The 1940s was the decade that the musical changed from being, a play with music and dancing to a play that had a story about something, while still maintaining the vitality of the old musical. In this decade there were many hits. The following are some examples of them: Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Finian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, and South Pacific. These plays were all about something real and they all were great successes in their own ways. .
"Pal Joey was a pure musical comedy peopled with the high and low life of Chicago's North Side." (Better Foot Forward Mordden 184) Pal Joey (1940) was not known for its incredible story but for its characters" personalities. Its characters were real people not the usual characters that you find in musicals. The leading man Joey was a smalltime performer at a nightclub and the leading lady Vera was an older seductress who picked him up. The play was written by John O"Hara with help from George Abbot and Robert Alton. The story opens up with letters written from pal Joey to pal Ted. The stories main plot is that Vera is infatuated with the charming Joey. Joey shows some love interest in her and in return she buys him his own club. His friends from the old club come to the new club, some friends are jealous of Joey's new found fortune and they decide to blackmail Vera over her affair with Joey, this leads to the downward fall. The play received grief from its critics, this made the play a failure in that sense, there were only 374 performances in 1940, but the truth is that legends love a failure, the play was eventually remade in the 1950s and at that time it became a bigger success. (Beautiful Mornin" Mordenn 55) This play marked the end of stock characters. (62).
Lady in the Dark, is one of those plays, that will never be able to be remade into a play that is as good as it was when it was first produced in 1941.