Born in Wyoming, Illinois, Kirke La Shelle worked with various companies as business manager before launching himself as a producer in the 1890s. Most of his career was associated with musicals, but he produced such legitimate hits as The Earl of Pawtucket (1903) and The Virginian (1904). He dramatized the latter in collaboration with novelist Owen Wister.
A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Lucille La Verne went on stage as a child performer in stock and toured with small troupes. At age 14, La Verne acted in Shakespeare and, shortly thereafter, made her Broadway debut, excelling in popular 19th-century plays and playing with versatility, including blackface. On Broadway, La Verne appeared in both drama and comedy, including Pudd’nhead Wilson (1895), Clarice (1906), a 1907 revival of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,† and The Easterner (1908); she stepped into The Blue Mouse as a replacement in 1909 and appeared in Ann Boyd (1913), The House of Bondage (1914), The Cinderella Man (1916), and The Goldfish (1922). La Verne had her most notable success in Lula Vollmer’s Sun-Up (1923), playing Widow Cagle, a role that played to La Verne’s strengths as a tough backwoods matriarch. The play had a short run on Broadway, but when La Verne directed a revival in 1928, it ran for a season. Additionally, tours in the United States and Europe ended with La Verne having played the role in excess of 3,000 performances. As she reached middle age, La Verne was typically cast in maternal and ethnic roles, as hags, and as other larger-than-life characters, which led to numerous opportunities in movies, beginning in 1915. Among these are Polly of the Circus (1917), Orphans of the Storm (1921), Zaza (1923), repeating her Broadway role in Sun-Up (1925), Sinner’s Holiday (1930), Little Caesar (1931), An American Tragedy (1931), and A Tale of Two Cities (1935); she was also the voice of the Evil Queen and her alter ego, the old hag offering a poisonous apple, in the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
Born William Lackaye in Loudoun County, Virginia, the actor made his New York debut in 1883 in Francesca da Rimini with Lawrence Barrett. He played many roles until 1925 but was most identified with that of Svengali in Trilby, which he originated in 1895 and continued performing until 1897, reviving it in New York in 1907, in 1915, and in 1921. His makeup for that role remarkably transformed his appearance. Kansas City Star critic Austin Latchaw recalled Lackaye’s Svengali: “Lackaye had wonderful eyes. They were huge and brilliant. Their penetrating effect was enhanced in the part of Svengali by the heavy black beard. The bearing, action and motionless expression of the character were almost creepy in their sinister import. . . . No one who saw the performance can forget Lackaye’s death scene. The stricken Svengali swayed, tottered backward toward the audience, and fell on a narrow table, his arms outflung, his head hanging down from the top of the table, facing us upside down, while the glare of the footlights added to the weirdness of the spectacle. Melodramatic, of course, but sensationally effective.” Lackaye was an active member of the Lambs Club, a quick wit, and a popular after-dinner speaker.
Opening on 22 October 1926 at the Mansfield Theatre, the amateurishly written three-act play by J. Frank Davis ran an amazing 794 performances. Edgar B. Davis (no relation to the author), a Texas oil millionaire who wanted to promote the idea of reincarnation, underwrote the lavish production directed and produced by Brock Pemberton, with scene design by Raymond Sovey, and costumes by Robert Edmond Jones. Antoinette Perry played the young woman who has visions of previous lives in 1300, 1670, and 1844, finally returning to 1926 to the beau (Vernon Steele) she had not married in the past. Davis was willing to keep the play running at a deficit and would even admit theatergoers free. It became, at the time, the fourth longest-running Broadway play ever.
Avery Hopwood and Charlton Andrews collaborated on this three-act farce, also billed as Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath, which opened on 9 August 1920 at the Eltinge Theatre and was produced by A. H. Woods for 360 performances. In an effort to loosen him up, friends take painfully shy Jimmy Walters to an artists’ ball. All goes well until a police raid. Jimmy escapes, but his only route is through the window of a nearby Turkish bath, where it happens to be “ladies-only” night. Jimmy and his friends are forced into drag and go through many other subterfuges until they are able to end the charade. The cast included Charles Ruggles, Mrs. Stuart Robson, and otherwise many newcomers. Remarkably durable, Ladies’ Night was revived on Broadway in 1950 and off-Broadway* in 1961 and has had innumerable stock, touring, and amateur productions.
In the 17 years of its operation (1915–1932), the Lafayette Players, an African American stock company founded by Anita Bush, aimed to provide a venue for serious drama by and about black life in the United States. The goal was to counter stereotypical roles and minstrel traditions clinging to Broadway theater and to provide a serious dramatic complement to the black musical entertainments offered at the Apollo Theatre and in nightclubs. The company was established for its first 13 years in Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre before moving to Los Angeles in 1928. Among the important African American actors and playwrights who worked with the Players, both at the theater and on tour, were Charles Gilpin, Clarence Muse, Dooley Wilson, Inez Clough, Evelyn Preer, and Abbie Mitchell. Presenting performances on a weekly basis, the company offered abridgments of Broadway comedies and melodramas with the aim of proving that black performers could excel in all types of theater, not just vaudeville and musicals. Before the financial catastrophes of the Great Depression forced the termination of the Lafayette Players, they had presented approximately 250 productions.
This Harlem-based theater housed the Lafayette Players, an African American stock company, from 1915 to 1928. Weekly abridged productions of popular stage works, musical revues,† vaudeville, and movies brought audiences to the theater until the Players moved to Los Angeles. With the establishment of the Federal Theatre Project,* the Lafayette Theatre housed the Negro Theatre Unit. Among its productions was Orson Welles’s* “voodoo” adaptation of Macbeth in 1936, which won much critical attention. The building was later used as a church, but the New Lafayette Theatre, founded in 1966, performed in a space in a wing of the theater, but it was destroyed by fire in 1968.
The great theater designer Thomas Lamb was born in Dundee, Scotland, and came to the United States at age 12. Known for his palatial interior decors, he studied architecture at Cooper Union Institute, then worked as a New York City building inspector until 1909. A commission from William Fox to design the City Theatre on Fourteenth Street launched Lamb’s career, during which he drafted plans for over 300 legitimate and movie theaters. While Lamb quickly proved himself as an innovator in structural components and use of space, he remains associated in the public mind with the opulence of his “deluxe style” that borrowed from various cultures. The Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre (1912) in New York, for example, brought together Greek and Roman figures and classical Egyptian motifs. Others incorporate Persian, Hindu, Spanish, Renaissance, Louis XVI, or Second Empire features. The size and opulence of Lamb’s theaters made them expensive to maintain, and most no longer exist. Among the surviving Thomas Lamb–designed theaters are the Hippodrome (1914) in Baltimore; the Winter Garden (1914) and the Elgin in Toronto; the Capitol (1920) in Windsor, Ontario; the Capitol (1921) in Winnipeg; the Tivoli (1924) in Washington, D.C.; the Palace (1926) and the Ohio in Columbus; Loew’s Midland (1927) in Kansas City; and B. F. Keith’s Memorial (1928) in Boston.
The origin of the Lambs Club of New York City may be traced to a Christmas dinner at Delmonico’s in 1874, when some members of Lester Wallack’s company, then acting in Dion Boucicault’s The Shaughraun,† socialized with their host, George H. McLean, and other cultured gentlemen, and conceived of forming a supper club to repeat such pleasant and instructive gatherings. Actor Henry Montague had belonged to the Lambs of London, which was then adopted as a model. Montague was elected the first Shepherd, with Harry Beckett as Boy (treasurer).
After a few years of informal gatherings, the Lambs incorporated in 1877 as a New York institution with a charter membership of 60. During the early decades, the membership comprised three theater professionals to every nonprofessional. As a precaution against conflict of interest, no critic or booking agent could be a Lamb. After several moves, the clubhouse settled at 34 West 26th Street in 1880, and it was there that the Lambs began presenting their in-house monthly Gambols in 1888. The Gambols were original skits and songs under the direction of a Collie. The remunerative success of opening a Gambol to the public in 1891 brought financial solvency and led to the practice of presenting an annual public Gambol. Eventually, it became customary for the stars to play walk-on roles while the large roles went to lesser-known members. First-year members, called Lambkins, got the “dame” parts. No woman ever became a Lamb or was even allowed inside the Fold (the clubhouse) until 1952.
The Lambs prospered during the 1890s with Clay Meredith Greene as Shepherd and Augustus Thomas as Boy. In 1897, the Lambs moved into their first permanent clubhouse, a four-story building at 70 West 36th Street. They presented the public Gambol of 1898 at the Metropolitan Opera House, and it paid off the mortgage. The Lambs moved again in 1913, to an expanded facility at 128 West 44th Street, which remained the Fold until 1975. A number of skits written for the Gambols at that venue were later developed into full-length plays, including Edwin Milton Royle’s The Squaw Man, Her Way Out, and Struggle Everlasting; and Augustus Thomas’s The Witching Hour, As a Man Thinks, and The Copperhead. In May 1975, the clubhouse was sold to the Manhattan Church of the Nazarene, and its contents were sold at auction, but the club continues as a group of members.
