Hay Fever

From: Don't Call Me A Star by Paul Gardner, New Times March, 1974:

His classical training helped keep afloat (for a month) a dowdy Broadway revival of Noel Coward's stylized comedy Hay Fever, starring Shirley Booth in a role demanding the batty sophistication of Gertrude Lawrence. Hay Fever is one of those dizzy farces in which languid characters loll on cushions playing mah-jongg or trip out to the garden to prune the calceolarias.

Sam knew how to loll and prune and rattle off convoluted epigrams that stumped the other actors. He also knew how to keep a Cowardian cool during a minor on-stage crisis. In the last act John Williams, as the author of trashy sudsy novels, had to announce that his latest opus was just completed. Williams appeared on cue and announced to Shirley Booth and Sam (according to the script), "It's finished!"

"What, dear?" asked Shirley Booth. Now, she had been having trouble remembering her lines what with all those damned calceolarias in the garden, but this time Williams went blank.

"I finished--"

"Yes--what, dear?" Miss Booth inquired again.

"I-uh-finished--"

"You finished," Waterston said blithely, "The Sinful Woman."

When the curtain clumped down, Williams, dismayed by his gaffe, thanked Sam for remembering the title. "If Shirley asked me one more time what I'd finished, I was going to say, 'My f-king book!' Laughing, Sam wished he hadn�t been so bloody helpful.

During Hay Fever Sam quit smoking. He was also in the process of separating from his wife, a photographer named Barbara Johns...[Now] Waterston�s most frequent visitor at his upper West Side apartment-cluttered with plants, records, scripts, books, and Christmas cards he hasn't thrown away-is a cover girl whose face has appeared on such fashion magazines as Mademoiselle