No Strings

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No Strings is a musical drama with a book by Samuel Taylor and words and music by Richard Rodgers, his only score written without a collaborator.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In this bittersweet tale, fashion model Barbara Woodruff, living in Paris, meets and falls in love with expatriate American David Jordan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who has suffered from an intense case of writer's block since his arrival in France. She attempts to restore his confidence in his creativity, but the easy life he's enjoying flitting about Monte Carlo, Honfleur, Deauville and St. Tropez is too much of a distraction. Concluding he can work only if he returns home to Maine, he invites her to go with him but, realizing they have no future together, they part with "no strings" attached.

Spoilers end here.

After one preview, the Joe Layton-directed and choreographed production opened on March 15, 1962 at the 54th Street Theatre, where it ran for slightly more than six months before transferring to the Broadhurst, where it continued until August of the following year for a total of 580 performances. Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley starred; Barbara McNair and Howard Keel replaced them later in the run.

In December 1963, what would prove to be an equally successful London production, starring Art Lund and Beverly Todd, opened at Her Majesty's Theatre.

The issue of civil rights - voter registration for blacks, integration, and fairness and equality in the workplace - was starting to gain momentum in the country in the early 1960s, but it was a topic largely absent on Broadway. Whether or not it was Taylor and Rodgers' intent to break new ground is unclear, since neither the book nor score make specific mention of race, nor does it impact upon any decisions made by the couple. Other than the model's reference to growing up north of Central Park (seemingly an allusion to Harlem), there is nothing in the script to suggest she's African-American. It was only in the casting of Carroll and Richard Kiley as the star-crossed lovers that the subject of interracial romance surfaced, but any production of the show easily could be cast with two leads of the same race without changing the content in any significant way. It may have appeared to be socially progressive at the time, but No Strings actually was nothing more than a show with black and white leads.