Born Eva Clara Lang in Columbus, Ohio, she grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, studied acting with Georgia Brown, and further developed her talent in O. D. Woodward’s stock company (playing a Kansas City, Omaha, Denver circuit), where she long remained a favorite of matinee girls, indeed a mainstay of the company from 1905 to 1913. As an ingénue, she toured the Midwest with particular success in Under Two Flags. Her more mature role as Mary Magdalen in The Holy City in 1907 made a powerful impression. Married to actor John Halliday from 1918 to 1928, she appeared with him in New York in The Dancer (1919) and Main Street (1921). After a period of retirement, she had an emotional homecoming performance in Kansas City in 1930 and another, in 1932, as Stella Dallas.
A native of Wales, Lawrence Langner worked in London theater and as a patent lawyer before coming to the United States in 1911. Once established in the legal profession, Langner reignited his theatrical interests by becoming one of the founders of the Washington Square Players in 1914. For the Players, he wrote plays including The Red Cloak (1916), Another Way Out (1916), and The Family Exit (1917). Most of his later plays were unsuccessful, with the exceptions of Henry-Behave (1926) and The Pursuit of Happiness* (1933), the last of which was written under his pseudonym (Alan Child) and had a long run. Langner also adapted the libretto of Champagne, Sec (1933).
Langner worked with the Washington Square Players until it disbanded in 1917. He then became one of the founders of the Theatre Guild in 1918, comanaging with Theresa Helburn during its most productive period. He is credited with supervising as many as 200 Theatre Guild productions. Following the popular success of the Theatre Guild’s second production, John Ferguson (1919), Langner pushed for more European works, including plays by Ernst Toller, Georg Kaiser, Ferenc Molnár, Luigi Pirandello, and particularly George Bernard Shaw, whose Heartbreak House (1919), Back to Methuselah (1921), and St. Joan (1923), were prestige triumphs for the Theatre Guild. Langner admired the plays of Eugene O’Neill and prevailed upon the Theatre Guild to present O’Neill’s Strange Interlude (1928), which won a Pulitzer Prize. In collaboration with his wife, Armina Marshall, Langner built the Westport Country Playhouse* in 1931, established a company there, and he founded the American Shakespeare Festival* at Stratford, Connecticut, in the 1950s.
The Irish-born lanky comic actor Jack S. Langrishe put together a small ensemble in St. Joseph, Missouri, and toured to Kansas City in 1859. His repertory of melodramas was so well received that city fathers spoke of building a theater for him. However, Langrishe, with his actress wife Jeannette and the company, followed the Pike’s Peak gold rush. Their one-week engagement at Denver’s Apollo Hall in 1860 turned into 11 years in the city, with summers in Central City, Colorado, and forays to other towns and mining camps. In 1876, he opened the Langrishe Theatre in Deadwood, South Dakota. In 1879, he was contracted for the inaugural season of the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado. Langrishe became known as “the father of Colorado theatre” but finally left the increasingly populated state in 1885 and lived his last 10 years in Warner, Idaho.
Born in Jersey, England, as Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, Lillie Langtry shocked London society when she became an actress despite having married into the wealthy elite. She had a notorious affair with the Prince of Wales and was celebrated as one of the great beauties of the age, often referred to as the “Jersey Lily.” Langtry’s American stage debut in a revival of Tom Taylor’s The Unequal Match in 1882 was a success; she attempted Shakespeare (Macbeth and As You Like It), but she was most appreciated in contemporary plays. Langtry acted in the United States as frequently as she did in England and had popular successes in Gossip (1895) and The Degenerates (1900), a play that generated considerable controversy over its depiction of high society scandals. Critics tended to praise Langtry’s beauty and charm more than her acting, but she had won respect for her talent by the time she retired in 1918.
Born in Niles, Michigan, Ringgold Wilmer Lardner became one of America’s greatest humorists with his numerous short stories. He occasionally worked as a songwriter and playwright, writing songs for producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. for the Ziegfeld Follies editions of 1917 and 1922 and the Ziegfeld-produced musical Smiles (1930). Robert E. Sherwood adapted Lardner’s story The Love Nest into a play in 1927. Lardner had a mild success with the comedy Elmer the Great (1928) in a George M. Cohan production. His biggest hit came in collaboration with George S. Kaufman on June Moon (1929), a comedy satirizing Tin Pan Alley. His son, Ring Lardner Jr., became a movie writer and was famously blacklisted for a time during the McCarthy Communist “witch hunt” era in the early 1950s.
The stage and movie actor Earle Larimore was born in Portland, Oregon, and made his debut at age seven. He served in World War I, then joined a stock company in Astoria, Oregon. He made his New York debut in 1925 and enjoyed a solid decade of good roles, mostly in Theatre Guild productions. He is perhaps best known for his roles in three Eugene O’Neill plays—as Sam Evans in Strange Interlude (1928), the title role in a 1930 revival of Marco Millions, and as Orin Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra* (1931). Larimore’s other Broadway credits include Ned McCobb’s Daughter (1926), The Silver Cord (1926), The Second Man (1927), Hotel Universe* (1930), Biography* (1932), and Dark Victory (1934); he stepped in as a replacement in the role of Willie Oban in O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh* (1946).
Born Francine La Remée in Verdun, France, she was brought to New York in childhood and made her debut in 1910. From 1913, she was performing regularly on Broadway, but her first big hit came in 1921 as a flapper who gets redeemed in Rachel Crothers’s Nice People. Her Broadway credits included leading roles in Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1917), Nobody’s Business (1923), Nancy Ann (1924), Arms and the Man (1925), Chicago (1926), and Let Us Be Gay (1929). She was related to the Adler family, as a niece of Jacob Adler and cousin of Luther Adler and Stella Adler.
George M. Baker’s 1898 two-act temperance melodrama was one of many such moral lessons in dramatic form aimed at middle- and lower-class audiences in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Mark Ashton, a good man with weaknesses, risks a happy marriage with a loving wife, Kate, and his son’s and daughter’s happiness, when the villainous Harry Hanson leads him to overindulgence in alcohol and other temptations. He ultimately repents his demons, noting at the final curtain: “Ay, gather about me close,—wife, daughter, son. In the hours of darkness, when temptation assails me, let me lean upon your true hearts to gather courage; for there are no trustier guards than loving hearts,—no strong citadel that ‘Home, sweet Home.’”
Opening on 28 October 1890 at Daly’s Theatre, this romantic comedy by Augustin Daly starred Ada Rehan and John Drew, and ran for 101 performances. The New York Times reviewer appreciated its lack of “everyday realism,” noting that “the personages are real human beings, to be sure; we sympathize with them and understand them, but they do not bore us with the petty details of their everyday lives. They love and suffer; they banter and jest; they charm and refresh us and lift our minds above the toil and discomfort of dreary everyday.”
Born David Austin Latchaw in Venango County, Pennsylvania, this drama critic came to Kansas City in 1886 on business for a publishing house and stayed in the crude frontier town on the verge of a culture boom. He began reviewing plays for the Kansas City Times in 1888, moved to the Kansas City Journal in 1895, and from 1902, worked for the Kansas City Star. He loved the stage stars of the glory days of the road, 1880s to 1912, and developed warm friendships with many. His criticism may have been overly generous, but it was also passionate and funny. He had a remarkable memory for details of performances, as shown in his 60-chapter retrospective, “The Enchanted Years of the Stage,” published in the Star from 31 March to 23 June 1935.
Along with Moishe Hurwitz, Jacob Lateiner was one of the major writers for the shund theater, the bottom rung of New York’s Yiddish stage, during its formative period in the United States in the 1890s. Lateiner is credited with writing over 150 plays, mostly simple melodramatic and sentimental works aimed at the unsophisticated tastes of newly arrived immigrants.
Beginning in 1915, H. Robert Law did scene designs for many Broadway productions as well as some in collaboration (notably with P. Dodd Ackerman) and some as a product of his H. Robert Law Studio, 502 West 138th Street, New York City. He designed five plays in 1915, his first season on Broadway—Maid in America, Three of Hearts, The Ware Case, The White Feather, and A World of Pleasure—in addition to the studio design for Mr. Myd’s Mystery. Among his many other credits were The Man Who Came Back (1916) and The Intimate Strangers (1921).
Opening 30 September 1914 at the 48th Street Theatre, this four-act melodrama by George H. Broadhurst, who also produced and directed, ran 221 performances. Julia Dean played Margaret, the brutalized wife and mother, who marries Richard Harding to save her mother from ruin. When the abusive Harding whips their young son, Margaret kills him. Charged with the crime along with a young man, Geoffrey, who loves her, Margaret is ultimately able to convince a sympathetic police inspector of her husband’s brutality. Olga Petrova played Margaret in a 1917 silent movie adaptation. The Law of the Land should not be confused with a play of the same name, George Hoey’s short-lived 1896 drama set in the pre–Civil War South. Of Broadhurst’s play, Life magazine’s critic wrote, “In this period of all sorts of plays there’s no denying that as a thriller The Law of the Land is entitled to its place in the sun—or the electric lights.”
