 A major concern with the second act was the effectiveness of the characters He and She ( later called by Rodgers " Mr. and Mrs. God " ) , before whom Billy appeared after his death . Mr. and Mrs. God were depicted as a New England minister and his wife , seen in their parlor . The couple was still part of the show at the Boston opening . Rodgers said to Hammerstein , " We 've got to get God out of that parlor " . When Hammerstein inquired where he should put the deity , Rodgers replied , " I don 't care where you put Him . Put Him on a ladder for all I care , only get Him out of that parlor ! " Hammerstein duly put Mr. God ( renamed the Starkeeper ) atop a ladder , and Mrs. God was removed from the show . Rodgers biographer Meryle Secrest terms this change a mistake , leading to a more fantastic afterlife , which was later criticized by The New Republic as " a Rotarian atmosphere congenial to audiences who seek not reality but escape from reality , not truth but escape from truth " . 
