A Pair of Sixes

A Pair of Sixes, originally titled The Party of the Second Part, is a farce in three acts by Edward Peple that made its Broadway debut at the Longacre Theatre on March 17, 1914. The piece was produced by Harry Frazee and achieved a run of two hundred and twenty-seven performances at the Longacre before closing in the third week of September 1914.

Over the following months A Pair of Sixes, reappeared at the Majestic Theatre in Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Standard Theatre. A national tour followed, as did runs at London’s Wyndham's Theatre and Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne. Peple’s farce spawned a novel by Lilian Lauferty, a 1918 silent film with Maude Eburne and Taylor Holmes and the 1926 hit Broadway musical comedy, Queen High, that in turn begat the 1930 Hollywood talkie Queen High starring Charles Ruggles, Frank Morgan and Ginger Rogers. In 1937 it was filmed as On Again, Off Again with the comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey.

“A Pair of Sixes" is a farce comedy about two part owners of the Eureka Digestive Pill Company who rarely get along. Both claim the credit alone for the success of their popular purple pills. When their quarreling began to threaten the well being of the company, the firm’s lawyer suggests a rather odd solution. He would deal each partner a poker hand, with the understanding that the loser would serve as the other’s butler for an entire year. The outcome of the wager supplies the fodder for the farce.

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