English-born actor Ernest Lawford spent most of his career in the United States, where he played a wide range of roles on Broadway, often in George Bernard Shaw’s plays, including Candida (1903), The Man of Destiny (1904), Major Barbara (1915), and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (1916), and other classic and contemporary British plays. Lawford played Mr. Darling/Captain Hook in the original American production of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1905) opposite Maude Adams. He was also among the cast of the first Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Jesse Lynch Williams’s Why Marry? (1917). Lawford’s other major Broadway appearances included The Frisky Mrs. Johnson (1903), Mrs. Leffingwell’s Boots (1905), a revival of The New York Idea in 1915, The Man Who Came Back (1916), The Circle (1921) with Mrs. Leslie Carter, a 1923 revival of As You Like It, Meet the Wife (1923), revivals of Hamlet in 1925 and Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance in 1926, Wings over Europe (1928), The Late Christopher Bean (1932), Mary of Scotland* (1933), Accent on Youth* (1934), Tovarich (1936), and The Fabulous Invalid (1938). Lawford acted in a few movies, including A Good Little Devil (1914), The On-the-Square Girl (1917), The Fighter (1921), Irish Luck (1925), and Personal Maid (1931). He was the uncle of film star Peter Lawford.
Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Lillian Lawrence made her stage debut at age 13 in a small role in the operetta The Royal Middy. She later appeared in opera and on tour in The Two Orphans.† Lawrence became a member of the Castle Square Stock Company for six years, ultimately playing hundreds of roles in theater and opera. In 1904, she joined the Alcazar Theatre stock company in San Francisco and, ultimately, several other stock companies, all successfully. On Broadway, Lawrence appeared in Blue Grass (1908), The Bachelor’s Baby (1909), The Red Petticoat (1912), Cordelia Blossom (1914), and His Majesty Bunker Bean (1916). For 10 years, between 1915 and 1925, Lawrence appeared in movies, most notably in The Galley Slave (1915), A Fallen Idol (1919), A Parisian Scandal (1921), White Shoulders (1922), East Is West (1922), The Common Law (1923), and Stella Maris (1925).
A playwright born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, Vincent Lawrence graduated from Yale University and became a Boston sports reporter. He turned to playwriting with The Ghost Between (1921) and two hits in 1923: Two Fellows and a Girl and In Love with Love. He demonstrated versatility, writing drama, comedy, and books for musicals, and his other plays produced on Broadway included The Married Man (1925), Spring Fever (1925), Sour Grapes (1926), Happy (1927), A Distant Drum (1928), Treasure Girl (1928), Among the Married (1929), Washington Heights (1931), and The Overtons (1945).
A New York native, John Howard Lawson attended Williams College, where he began writing plays with a Marxist bent. Lawson’s leftist politics led him to develop a dramatic approach he labeled “political vaudeville,” and he was first seen on Broadway in Roger Bloomer (1923), an expressionist satirizing of a young man’s revolt against materialism. The Theatre Guild produced his next play, Processional (1925), a success that featured actors George Abbott, June Walker, and Philip Loeb in a fiery account of a West Virginia coal miners’ strike. Lawson’s next three plays, including Nirvana (1926), Loud Speaker (1927), and The International (1928), all failed, but Success Story (1932), produced by the Group Theatre,* was well received. When sound movies began, Lawson spent much of his time writing screenplays until he was blacklisted as one of the “Hollywood Ten” during the House Un-American Activities anti-Communist “witch hunts” in the late 1940s.
Born Katharine Drain in Spokane, Washington, she went to France as an ambulance driver in World War I, then studied art in Paris and performed there as a dancer in 1921. Her marriage to playwright John Howard Lawson lasted from 1918 to 1924. She designed costumes for his play Roger Bloomer (1923). During the 1920s, she held various stage management, technical, and design assistant positions on Broadway, and she created scene designs for two plays: The Chief Thing (1926) and Mr. Pim Passes By (1927). Most of her set and costume designs on Broadway were during the 1930s, after which she worked in Los Angeles. For over 23 years, she was costume designer for Bob Hope.
A touring vaudevillian whose early life is lost to obscurity, Frank Mokeley Lawton was probably born in Hartford, Connecticut. His stage debut likely came in 1874 when he joined the Eureka Minstrels, partnered with blackface entertainer Lew Dockstader. He developed skills as a singer, dancer, whistler, and bones player, all of which served him well in the roles he played and in vaudeville. Over time, and with other troupes, Lawton partnered with such vaudevillians as Joe Sparks and Billy Mitchell, but he scored a personal success in 1887 when he joined the Sol Smith Russell Company to play rustic Spartacus Hubbs in Pa. Lawton’s whistling was so popular he recorded it in 1898 for Berliner Gramophone. The remainder of his career was spent touring England, Australia, and New Zealand. He was married twice, to actress Virginia Earle and dancer Daisy May Collier, the latter mother of his four children, including movie actor Frank Lawton (1904–1969).
Eugene O’Neill’s only major drama of the 1920s not given a Broadway production, Lazarus Laughed premiered instead at California’s Pasadena Playhouse,* where it opened for a limited run on 9 April 1928. In this epic, biblically inspired work, O’Neill continued his experimentation with masks, a device he had first employed in The Great God Brown (1926). In this case, the entire cast wore masks with the exception of Lazarus, who lives fearlessly because he is not afraid of death. When a jealous woman, Pompeia, kills Lazarus’s wife, he forgives her, and when the insane Caligula condemns Lazarus to be burned at the stake, the repentant Pompeia throws herself on the fire. Lazarus only laughs as he is engulfed by the flames, calling out “Fear not, Caligula! There is no death,” as the horrified Caligula begs forgiveness. California critics applauded the lavish production, featuring Irving Pichel as Lazarus and Victor Jory as Caligula, but were muted in their response to the play, which was similarly disliked by reviewers when it was published in book form.
Distinguished actress and director Eva Le Gallienne was the daughter of noted writer Richard Le Gallienne. Born in London, she trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made her Broadway debut in Mrs. Boltay’s Daughters (1915), but she toiled with little success until she scored a triumph as Julie in the American premiere of Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom (1921), following this with another success in Molnár’s The Swan (1923). Le Gallienne’s most significant achievement was founding the Civic Repertory Theatre (CRT), a bold attempt to establish the repertory system on Broadway with the goal of bringing classics of international drama to American audiences at bargain prices. Established in 1926 with the financial aid of Otto Kahn, the CRT ran for six seasons before financial strains ended the experiment, although Le Gallienne herself gave well-received performances in a range of CRT productions, including roles as Masha in Three Sisters, Viola in Twelfth Night, Sister Joanna in The Cradle Song, Elsa in the Pulitzer Prize–winning Susan Glaspell drama Alison’s House,* and the White Queen in her own adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, as well as Peter Pan and Hedda Gabler. Among those acting with the CRT were Alla Nazimova and Josephine Hutchinson, both of whom had lesbian relationships with Le Gallienne. Le Gallienne also directed many CRT productions and continued acting in New York and on tour, scoring a particular success as Lettie in Thomas Job’s Uncle Harry* (1942).
After World War II, in partnership with Cheryl Crawford* and Margaret Webster,* Le Gallienne attempted once again to establish a New York company, the American Repertory Theatre,* but it, too, failed. She continued to act until late in her life, occasionally appearing in movies. Le Gallienne might have rivaled Katharine Cornell or Helen Hayes had she chosen a more commercial career, but she preferred a steady diet of the classics and serious modern drama, especially the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and George Bernard Shaw.
As an actress, Sarah Cowell Le Moyne made her debut in A.M. Palmer’s stock company in 1878 and went on to a dozen or so roles on Broadway, notably in a starring role in The Greatest Thing in the World, written for her by Harriet Ford and Mrs. Henry C. DeMille. Yet Mrs. Le Moyne (wife of actor William J. Le Moyne) remained best known as an elocutionist, who popularized the poems of Robert Browning and was often called upon to recite at public events. She served on the board of directors of the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Born in Boston, William J. Le Moyne had his first stage experiences in amateur theater in his teens. He began his professional career in 1852 in a production of The Lady of Lyons in Portland, Maine. That same year, in Troy, New York, he joined the Howard† family troupe at Peale’s Museum, where he was cast in the role of Reverend Deacon in the original production of George L. Aiken’s† adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.† The production toured for a year. When the Civil War began, Le Moyne fought for the Union in the 28th Massachusetts Volunteers. He was seriously wounded in the Battle of South Mountain, which ended his service. Following his recovery, he returned to the stage in 1863, playing in works adapted from the novels of Charles Dickens. At various times, Le Moyne acted with such stars as Edwin Booth, Edwin Forrest,† Charles Fechter, and James K. Hackett. Le Moyne’s Broadway appearances included The Banker’s Daughter† (1878), The Rajah (1883), The Highest Bidder (1887), The Wife (1887), Sweet Lavender (1888), The Moth and the Flame (1898), Catherine (1898), Barbara Frietchie (1899), Naughty Anthony (1900), a 1901 revival of The Merchant of Venice starring Nat C. Goodwin, and Don Caesar’s Return (1901). Health issues forced his retirement in 1901.
