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AT THIS THEATRE
THE WALTER KERR
Formerly the Ritz, this theatre was renamed the Walter Kerr on March 5, 1990, in honor of the Pulitzer prize-winning drama critic who was the reviewer for The New York Times, and before that, for The New York Herald Tribune.
Jujamcyn Theatres, which owns the house, has spent $2 million to restore the theatre to the way it looked when Herbert J. Krapp designed it in 1921. This is the theatre's second restoration. In 1983, Jujamcyn spent $1.5 million on the house and restored it to legitimacy after years as a movie theatre. "With this latest restoration," says Rocco Landesman, Jujamcyn's president, "we felt that we wanted to honor someone, and for me, Walter Kerr's name is synonymous with Broadyway."
The Ritz opened on March 21, 1921, with Clare Eames in John Drinkwater's Mary Stuart, followed by the glittering Ina Clair in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. In 1922, Roland Young amused in Madame Pierre, and the following year, Katharine Cornell gave a luminous performance in The Enchanted Cottage. Also admired was Lynn Fontanne in a play called In Love With Love. Audiences in 1924 were spellbound by Sutton Vane's eerie Outward Bound starring Alfred Lunt, Leslie Howard and Margalo Gillmore; while the same year unveiled Hassard Short's Ritz Revue and John Galsworthy's Old English, starring George Arliss.
A Saucy Claudette Colbert graced The Kiss In A Taxi in 1925, followed by Helen Hayes in Young Blood, and Frank Morgan and Estelle Winwoof in A Weak Woman.
On the day after Christmas, 1927, bubbly Miriam Hopkins and Frank mcHugh cheered first nighters in Excess Baggage, followed by another winner, Janet Beecher in Courage, which ran until May 1929. The decade came to an end with the successful Broken Dishes with Donald Meek and a young Bette Davis, who was immediately snapped up by Hollywood. 
Highlights of the 1930's at the Ritz included monologist Ruth Draper in some of her celebrated character sketches; the thriller, Double Door; Frank Lawton and Mildred Natwick in The Wind and the Rain; Dennis King and Leo G. Carrol in Mark Reed's delightful Petticoat Fever; Ilka Chase and Peggy Conklin in Co-Respondent Unknown; and Jessica Tandy and Dame Sybil Thorndike in J.B. Priestley's Time and the Conways. 
During the late 1930's the Federal Theatre Project (also known as the WPA Theatre)staged some exciting productions at the Ritz. Among them were T.S. Eliot's verse drama, Murder In the Cathedral, the stirring Power, staged by the WPA's Living Newspaper unit, which ran for five months; and a lavish production of Pinocchio that ran for 197 performances.  
In 1939, the Ritz became the CBS Theatre #4 where live radio shows were broadcast, including the programs of the Town Crier, drama critic Alexander Woolcott, On December 22, 1942, the theatre went legit again with Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1943 with the producer onstage to introduce some new faces, including John Lund and Alice Pearce. Toward the end of 1943, NBC took the theatre over, and later, ABC, for use as a radio studio, and then, TV. 
It was not until December 1970, that the Ritz returned to legitimacy with previews for a new rock opera called Soon. The show opened on Jan. 12, 1971, and marked the Broadway debuts of Peter Allen, Nell Carter and Richard Gere. 
Following a major renovation in late 1971, the Ritz reopened on March 7, 1972 with the short-lived thriller, Children, Children, starring Gwen Verdon. In 1973 it housed a production of the British sex farce, No Sex Please, We're British. Under the Jujamcyn banner, the Ritz has presented The Flying Karamazov Brothers, Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare, Dancing in the End Zone, Doubles, Penn & Teller and Chu Chem. 
[[Bottom of page]] Space limitations prevent us from mentioning all the productions which have played this theatre
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