Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm

"Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm" from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

As part of our RCT Musical Theater Virtual Review Series, we take a look at our 2019 production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

In the song, “Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm,” - performed by Elizabeth Romero, Stephanie Bull, and Jeremiah Lussier - Rosemary Pilkington, who dreams of married life in the suburbs with an executive, has taken a liking to Finch and fantasizes about him to her friend, Smitty. In this farcical number, Rosemary sings of her longing “to be loved by a man I respect, to bask in the glow of his perfectly understandable neglect. Happy to keep his dinner warm, till he comes wearily home from downtown.”

Performed at the Rose Center Theater in Westminster, California - the Orange County Production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was produced by RCT Musical Theater Productions and was lead by the artistic team of Tim Nelson, Jennifer Simpson-Matthews, Diane Makas, and Chris Caputo. The cast included Jimmy Award Winner, Elizabeth Romero as Rosemary Pilkington, Jeremiah Lussier as J. Pierrepont Finch, Tawni Bridenball and Malia Merrill as Hedy La Rue, Stephanie Bull as Smitty, and Chris Caputo as J.B. Biggley. The production ran for four weeks opening on July 19, 2019 and closing on August 11, 2019.

The 1961 musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, a book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert, and based on the 1952 book of the same name by Shepherd Mead follows the story of young and ambitious J. Pierrepont Finch, who, with the help of the book How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, rises from window washer to chairman of the board of the World Wide Wicket Company. 

The musical, originally starring Robert Morse (J. Pierrepont Finch) and Rudy Vallee (J.B. Biggley), premiered on Broadway at the 46th Street Theater on October 14, 1961 and closed on March 6, 1965 after 1,417 performances. That production won the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Musical, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was nominated for eight Tony Awards, winning seven, including Best Musical. 

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