Established in 1916, New Orleans’ oldest theater company was set up in the Little Theater style. The theater found a home almost immediately in an 18th-century Spanish colonial building in the French Quarter, later renovated to include a 450-seat space and a modest children’s theater* facility. The theater’s operation has continued to the present day, and aside from a regular season of plays, it presents the annual Tennessee Williams*/New Orleans Literary Festival.
In a stock company, the leading man and leading woman roles were the major parts in the play and were cast according to those lines of business. However, if a star performed with the stock company, the star would take that role while the leading man or leading lady would either step down to a supporting role or be at rest during the star’s engagement.
C. M. S. McLellan’s five-act drama, written as a vehicle for Minnie Maddern Fiske, opened on 12 December 1904 for 131 performances at the Manhattan Theatre. Mrs. Fiske played Leah, a thief, who attempts to steal jewels intended for Paul Sylvaine’s fiancée. When he catches Leah in the act, she recognizes him as the man who saved her during a shipwreck years before, and they become friends. When the wastrel Raoul Berton (played by George Arliss), the brother of Sylvaine’s intended, steals the jewels, framing Leah in the process, Sylvaine protects Leah but loses his fiancée. Reformed, Leah marries Sylvaine. McLellan’s original version offered a more ambiguous ending, but he changed it under pressure from Mrs. Fiske and her husband, Harrison Grey Fiske, producer of the play. It was a popular work in Mrs. Fiske’s repertory, but it was made into a movie without her in 1913 and was revived by William A. Brady in 1924 with McLellan’s original ending, achieving only 32 performances.
Michael Bennett Leavitt was born in Posen, Prussia, brought to the United States before his second birthday, and made his debut with the Mrs. W. B. English Company in Bangor, Maine, performing alongside Mrs. English’s two daughters, Helen and Lucille Western.† By age 14, he was performing in minstrel shows, playing banjo, bones, tambourine, and piano, as well as acting in the burlesque sketch and serving as advance man. As impresario of Madame Rentz’s Female Minstrels (later the Rentz-Santley troupe), he popularized burlesque performed by women. He moved easily into management of legitimate theater and formed a chain of theaters that became the prototype later imitated by the Theatrical Syndicate. During his career, he worked with virtually every person in American show business, much of which is recounted in his magisterial memoir, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management (1912).
Hungarian-born Joe Leblang (1874–1931) began brokering theater tickets in the 1890s, and by 1913, he had built a booming business in the basement of Gray’s Drugstore on Broadway near 43rd Street. Leblang’s became the prime venue for theater tickets in New York, often selling up to 3,000 tickets a night in the 1930s. After Leblang’s death, the ticket agency continued in operation through the mid-1940s, with many other similar agencies springing up in that era.
The early life of Lillian Lee is obscure, but she went on stage as a child performer in Joseph Jefferson’s production of Rip Van Winkle while the show was on tour in Baltimore, Maryland. Lee’s skills as an actress were evident early on when she demonstrated that she could easily move from comedy to melodrama and Shakespeare and musicals. She appeared with numerous stock companies, on tour, and on Broadway in Lovers’ Lane (1901), Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1904), Dream City (1906), The Midnight Sons (1909), The Lady from Lobster Square (1910), The Hen-Pecks (1911), The Wife Hunters (1911), The Lady of the Slipper (1912), Irene (1919), and Cinders (1923). She was also in the cast of the first two Ziegfeld Follies, in 1907 and 1908. Lee appeared in two movies, Sweet and Low (1914) and No Mother to Guide Her (1923).
The success of The Black Crook,† often referred to as the first musical, in New York in 1866 demonstrated that there was a huge paying audience for visual spectacle that included scantily clad women. The “leg business” was any endeavor that seemed to privilege female form over literary content. Olive Logan emerged as a vociferous critic of such degradation of theatrical art.
This light romantic four-act play by William Gillette opened on 14 August 1888 for 102 performances at the Madison Square Theatre with a cast including Sidney Drew, George Fawcett, and Nina Boucicault. Drew played a lawyer who convinces two men, his rivals for the affections of a young woman, that each has killed the other. His goal is to eliminate the rivals and to reunite the girl with her mother and sister, thereby winning her love. Gillette adapted the play into a novel, beginning a trend that continues in the 21st century.
The legitimate drama, stage, or theater, called “legit” in Variety slang, meant straight plays without musical interpolations. The term originated when strict regulations during the 17th and 18th centuries were intended to protect the theaters that were licensed for the performance of plays. Nonlicensed theater groups would get around the restrictions by adding snatches of song or dance, which theoretically changed the piece into a different (unregulated) genre. By extension, the term legitimate came to imply works of some literary merit.
Born in Chicago, Fritz Leiber made his acting debut there in 1902. Beginning with the role of Macduff in the Ben Greet Players’ 1905 production of Macbeth in New York, he established himself as a Shakespearean actor, playing perhaps 100 different Shakespearean roles. From 1908 to 1915, he toured with Robert Mantell. In 1920, he organized his own company, and along with his continuing commitment to Shakespeare, Leiber also acted in Two Strangers from Nowhere (1924), The Field God (1927), and Yoshe Kalb (1933). He acted and directed for Chicago Civic Shakespeare Society from 1929 to 1932.
Born in New York City and trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Winifred Lenihan made her acting debut in 1918 in Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Betrothal. She played the title role in the American premiere of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan (1923). Her other Broadway credits include For the Defense (1919), The Dover Road (1921), Will Shakespeare (1923), The Failures (1923), White Wings (1926), a 1928 revival of Major Barbara, and her own play, Blind Mice (1930), which was a failure. Lenihan adapted her play for a movie version titled Working Girls (1931), and her only film role came in Jigsaw (1949).
Born Lemuel Golden Toney in Richmond, Virginia, Eddie Leonard became one of the most celebrated minstrel men of his time. He was a dominant personality in vaudeville, where he wrote and popularized such songs as “Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider” and “Roly-Boly Eyes.” He appeared on Broadway in The Southerners (1904), Lifting the Lid (1905), Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels (1906), The Cohan and Harris Minstrels (1908), and Roly-Boly Eyes (1919). A predecessor of the better-known stars Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, Leonard differed in that he performed solely in blackface. As that racist tradition died away, so did Leonard’s career. He appeared in a few movies, including Melody Lane (1929), Rainbow’s End (1938), and, as himself, in If I Had My Way (1940).
The irrepressible Chicago drama critic was born Lillian West in West Burlington, Iowa. She graduated from the conservatory of music at St. Mary’s Academy, South Bend, Indiana, and spent several years performing in light opera in New York and on tour. After she and her first husband, Frank Brown, divorced, she returned to Chicago and, in 1890, began a 40-year career as critic for the Chicago Daily News, using the pen name Amy Leslie. In 1901, she married the much younger Frank “Bring ’Em Back Alive” Buck, but they divorced 15 years later. Leslie’s style might be described as gushing, enthusiastic, and ornate. Her 1891 book Some Players is a collection of vividly written sketches of many actors of the day, interspersed by the photographs they autographed to her.
Born Elsie Lyde in Orange, New York, this child actress captivated New York theatergoers in Editha’s Burglar (1887), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1888), and The Prince and the Pauper (1890). After a hiatus, she returned in The Rivals (1898), The Man on the Case (1907), The Christian (1901), Disraeli (1911), and others, without achieving her earlier level of success.
Opening 21 February 1929 at the Little Theatre, this sophisticated comedy by Rachel Crothers ran for 132 performances. John Golden produced it, and Crothers directed her own work. Francine Larrimore played the charming divorcée whose erring husband wins her back in the course of an elegant house and garden party. The 1930 movie version of the play starred Norma Shearer and Marie Dressler.
W. Somerset Maugham’s drama opened at the Morosco Theatre on 26 September 1927 for 104 performances. Katharine Cornell scored a triumph with critics as Leslie Crosbie, the unfaithful wife of a South American plantation owner who murders her lover. Claiming the man attempted to rape her and, as such, that she was justified in shooting him, Leslie is acquitted with the aid of a lawyer friend and her supportive husband. However, the lover’s Asian wife takes matters of justice into her own hands. The play became a stock staple and a memorable movie, notably filmed twice, first as an early “talkie” starring Jeanne Eagels in 1929 and again in 1940 with Academy Award–nominated Bette Davis.* Two television adaptations (1969, 1982) also appeared.
Born in Troy, New York, this popular comedian, one of the “Big Four” of Augustin Daly’s company (a group including Ada Rehan, Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, and John Drew), began his theatrical apprenticeship in Mrs. John Wood’s† troupe, performing in burlesque. Lewis joined Daly in 1869 and remained in the company until his death. He scored personal successes in a range of classic and contemporary comedies, particularly in Shakespeare, with his Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1888), Touchstone in As You Like It (1891), and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (1893) as particular standouts.
