"The Ritz" opened on Broadway on January 20, 1975 at the Longacre Theatre and closed after 398 performances and ten previews.F. Murray Abraham, Rita Moreno, Jerry Stiller, Jack Weston, Paul B. Price, Tony De Santis, Christopher J. Brown, and John Everson play the roles they created in the original Broadway production. Treat Williams replaced Stephen Collins as Brick, and Dave King replaced George Dzundza as Abe Lefkowitz.
The closing credits song, "Liberated Man," is sung by C.T. Wilkinson, better known as Colm Wilkinson. He later played Jean Valjean in both the London and Broadway productions of Les Miserables; he also appeared as the Bishop in Les Misérables (2012).
The large photo in Brick's room is Jean Harlow. In the room next to Brick's (when the wall is knocked down) is a picture of W.C. Fields. In Gaetano's room there is a picture of Marilyn Monroe.
Abe Lefkowitz, the doorman at The Ritz, asks Gaetano Proclo, "You ever been in a place like this?" Proclo replies, "Oh, sure. We have a Jack DeLanne's in Cleveland." The name is a take-off on Jack LaLanne, the bodybuilder who founded the American physical fitness movement. He opened America's first health and fitness club in Oakland, CA in 1936 and had fitness clubs throughout the USA. (The joke is that Proclo thinks he's checking in to a health club, when, in fact, it's a gay bathhouse.)