I am looking for a picture of the original Oklahoma playbill. I tried doing a google search and found these two pictures. I was wondering which one was the original (if any of them).
I wish I had a definitive answer. Both say THE PLAYBILL FOR THE ST. JAMES THEATRE so evidently both were used during the original run.
The Max Wilk book on the show has a photo of the playbill with the surrey photo and what appears to be the date June 13, 1943, written in the bottom right hand corner (it's a little hard to read).
The design on the other is the original poster design, as seen on page 175 of Tim Carter's book on the show.
Taking a guess, it seems possible that when the show opened, the poster design was used on the playbill, then they may have switched to the photo once the show was an established hit. I wonder if perhaps later in the run they switched back to the poster design (since it's clearly the original cast in the photo) or perhaps some other design or a new photo.
I have a copy of the London Playbill for the RNT revival of the show in 1998-1999. The Playbill contains a chronology of events, photos, as well as some anecdotes on how the show became the landmark American musical.
The second photo on the Opening Post is identified as a poster for the retitled ( versus the original show "Away We Go!") show. Maybe the second photo was also used as the cover for the Playbill?
I think the bottom one is a later version. It was definitely the cover for the National Tour(s) souvenir brochures, I have two of them. (One Pre- and one Post- Allegro)
I'm pretty sure that the standard design for playbills in the early 1940s was a sepia production photograph and not the poster, which was probably used later in the run, when the cast changed, so they wouldn't have to keep changing the photograph.