The sisters—Alice, a director and scene designer, and Irene, a producer, designer, and choreographer, both best remembered as cofounders of the Neighborhood Playhouse—were the eighth and tenth children of Leonard Lewisohn, a German-immigrant founder of the American Smelting and Refining Company and Amalgamated Copper Company, and Rosalie (Jacobs) Lewisohn, from a family of New York bankers. The death of both parents at the turn of the century left over $2 million for each of the 10 children. Their father had encouraged Alice’s and Irene’s artistic inclinations and had also exposed them to philanthropy and social work at New York City’s Henry Street Settlement House, where they formed a friendship with Lillian D. Wald. Irene traveled to Asia with Wald, while Alice studied acting with Sarah Cowell Le Moyne and made her professional debut in 1906. In 1912, Alice organized the Neighborhood Players at the Henry Street Settlement House, and the amateur group produced several plays.
In 1915, the sisters opened the 390-seat Neighborhood Playhouse, with construction financed by them, and modeled upon theaters they had visited in Europe. For 12 years, the company produced plays from the international repertoire, turning professional in 1920 and garnering particular acclaim from critics for The Little Clay Cart (1924) and The Dybbuk (1925). Alice married designer Herbert E. Crowley in 1924; they were later divorced, but she is often referenced under the name Alice Crowley. Irene remained active in theater after the Lewisohns closed the playhouse in 1927 due to unsustainable financial losses. She also founded the Museum of Costume Art, which was later absorbed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
During World War I, temporary structures were erected at military training camps, where soldiers were entertained by professional troupers.
This 1887 temperance “dialogue” was published in leaflets, like many other such plays in the late 19th century.
Born in New York shortly after his father was forced to depart from Germany for political reasons, Theodore A. Liebler studied art and worked as a lithographer. A fire at his studio forced him out of business, but he recouped by partnering with George C. Tyler to produce The Royal Box (1897). The play was a hit, leading Liebler and Tyler to establish a producing firm, Liebler & Co., that year, which became one of the dominant producing organizations prior to World War I. Among his remarkable 240 productions were some of the most popular plays of the era, including The Christian (1898), Children of the Ghetto (1899), Sag Harbor (1900), In the Palace of the King (1900), A Gentleman of France (1901), Raffles (1903), Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1904), The Squaw Man (1905), Salomy Jane (1907), The Man from Home (1908), Alias Jimmy Valentine (1910), Pomander Walk (1910), Disraeli (1911), and The Garden of Allah (1911). Liebler also produced American tours starring Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Eleonora Duse, Rejane, and the Abbey Theatre’s Irish Players. The tour of the Irish Players set off riots of Irish Americans who found J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World objectionable. Liebler’s seemingly unerring sense for the tastes of the theatergoing public prior to World War I declined after the war, and, following several failures, the company folded and he retired. See also †FOREIGN STARS AND COMPANIES ON THE AMERICAN STAGE.
Born in Pittsburgh, the stage director James Light studied painting and architecture at Carnegie Institute of Technology. After meeting Eugene O’Neill, he joined the Provincetown Players, first as an actor and then directing for the company for 13 years from 1917, staging O’Neill’s S.S. Glencairn and All God’s Chillun Got Wings, both in 1924. Light also directed for the Federal Theatre Project* and taught at the New School for Social Research, serving as dean of drama from 1939 to 1942.
Theater lighting at its most primitive during the period before electricity consisted solely of candlelight, and this was often the condition in small-town halls in rural America even very late in the 19th century. Melvin Schoberlin cites an instance in which only 12 candles served an entire facility—both stage and auditorium. Plays were written in acts that could be played before the candles burned down and had to be changed. Still, a smoking candle might require wick-trimming or snuffing during a scene. Safety, convenience, and illumination all improved with the use of oil lamps, which first replaced candles in the footlights. According to The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson, during the first half of the 19th century in midwestern towns, “a second-class quality of sperm-oil was the height of any manager’s ambition.”
Gas lighting was the norm for theaters in most cities during most of the 19th century, with steady improvements in the equipment and ability to control its effects. The gas table allowed centralized control of the valves that regulated the gas lines to individual instruments. Gaslight required fairly large backstage crews of gasmen. This was also the era of the limelight.
Toward the end of the 19th century, electric lighting began to replace gas lighting in theaters. It was safer, more economical, and easier to control. Similarly, the carbon arc replaced the limelight. Yet many artists remained partial to gaslight, and many turn-of-the-century theaters were built with both gas and electric lighting in compatible systems.
Scene designer Ernest Gros told an interviewer (Theatre Magazine, August 1908): “The electric light is brutal. We try to control it by the use of different media, but in no way can we get the softness and mystery of gas.” Thus, even after electric lighting replaced gas in theaters, the great English actor Sir Henry Irving preferred the softer effects of the calcium light (limelight), and, on his 1899–1900 American tour, he brought his own gas tanks along on the train. His manager Bram Stoker recalled in his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906) that when they played Kansas City and stacked the scarlet oxygen tanks outside the stage door, a reporter published his assumption that Irving was a dying man, kept alive only by using oxygen. See also ARC LIGHT; THEATER FIRES.
Winchell Smith and Frank Bacon collaborated on this remarkably long-running hit, which opened on 26 August 1918 for a phenomenal 1,291 performances at the Gaiety Theatre and was produced by John Golden. Bacon played “Lightnin’” Bill Jones, a bragging drunk, who owns a hotel sitting on the California/Nevada border. The hotel, run by Jones’s wife, features a line painted down the middle of the lobby indicating the borders of the two states. Mrs. Jones, along with Lightnin’s young friend, John Marvin (played by Ralph Morgan), are bilked by two shady speculators who convince Mrs. Jones to sell the hotel to them, but when Lightnin’ refuses to cosign the agreement, Mrs. Jones threatens divorce. However, Lightnin’ saves his marriage and John’s fortunes by revealing the duplicity of the speculators. Lightnin’ was the longest-running play of its day until Abie’s Irish Rose surpassed it in the mid-1920s. John Ford made a movie version in 1925. An early “talkie” starring Will Rogers was a hit in 1930. Revived on stage in 1938 with Fred Stone, Lightnin’ closed after 54 performances.
Invented by Thomas Drummond in 1826, limelight (or calcium light) was not regularly used for lighting in London theaters until much later. It was adopted by American troupes after the Civil War but was gradually replaced by the cheaper carbon arc light. The bright glow of limelight, directed through a lens, was produced by heating a block of limestone to incandescence with the spark of combined oxygen and hydrogen through hoses from their separate containers, allowing it to give off a misty white light. American theaters employed limelights during the latter half of the 19th century mostly for spotlighting leading players. The term in the limelight is frequently employed to suggest an actor at the center of attention.
Born in Waterford, New York, Howard Lindsay became a versatile theater man, with notable successes as playwright, actor, director, and producer. Educated at Harvard University, Lindsay attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, after which he worked as an actor. He toured with McKee Rankin, worked in vaudeville and burlesque, and was a member of Margaret Anglin’s company beginning in 1913 and continuing until he went into the military during World War I. Anglin acted in Lindsay’s first produced play, Billeted (1917). After the war, Lindsay’s A Young Man’s Fancy (1919) failed, but he directed and acted in George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly’s comedy Dulcy (1921). During the 1920s, he directed Booth Tarkington’s The Wren (1921), Kaufman and Connelly’s To the Ladies (1922) and The ’49ers (1922), Sweet Nell of Old Drury (1923) starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Aaron Hoffman’s The Good Old Days (1923), Kaufman and Herman J. Mankiewicz’s The Good Fellow (1926), Edwin Burke’s This Thing Called Love (1928), and his own play Tommy (1927), written in collaboration with Bertrand Robinson, with whom he also wrote Your Uncle Dudley (1929) and Oh, Promise Me (1930). Lindsay acted in several of these. After 1930, he collaborated almost exclusively with Russel Crouse,* and they won the Pulitzer Prize for State of the Union* (1945) and a Tony Award* for their libretto of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s The Sound of Music (1959) and scored a record-setting success with the comedy Life with Father* (1939), in which Lindsay played the lead opposite his wife, Dorothy Stickney.
In the 1880s and 1890s, fashionable young people would attend the theater in groups, booking their seats in a continuous row, thus forming “line parties.”
From the 18th century until the rise of the combination system, actors were hired according to certain categories of roles that they would play throughout the repertory of plays presented by that company. Apart from the leading man and leading lady roles, the usual lines of business in any late 19th-century touring company, presenting mostly melodramas interspersed by comedies and Shakespeare plays, were juvenile, ingénue, heavy man (or villain), eccentric (often ethnic types), light comedian, character actor, low comedian, old man, walking gentleman, and utility. There were, of course, female counterparts to many of them, as well as endless variations like the Yankee, the soubrette, and the respectable utility.
