picture on 2¢ stamps.

The two men first teamed up, not to write but to rewrite a new book for Anything Goes, which subsequently became an Ethel Merman smash hit. After two more musicomedy successes, they pined for words without music, set about dramatizing Life With Father. The script aroused so little enthusiasm that Alfred Lunt, Roland Young, Walter Huston all turned down the title role. Lindsay himself finally took the part.

Fee for Two. Having authored the show with the second longest run (to date) in Broadway history, Lindsay & Grouse next produced the show with the fourth longest run: Arsenic and Old Lace. From these two projects alone, each has made roughly a million—with plenty of gold still to be mined. The two men don't like to talk finances, claim that most of their earnings just slip away. When a columnist wrote that Lindsay's money had "gone to his head," Lindsay phoned him, said "Thanks, I've been wondering where it went."

On at least one thing besides the theater their minds meet. Along with Marc Connelly, Arthur Kober and F.P.A., both are passionate regulars in that famed weekly gathering of cutthroat bonhomie that first achieved fame as the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club. This poker game, which Heywood Broun once asked to be kept going till 10 a.m., "so I can make my picket line," and which has been known to run for 33 hours,* is for Grouse "the most refreshing mental bath I can get." The club has a West Coast "branch," and "with luck and a plane," say Lindsay & Grouse, "we can make both games the same week."