My own project began in 1996 when I was asked to direct a Christmas play for the On Broadway Thespians of Coos Bay, Oregon. Tosca Means was the President of OBT at that time. Randall Tosh was a board member. David Dorsey, another Coos Bay attorney was a board member. Judy McDonald was Managing Artistic Director.

Tosca Means

Tosca told me that her husband Larry’s favorite Christmas play was “Shop Around the Corner”. I began researching how I might obtain a copy of that script. In fact, “Shop Around the Corner” is a screen play by Samson Raphaelson. The only published copy of that screen play can be found in a book edited by Pauline Kael and published by the University of Wisconsin Press. This is a photo of the cover.

My research led me to the Margaret Herrick Museum in Hollywood where I found articles related to MGM’s purchase of a play in Hungarian by Miklos Laszlo. A copy of a related MGM document is attached. It shows that MGM had assigned the rewrite into a screenplay to Raphaelson, based on a play by Laszlo titled “illazserter”.

All of this led me to any publisher of any Miklos Laszlo play whatsoever. This turned out to be Dramatic Publishing Company. I called them and offered to buy copies of the play and a production license for a play titled “And the Snow Falls”. Several days later, the publisher called back and said it had no copies of the play and no longer represented the author.

Catalogue listing by Baker Plays in the early 1950s.

I next checked through interlibrary sources and actually found a copy of the play at the George Fox University library in Newburg, Oregon. Then, I paid the U.S. Copyright office to render an opinion on the copyright protections. The following is a copy of the letter to me.

That office recorded a copyright by Laszlo and Leggit in 1950. The copyright was not renewed. Leggit was Laszlo’s pen name.

Let’s put all of this into perspective. The screenplay “Shop Around the Corner” is not the three act stage play “And the Snow Falls”. Laszlo did write other versions of the plot to his original play. “St. Lazarre’s Pharmacy” was produced on Broadway. A copy can be found at Julliard.

“Parfumerie” is often referred to as a possible source for Raphaelson’s screen play. But Raphaelson himself states in the Kael book that the MGM director, Ernst Lubisch, did not want him to see a copy of the play that MGM purchased from Laszlo. I recently learned that a copy of “Parfumerie” can be found in Raphaelson’s personal papers at Columbia University.

In any event, “Parfumerie” is not “And the Snow Falls”.

There was a time when I thought my research had brought me to another Laszlo script that also had not been produced. The New York librarian had told me about a manuscript in Julliard's archives titled "St. Lazarre's Pharmacy". I recently discovered that play was in fact produced but did not play long.

This is the poster from the 1996 premiere of ATSF.