A 70th anniversary salute to the comic strip-turned stage mainstay… By PETER BOSCH It already had tryouts in Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia, but now it had reached its destination — BROADWAY! On November 15, 1956 — 70 years ago — sophisticated, dressed to-the-nines New Yorkers stepped out of their limousines and taxis and went into the St. James Theatre to see a new musical about a hillbilly: Li’l Abner! There had been other times when Abner Yokum went away from the newspaper comic page. Among those were a short-lived radio show (from 1939 to 1940), a terrible 1940 low-budget feature film, and five cartoon shorts produced by Columbia Pictures in 1944 that were even worse than the 1940 movie. A musical about Al Capp’s famous character was clearly a risky venture unless done right, but it had been considered for a number of years. None of the producing teams that got the option from Capp stuck with it. Well, that is until Norman Panama and Melvin Frank came along. Here are 13 THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT THE LI’L ABNER BROADWAY MUSICAL: — 1. Panama and Frank were a winning Hollywood screenwriting team, with Bob Hope hits such as My Favorite Blonde (1941), The Road to Utopia (1946), and Monsieur Beaucaire (1946). They also wrote Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), the box-office smash comedy starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. Thanks to those successes, they moved up in the industry, becoming a triple threat – writing, producing, and directing. One film that employed them in that capacity was the hilarious Danny Kaye picture, The Court Jester (1955). That’s right — the team that gave you, “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.” They decided to give Broadway – and Li’l Abner – a try. The plot they came up with involved the Sadie Hawkins Day race, the possible atomization of Dogpatch, a health tonic called Yokumberry, and a corrupt businessman who wants its formula and plans to have his mistress marry Abner to get it. The businessman would then arrange for Abner’s “suicide” — but it all comes out right in the end for the citizens of Dogpatch, with the imprisonment of the businessman and his mistress, and Abner marrying Daisy...