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| Regina Baff, Henry Winkler. |
42 SECONDS FROM BROADWAY [Comedy/Homosexuality/Romance/Sex/Theatre]
A: Louis Del Grande; D: Arthur Storch; S: William Pitkin; C: Glenda Miller; L:
Roger Morgan; P: Arthur Cantor; T: Playhouse Theatre (OB); 3/11/73 (1)
A corny, tired comedy about stereotypical characters in a
stereotypical situation. The year is 1957. An 18-year-old Hoboken, New Jersey,
Italian boy named John (Henry Winkler) and a 20-year-old Brooklyn Jewish girl
named Robin (Regina Baff), coworkers in a Western Union office and co-aspirants
for theatrical careers, make believe they are siblings and take an apartment
together, “42 seconds from Broadway.”
Both are virgins, but John fears he may be gay. Robin,
lusting after him, is afraid she’s a nymphomaniac. Romance finally binds them
together, but not before a series of indifferently amusing scenes involving the
boy’s parents, a group therapy session, a screwball acting teacher, and so on.
Ethnic jokes, gay jokes, and psychoanalyst jokes, all bland,
were sprinkled throughout. Clive Barnes thought it worse than poor TV fare,
which it resembled. Richards Watts called it “dismal.” And Douglas Watt scorned
it as “simple-minded” and “wholly synthetic.” Watt also picked out young Henry
Winkler, not yet cast as Fonzie on TV's “Happy Days,” which would make
him a household name, as “an adroit laugh-getter” with a resemblance to Jerry
Lewis.\
42 Seconds from Broadway vanished so quickly it might almost have been called 42 Seconds on Off Broadway.