Opening on 20 November 1905 at the Lyceum Theatre, this drama by Charles Klein ran for 586 performances. The New York Times reviewer saw its theme as “the dominant power of money in American politics.” Edmund Breese played “Ready-Money” Ryder, a corrupt corporate figure whose chicanery has brought disgrace on an upright judge. The judge’s daughter, as an author using a pen name, gains access to Ryder’s papers and finds the evidence needed to clear her father’s name. Of course, her conflicted romantic feelings incline toward the judge’s son. It was not difficult for the public to see the parallels with corporate genius John D. Rockefeller and investigative journalist Ida Tarbell, whose two years of research into the oil industry had resulted in the 1904 publication of her classic study, The History of the Standard Oil Company.
Born Keni Sonyes in Zhytomyr in present-day Ukraine, Keni Liptzin (sometimes seen as Lipzin) had no education, but a fine singing voice helped her find work on the stage in 1880, under the guidance of Israel Rosenberg. When she married stage prompter Volodya Liptzin in London, Liptzin took his name and acted opposite Yiddish theater great Jacob Adler. She came to the United States to continue performing with Adler in 1889, and she also appeared with Moise Finkel and David Kessler before establishing her own theater. Liptzin found her greatest successes in Jacob Gordin’s plays, including Di shkhite and Mirele Efros, but she also performed in many 19th-century staples. Liptzin’s larger-than-life acting style, which early 20th-century critics described as “classical,” ultimately gave way to more realistic approaches, but Liptzin’s performances, particularly in Mirele Efros, “made a strong impression” demonstrating a pride equal to King Lear, as Abraham Cahan wrote in Forverts.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the impresario Jacob Litt worked theater jobs from boyhood, learning the business and working up to acquisition of his own theaters in his hometown, where he produced melodramas that then lucratively toured the Midwest. The self-made man eventually also held theaters in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the Broadway Theatre in New York. He had a management association with Charles Frohman and, in 1901, formed a partnership with A. W. “Sandy” Dingwall, who in 1890 had left his position as drama critic on the Milwaukee Sentinel to work with Litt. Litt became a millionaire after his stock company produced In Old Kentucky by Charles T. Dazey in 1893 and then sent it on the road, where it remained perennially popular, returning annually to many cities for two decades. Illness forced his early retirement in 1902.
This three-act comedy by Floyd Dell and Thomas Mitchell, produced by Crosby Gaige, opened at the Morosco Theatre on 9 October 1928 for 303 performances. Based on a novel by Dell, the play was adapted by actor Mitchell, who played hapless Norman Overbeck who learns that he is the father of Isabel Drury’s baby shortly before he is to marry Madge Ferris. Following complications, he realizes he loves Isabel. Little Accident found its way to movie screens twice (1930, 1939), and Dell and Mitchell collaborated on another Mitchell vehicle, Cloudy with Showers (1931).
Opening 26 December 1918 at the Little Theatre, the Shubert-produced comedy written and directed by Rachel Crothers ran for 252 performances. Estelle Winwood played an impoverished society belle on a train heading west. She made a credible emotional trajectory of her learning through the disaster of a train wreck to think of someone other than herself. A movie adaptation of A Little Journey was released in 1927.
Opening on 8 September 1920 at the Plymouth Theatre, this comedy by Rida Johnson Young ran for 311 performances. Produced by Sam H. Harris and directed by Sam Forrest, its slight plot appealed to audiences for its evocation of the Dutch era in New York City’s history. Movie versions appeared in 1923 and 1940.
Small theater groups formed in order to promote new playwrights and experimental techniques without commercial pressure sprang up around the United States in the 1910s and 1920s. The designation as a movement came after the 1915 openings of Washington Square Players and the Neighborhood Playhouse, followed in 1916 by the Provincetown Players, but the phenomenon can be traced back earlier. Percy MacKaye may be the first American theater artist to promote the notion of such theaters in his book The Playhouse and the Play (1909). However, earlier initiatives can be signaled, notably Jane Addams’s Hull-House Players in Chicago, begun in 1900. An article by Constance D’Arcy Mackay in The American City (September 1918, 206–12) promoted the concept. Chicago became a hotbed of little theaters between 1900 and 1925, with many—like Maurice Browne’s Chicago Little Theatre (1919)—operating only briefly. Detroit’s Arts and Crafts Theatre run by Samuel J. Hume did significant work, as did many others.
Some little theaters produced new plays, a trend exemplified by the Provincetown Players, who gave early opportunities to Eugene O’Neill and Susan Glaspell. Others stressed European plays and techniques, particularly those in the social problem play style perfected by Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw. Still others devoted their attention to the cultures of immigrant groups, while some, like New York’s Lafayette Players and Cleveland’s Karamu House, focused on elevating the quality of theatrical opportunities for African Americans. The little theater movement laid the foundation for the community theaters* of the 1930s and after, which in turn prepared audiences for the great network of professional regional resident nonprofit theaters* that developed in the 1960s.
Born Charlotte Selina Wood in Long Branch, New Jersey, she was nicknamed “Little Tuesday” because she was born on that day and her parents hesitated in deciding on a name. Her uncle was the noted playwright Joseph Arthur, and he aided her career, which began when she was barely two years old in Helen’s Inheritance at the Madison Square Theatre. Clearly a prodigy, Little Tuesday also appeared in Pine Meadow and, in 1890, in a benefit performance given for her at the Star Theatre. Her public performances were only occasional, partly due to concerns raised by Eldridge T. Geary Jr. of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, but she appeared in charity shows and gave private performances for wealthy New Yorkers, including the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Whitneys. Little Tuesday toured during the 1892–1893 season in her uncle’s play, The Still Alarm, but afterward she appeared less frequently as she began schooling. In 1896, she acted in her uncle’s one-act Beware, the Dog, but she is believed to have completely retired by 1897. As with many child prodigies, Little Tuesday’s popularity was a novelty and soon faded. It is believed she married George T. Zimmerman in 1915 and headed a women’s club that supported theatrical endeavors, but little is known of her after that time.
Persistent in her quest for a successful dramatization of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Jessie Bonstelle tried and tweaked various versions on the road. She directed it in New York at the Playhouse, where it opened on 14 October 1912 and ran for 184 performances in an adaptation by Marian De Forest. William A. Brady produced it, and Alice Brady, his daughter, played Meg. The cast also included Mrs. E. A. Eberle as Aunt March, Marie Pavey as Jo, and John Cromwell as John Brooke. Little Women had Broadway revivals in 1916, 1931 (with Jessie Royce Landis as Jo and Peg Entwistle as Amy), 1944, and 1945.
A. H. Woods produced Edward Peple’s four-act melodrama adapted from his own novel at the Liberty Theatre, where it opened on 14 November 1911 for 55 performances. Set in the South during the Civil War, The Littlest Rebel concerns a Confederate officer, Morrison, who returns to his Virginia home to see his family, including his young daughter, Virgie. He is arrested, but a Union officer is moved by Morrison’s love for his daughter and helps arrange an escape. However, the friendly conspirators are caught in the act by Union officers and scheduled for execution. Virgie finds her way to President Abraham Lincoln† to beg for her father’s life, and Lincoln stays the execution of all involved. The cast included Dustin Farnum, William Farnum, Percy Haswell, and future movie star Mary Miles Minter. A 1914 silent screen adaptation followed, and a 1935 film version starring Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson scored a hit.
The African American scholar and critic Alain Locke was born in Philadelphia and educated at Harvard and Oxford Universities, the latter on a Rhodes scholarship. From 1911, he taught at Howard University and wrote prolifically on African American culture to the extent that he can be credited as a progenitor of the Harlem Renaissance. In a running polemic with W. E. B. DuBois, Locke upheld the value of folk drama as opposed to DuBois’s more propagandist approach. As an essayist and editor, Locke supported Georgia Douglas Johnson and other playwrights of her circle. With Montgomery Gregory, he founded the Howard Players.
The actor-playwright Edward Locke was born in Sturbridge, Worcester, England, and came to the United States in 1884 to perform with a stock company. After acting with David Warfield in The Music Master, he left the stage to devote himself to writing plays. His notable success came in 1909 with The Climax, which was taken on the road by six different companies and revived on Broadway in 1919. His other plays include The Case of Becky (1912), The Silver Wedding (1913), The Bubble (1915), and The Dancer (1919).
Born in Plymouth, Ohio, the nationally renowned Toledo Blade drama critic and arts activist Robinson Locke followed in the footsteps of his father, David Ross Locke, who had purchased the Blade after the Civil War. After travels in Europe, Locke returned to Toledo to write theater and music reviews under the name Rodney Lee. Meanwhile, he corresponded with artists and amassed a monumental collection of rare books, theater memorabilia, and clippings. He was a founder of the Toledo Museum of Art in 1901, among many other civic involvements in arts organizations. Locke’s name is known today for the invaluable Robinson Locke Collection, more than 500 bound volumes in addition to thousands of unbound clippings, playbills, photographs, and letters, now housed at Lincoln Center* Theatre Library in New York City.
