"Meet Cute" in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955)

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WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER?
A new comedy by
George Axelrod
Random House, New York
Copyright, as an unpublished work, 1955
Copyright, 1956

   This is the play, not the movie.  All I remember about the movie is Jayne Mansfield's breasts.
   The play is dedicated to agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar.
   "Meet cute" is everywhere here.  I can probably get an early citation in my 1930s Barry Buchanan papers on the ENTERTAINMENT WORLD, but it appears that Carnegie Mellon University didn't copy the film box of "m."  So, no "meanwhile, back at the ranch" either.  Sorry.

Pg. 17 (RITA):  They think of me as a _sex symbol_.

Pg. 45 (GEORGE):  _Rita Marlowe_!  _Holy Cow_!

Pg. 48:
GEORGE:  _Footsie_?
IRVING:  Yes.  Or _toesey-woesey_, as it is sometimes called.

Pg. 70:
MIKE:  I am a playwrote.
SECRETARY:  A what?
MIKE:  A _playwrote_.  That's a playwrght who hasn't written anything _lately_...

Pg. 82:
IRVING:  Dear boy, the _beginning_ of a movie is childishly simple.  The boy and girl meet.  The only important thing to remember is that--in a movie--the boy and the girl must meet in some _cute_ way.  They cannot, you understand, just be introduced.  Or meet like normal people at, perhaps, a cocktail party or some other social function.  No.  It is terribly important that they meet cute.
(Pg. 83--ed.)
MIKE:  You can write that down if you want to...(_He notices that GEORGE is_)  Oh you _are_.
GEORGE:  "Meet cute"?  I'm afraid I don't understand...
IRVING:  For example--the boy enters a department store to purchase a pair of pajamas.  However, as he wears only pajama bottoms--he does not wish to buy a _whole_ pair.  He wishes to purchase only bottoms.  The store will not sell him justthe bottoms.  Nearby is a beautiful girl who is _also_ seeking to buy pajamas.  But only the tops.  The store will not sell her just the tops.  The solution is obvious.  Our boy and girl--strangers until this moment--suddenly find themselves the joint owners of a single pair of pajamas.  In short, they have _met cute_.

Pg. 102:
GEORGE:  As you all know, the first and the most difficult problem in the construction of a motion picture is to contrive what we in the trade call a "meet cute" for the boy and girl.  And I do believe that I have succeeded in coming up with rather an ingenious one.  THe boy is a psychiatrist.  The girl is a prostitute.  How do they meet?
HARRY (_Fascinated_):  How _do_ they?
MIKE:  She come to his office?
GEORGE (_Scornfully_): _Comes to his office_!  _Dear boy_!  Each of them has sent his couch out to be recovered!  But there is a mix-up--and _her_ couch is delivered to his office--and _his_ couch is (Pg. 103--ed.) delivered to her apartment.  He goes to her apartment to get his couch back.  "I need it for my work!" he says.  She says: "I need it for mine!"
(_There is pandemonium and triumph--HARRY is embracing GEORGE as_
_The Curtain Falls_