The origin of The Torch-Bearers was simple enough. Kelly wrote the kind of tight, effective short plays that amateur actors and little theatre directors are always looking for. He had a perfectly good Philadelphia family behind him. And so he was being invited to lunch every now and then by the Pampinellis of the cities in which he played. To hear them was enough. They had to live a wider life.

There were other things to make the death-watch wonder whether The Torch Bearers could live. It was satire. Satire is not ordinarily a popular commodity in the theatre. It defeats sympathy, and sympathy is necessary to emotion, and emotion to theatrical success.