Born Eugene Lockhart in London, Ontario, Canada, Gene Lockhart made his first forays into theater in childhood as a singer, occasionally performing with English star Beatrice Lillie. His first Broadway roles were in musicals, including The Riviera Girl (1917), but he scored his first real success as an actor playing a moonshiner in Lula Vollmer’s folk play, Sun-Up (1923). This led to more varied opportunities, and he built a long career on stage and in movies, at his best as a versatile character actor. On Broadway, Lockhart appeared in The Wonderful Visit (1924), The Handy Man (1925), Bunk of 1926 (a musical revue† for which he wrote music, lyrics, and libretto, as well as acted in the show), Sure Fire (1926), The Little Father of the Wilderness (1930), revivals of The Way of the World in 1931 and Uncle Tom’s Cabin† in 1933, and The Young Idea (1932).
Well established by this time, his cherubic appearance and skill in both serious and comic roles won him praise when he could employ both as alcoholic Uncle Sid in Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!* (1932), playing opposite George M. Cohan. As his film career burgeoned, he less frequently acted on Broadway, though he appeared in Sweet Mystery of Life (1935), Virginia (1937), Happily Ever After (1945), and, in 1949, he played Willy Loman during the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s* Death of a Salesman.* On screen, Lockhart was nominated for an Academy Award for Algiers (1938); he appeared in over 120 movies, as well as television, until shortly before his death. Lockhart’s films include Of Human Hearts (1938), A Christmas Carol (1938), His Girl Friday (1939), Abe Lincoln in Illinois* (1940), Meet John Doe (1941), The Devil and Daniel Webster* (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and, in one of his last big screen roles, as the Starkeeper in Carousel (1956). He was the father of actress June Lockhart.
Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, Richard Lockridge began his journalistic career after World War I, reporting for the Kansas City Kansan, the Kansas City Journal, and the Kansas City Star. In 1923, he joined the New York Sun, where he was drama critic from 1928. He wrote a biography of Edwin Booth titled Darling of Misfortune (1932), and with his wife, Frances Lockridge, he wrote the popular Mr. and Mrs. North detective novels.
Philadelphia-born Philip Loeb acted in high school theater, served in the United States Army, and found his way into the profession as a stage manager of The Green Goddess, which starred George Arliss. Loeb’s acting career took off when he became associated with the Theatre Guild. His Broadway credits both in and out of Theatre Guild productions suggest infinite variety, featuring musicals and revues,† comedy, drama, classics, and the latest European and American “cutting-edge” works, including a 1916 revival of If I Were King, He Who Gets Slapped (1922), The Guardsman (1924) starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Processional (1925), The Garrick Gaieties (1925, 1926, 1930), Ned McCobb’s Daughter (1926), Right You Are If You Think You Are (1927), June Moon (1929), The Band Wagon (1931), Flying Colors (1932), Let ’Em Eat Cake (1933), Life Begins at 8:40 (1934), Room Service* (1937), and Sing Out the News (1938). In the mid-1930s, Loeb became involved in the Group Theatre.*
Loeb’s later Broadway credits included Swingin’ the Dream (1939), Over 21 (1944), and Time Out for Ginger* (1952); he also wrote sketches for the revue Seven Lively Arts (1944). Loeb appeared in a few movies, including the screen version of Room Service (1938), Sweethearts (1938), and A Double Life (1947). In 1948, he played Jake Goldberg in a stage adaptation by Gertrude Berg of her long-running radio show, The Goldbergs, called Me and Molly (1948), which ran a season. Berg was moving the show to television and offered Loeb the role of Jake, the family’s patriarch, in 1949. Within a year, and despite the show’s success, Loeb found himself labeled a Communist in Red Channels during the Communist “witch hunt” era. He denied any Communist affiliations, but sponsors of The Goldbergs insisted he be replaced. Berg fought the demand but was ultimately compelled to acquiesce. Loeb found some work in theater, but he became increasingly depressed, largely because he had a mentally challenged son and needed money for the son’s sole support. Depression led to Loeb’s suicide in 1955, a circumstance fictionalized on screen in The Front (1976).
The producer Marcus Loew was born into poverty in New York City and left school to take odd jobs when he was nine. From penny arcades he moved to acquire a dime theater in Brooklyn; he then built his remarkable chain that, by 1921, had 47 theaters in 12 states and, at the time of his death, totaled about 150 theaters with an additional 24 under construction. Although primarily associated with vaudeville and movies, Loew was described in his Variety obituary as “the outstanding individual figure of the amusement industries of all times—substantially, sentimentally, financially and constructively.” Moreover, Loew was extolled for his honesty and kindliness. He was a close friend and sometime business partner of actor David Warfield.
Born Marie Cecilia Loftus Brown in Glasgow, Scotland, this versatile actress began performing professionally at age 15 and won a following with her impersonations of celebrities. She made her American debut in vaudeville in 1895, but she then moved into comic opera and legitimate drama. She toured in Shakespearean roles with Helena Modjeska and, later, with William Faversham. She enjoyed particular success with E. H. Sothern in If I Were King, which was written for her by her first husband, J. Huntley McCarthy. Between these engagements, she would return to vaudeville, triumphing when she played the Palace Theatre in 1923. In later years, she drank heavily but was never known to miss a performance.
Born in Elmira, New York, the activist actress and playwright Olive Logan grew up in a theatrical family, often playing child roles in her father’s company. She made her adult debut in 1854 at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Theatre.† From 1855 to 1863, Logan lived abroad, during which period she married the first of her three husbands. In 1864, she acted in her own play, Evaleen, at Wallack’s Theatre in New York City, and then toured it under the title The Felon’s Daughter. Having begun publishing essays in periodicals about her life in Paris while she lived there, she decided to pursue writing as a profession. She wrote voluminously, not only about theater but also about women’s issues, on which she lectured widely. Logan championed decency of behavior and dress for women, gaining national celebrity. Her 1870 memoir Before the Footlights and Behind the Scenes colorfully evokes changes in theatrical customs during the post–Civil War years and recounts the controversy following publication of her famous essay on “the leg business,” condemning scantily clad women on stage, in Galaxy magazine (summer 1867). She followed that book with another, The Mimic World (1871) and began to see her plays produced in New York: Surf (1870), A Business Woman (1873), A Will and a Way (1874), her translation of La Cigale (1878), and Newport (1879).
Opening on 24 September 1917 at the Morosco Theatre, the comedy by Fanny and Frederic Hatton ran for 296 performances. Leo Carrillo (originally spelled Carillo) played an Italian dressmaker with a fashionable clientele, who becomes infatuated with a gold-digging chorus girl. He made a hit with lines like “Such talkings from you! Each-a time you open your mouth you make-a the indecent exposure of your mind.” Carrillo revived the play to renewed success in 1927. A movie version appeared in 1919.
This Irish-born actor came to California in 1886 and soon found employment with stock companies. He gained a popular following as leading man with the Woodward Stock Company in Kansas City for several seasons at the turn of the century. He played both contemporary and Shakespearean roles, including Hamlet. In 1901, Lonergan organized an open-air production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It in Kansas City’s Troost Park, with electric lights and an orchestra in the shrubbery; he played Orlando and directed. In New York, he acted with major figures like John Barrymore and Minnie Maddern Fiske but increasingly turned to directing. Two of his own plays were produced in New York: The Golden Age (1928) and House Unguarded (1928).
Pennsylvania-born John Luther Long gave up a thriving law career to write short stories before collaborating with David Belasco on three plays, Madame Butterfly (1900), The Darling of the Gods (1902), and Adrea (1904). With Edward Childs Carpenter, he wrote The Dragon Fly (1905), but he also penned several plays on his own, including Dolce (1906), which starred Minnie Maddern Fiske, and Kassa (1909), a vehicle for Mrs. Leslie Carter. Long’s final play, Crowns (1922), found scant favor.
Born in Mount Shasta, California, Anita Loos scripted over 200 movies from the silent era to sound; she also wrote novels and plays. Her most successful play, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1926), adapted from the novel by Loos and her husband, John Emerson, is a comedy about Lorelei Lee, a gold-digging flapper of the Jazz Age. With Emerson, Loos also wrote The Whole Town’s Talking (1923), The Fall of Eve (1925), and The Social Register (1931). On her own, Loos’s Happy Birthday* (1946), a modest success, starred Helen Hayes, and Loos also adapted Colette’s novel Gigi (1951). Her screenplays include classics, from D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) to San Francisco (1936), Saratoga (1937), and The Women* (1939).
