Joseph Hellers lost musical comedy unearthed at Yale university

Catch-22 author erased 1962 musical Howe & Hummel from history; only two copies of his stiletto-sharp script survive today

It goes unmentioned in his autobiography and has been overlooked by his biographers. But now an academic from Durham university has shone a spotlight on a moment in his career that Joseph Heller tried to gloss over: the script the Catch-22 author penned for a musical comedy about two crooked lawyers who ruled the roost in 19th-century New York.

Heller was approached to write the script for the musical Howe & Hummel in June 1962, before he became a hit with Catch 22, reveals Edmund Richardson, an author and lecturer in classics at Durham university, in Hazlitt magazine. Catch-22, which would go on to sell millions of copies around the world, had been out for nine months, but was not yet setting bestseller lists on fire.

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