202. GOD SAYS THERE IS NO PETER OTT. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Rue McLanahan, Hanford Rowe, Ann Sweeny, Alice Drummond, Tom Ligon.

GOD SAYS THERE IS NO PETER OTT [Comedy-Drama/Family/Romance] A: Bill Hare; D: Leland Ball; S: David Chapman; C: Pamela Scofield; L: Judy Rasmussen; M: Arthur B. Rubinstein; P: Square Root Productions; T: McAlpin Rooftop Theatre (OB); 4/11/72-4/23/72 (8)

Avis (Rue McLanahan), eccentric, sharp-tongued, but likable, having gone through a half-million dollar inheritance, is reduced to running a Cape Cod guest house, where she is forced to put up the unwed but pregnant daughter (Ann Sweeny) of her hated brother (Hansford Rowe) and his wife (Alice Drummond). The brother owns the house’s mortgage. The girl’s rootless ex-lover, Peter Ott (Tom Ligon), a failed priest who is heir to a fortune, shows up, having decided to do his duty and marry her. The play deals with how he handles the complications that ensue when he finds himself attracted to Avis.

The reviews were mostly unpleasant for this quick loser. Clive Barnes'S pan pan said “it is not very interesting, its writing is obvious and its characterization so one-dimensional that it could make a cube seem like a square.” All in all, said Barnes, it played like “a run-of-the-mill television drama.” Of course, McClanahan would eventually make her biggest splash on that medium, in “Golden Girls.”