BEST PLAYS OF THE YEAR ANTHOLOGY—ADAPTATIONS

The Best Plays Theatre Yearbook has been published every year since 1920, generally featuring a selection of ten plays (occasionally more, occasionally less, depending on perceived quality) that had played in New York that year. Since these plays represented the most critically acclaimed works of the year, and often enough among the most commercial, they were also often attractive to film producers in Hollywood’s Classical period as is evidenced by the numbers that were adapted to film in the list below. The drop in works adapted from this series parallels the general drop observable in the American Film Institute’s data. Perhaps even more striking are the percentage of plays in each volume that were adapted, with the period from 1920–1949 distinguished by roughly two-thirds of all published “best” plays made into movies.

1920	5
1921	7
1922	10
1923	6
1924	8
1925	8
1926	4
1927	5
1928	9
1929	6
1930	9
1931	7
1932	7
1933	5
1934	8
1935	5
1936	7
1937	5
1938	6
1939	5
1940	7
1941	8
1942	3
1943	5
1944	5
1945	8
1946	5
1947	8
1948	5
1949	6
1950	5
1951	5
1952	5
1953	5
1954	2
1955	7
1956	5
1957	4
1958	4
1959	4
1960	3
1961	6
1962	4
1963	3
1964	3
1965	4
1966	4
1967	4
1968	6
1969	4
1970	5
1971	3
1972	2
1973	3
1974	2
1975	4
1976	3
1977	3
1978	5
1979	4
1980	3
1981	2
1982	5
1983	5
1984	5
1985	1
1986	0
1987	2
1988	3
1989	2
1990	2
1991	3
1992	2
1993	2
1994	3
1995	1
1996	1
1997	0
1998	0
1999	1
2000	0
2001	2
2002	0
2003	0
2004	0
2005	1
2006	2
2007	2
2008	0
2009	0
2010	0

Percentages of plays adapted

1920–1929	69.4
1930–1939	64.6
1940–1949	60
1950–1959	46
1960–1969	41
1970–1979	34
1980–1989	27.5
1990–1999	15.6
2000–2010	7.2