The English actor Robert Loraine was born in Brighton, England; served in the British military during the Boar War; and found critical approval in plays by Shakespeare and Strindberg when he turned to acting. Loraine performed in the United States from 1901. He was John Tanner in the American premiere of George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman (1905), in which he had acted in London (replacing Harley Granville Barker); he toured in it for two seasons. At the opposite ends of his stage career he played David Garrick in Pretty Peggy (1903) and acted in Eugene O’Neill’s Days without End* (1934). Loraine’s other Broadway credits included To Have and to Hold (1901), The Man with a Load of Mischief (1925), The Master of the Inn (1925), a 1926 revival of the melodrama The Two Orphans,† The Devil Passes (1932), Lucrece (1932), and Times Have Changed (1935). Loraine also appeared in a few movies, including The Perfect Alibi (1930), Marie Galante (1934), and Limehouse Blues (1934).
The actress Pauline Lord was born in Hanford, California, and educated in San Francisco, where she often attended plays at the Alcazar Theatre. At 13, she performed with the Belasco Stock Company there. She toured with various companies before making her New York debut in The Talker in 1912. She performed in a number of well-received plays but finally made the leap to stardom in Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie (1921), with continuing acclaim for her performances in They Knew What They Wanted (1924), The Late Christopher Bean (1932), and Ethan Frome* (1936). As Lynn Fontanne’s replacement in the role of Nina Leeds in Strange Interlude in 1928, she again won praise for her compelling qualities: the emotional truth of her characterizations, her tremulous vulnerability, and subtle power. Among her last roles, Lord played Amanda Wingfield in the national tour of Tennessee Williams’s* The Glass Menagerie* in 1946.
Born Marion Lorne MacDougall in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, Marion Lorne attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On Broadway, Lorne appeared in Mrs. Temple’s Telegram (1905), The Devil (1908), The Florist Shop (1909), and Don’t Weaken (1914), followed by a long stint in London, appearing in plays written by her husband, Walter Hackett. Following Hackett’s death, she returned to the United States and replaced Josephine Hull in the long-running Broadway comedy Harvey.* In movies, Lorne’s most notable role was as Robert Walker’s demented mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), and she won a posthumous Emmy Award for her television role as befuddled witch Aunt Clara on Bewitched in 1968.
Opening on 16 November 1891 at Proctor’s 23rd Street Theatre, Henry C. DeMille’s adaptation of a German play by Ludwig Fulda, directed and produced by Charles Frohman, ran for 138 performances. This drama of the conflict between Capital and Labor ends happily with the wealthy manufacturer’s daughter choosing the factory superintendent (an engineer who sides with the striking workers) over the socially superior young man whom her father has made a partner and who alienates the workers. Finally, it is revealed that the superintendent actually invented the device that enabled the manufacturer to prosper! A movie adaptation was released in 1914.
Opening on 6 December 1909 at the Bijou Theatre, this Shubert-produced farce by Rida Johnson Young ran for 200 performances. An engaging but debt-ridden young journalist hits upon the idea of raffling himself off in marriage at a dollar per ticket. Just as the money starts to pour in, he meets the girl of his dreams. He then enlists his friends to buy as many tickets as possible in her name. This makes her indignant when she learns of it, but all ends well.
Opening on 9 October 1888 at Daly’s Theatre, this three-act comedy, freely adapted by Augustin Daly from the French hit Les surprises du divorce, ran for 105 performances. Ecstatically received by critics and audiences, the play provided wonderful comic roles for John Drew, Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, and James Lewis, while Ada Rehan skillfully milked values from the less substantial role of Miss Buttercorn. The opening night audience cheered the stars and called for a speech from Daly. The comedy continued its success on the road.
Born in Portsmouth, England, Montagu Love worked as an artist and a military reporter before going on stage. In 1913, he toured to the United States with actor Cyril Maude. Love appeared with Arnold Daly in three productions of George Bernard Shaw plays in 1915: You Never Can Tell, Arms and the Man, and Candida. On Broadway, he also acted in Husband and Wife (1915), The Ware Case (1915), The Great Pursuit (1916), The Survival of the Fittest (1921), A Kiss of Importance (1930), Firebird (1932), and Richard of Bordeaux (1934). Shortly after his arrival in the United States, Love began to appear in films and worked steadily as a character actor, often playing authoritarian figures, sometimes villainous, until shortly before his death. Love acted in more than 175 films, often in small roles and many classics, including The Son of the Sheik (1926), Don Juan (1926), The King of Kings (1927), Outward Bound (1930), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Juarez (1939), Northwest Passage (1940), The Mark of Zorro (1940), and The Constant Nymph (1943).
Valentine Love was the stage name of an actor-manager named Maskell, who came from England and acted for a time in Philadelphia and New York, gathering a repertoire of melodramas, which he then recycled in Kansas City during his management of the Theatre Comique from 1877 to 1881. Love was a colorful figure, who left town abruptly to escape the theater’s creditors, turned up in Brooklyn with his wife Nellie Maskell for a few years, and then dropped out of the records.
Robert E. Sherwood’s three-act romantic comedy opened at the Comedy Theatre on 22 December 1927 for a disappointing 23 performances. Based on a short story of the same name by Ring Lardner, The Love Nest received little attention from critics in an especially busy season and closed before most critics had an opportunity to review it. In the play, a young movie mogul invites a reporter, Bartlett, to visit him and his wife at their New York estate. Expecting to encounter a conventional happy marriage, Bartlett instead discovers that the wife (played by June Walker, who won kudos) is unhappy, having married her husband solely hoping he would make her a film star. Instead, she has turned to alcohol for comfort since the marriage is loveless, and she can find no way to escape since divorce was difficult to obtain in New York. The play ends essentially where it began, with the husband deep into his productive life, his wife bored and unhappy, and the reporter without the story he hoped to write. Sherwood acknowledged having difficulty stretching Lardner’s short story into three acts, and his response to the final result was to say “the Lardner part of it was good.”
Born Frederick Aaron Lovecraft, he was in the jewelry business before he made his mark as manager of Palmer’s Theatre and, at the time of his death, was also involved with the Coney Island Jockey Club. He committed suicide by swallowing carbolic acid and shooting himself following significant financial reversals. The tragedy became a front-page scandal and was further complicated when May Brooklyn (1859?–1894), leading lady at Palmer’s who was reportedly engaged to Lovecraft, killed herself.
Producer William A. Brady balked at presenting Clyde Fitch’s four-act play because of its subject matter, but following a well-received tryout in Trenton, New Jersey, he brought it to the Manhattan Theatre for 127 performances opening on 6 February 1901. Reverend Thomas Singleton, played by Ernest Hastings, contends with a narrow-minded congregation shocked by his efforts to feed the undeserving poor and house orphans, while permitting a divorced woman to sing in the church choir. They are horrified when he allows card playing and shooting pool, which leads conservative Deacon Steele to attempt to remove him. However, Singleton prevails and continues his compassionate work. A movie version of Lovers’ Lane was released in 1924.
Helen Lowell Robb was born in New York City and began her acting career at 17 in the title role of the operetta Iolanthe. By 1885, she was performing in New York. She was most remembered as Miss Hazy in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1903), among many roles, some performed on tours abroad. In The Lottery Man she had, as the New York Times reported, “the dry, acrid humor of real comedy, never once overdoing or underdoing, and creating a sense of sympathy underneath the laughter.” After 1934, she made her career in movies and worked until her death.
Born Lucy Christiana Sutherland (and sister of novelist Elinor Glyn), this British-born fashion designer married Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon in 1900. She had already begun making and selling dresses in London and, in 1903, incorporated her business as Lucile, Ltd. She soon expanded to Paris and New York, propelled by her canny business sense, adopting theatrical techniques like parades of models wearing her creations. Her fashions prospered as her gowns were chosen by actresses both for public events and as glamorous stage costumes. Lucile’s greatest theatrical showcase was the Ziegfeld Follies, to which she contributed designs from 1916 to 1921. Marlis Schweitzer shows that Lucile’s influence on the Ziegfeld presentation of the chorus girl might have equaled that of Ned Wayburn. Lucile also staged a one-act fashion-show play, Fleurette’s Dream at Peronne, for the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit in 1918.
Opening on 21 October 1925 at the Playhouse Theatre, Sidney Howard’s play, produced by William A. Brady Jr. and Dwight Deere Wiman,* ran for nine performances. The published text (1926) includes a 21-page preface by Howard and is subtitled “Four Episodes in the Rise of a New Yorker.” In act 1, Sam (John Cromwell) is a speakeasy owner who persuades Carlotta, a slightly “tarnished” socialite (played by Clare Eames), to marry him. Clearly using her social position to promote his ambitions, their act 2 scene in their Park Avenue apartment hints that there could be genuine affection beneath the tensions. She is embarrassed to have her family meet him, but her aunt (played by Rose Hobart) finds Sam refreshing and invites him to the family villa in Venice. At the villa in act 3, Sam is chafing with irritation at the decadent rich. Sam and Carlotta quarrel bitterly. In the final scene, Sam comes to dying Carlotta’s bedside. She tests his motives, but he cannot bring himself to express his true feelings for her. Her cousin goes to get a doctor. Carlotta dies. Sam looks at his watch and decides that his business appointment is more important than staying with the body until her cousin returns. The lack of sentimentality or traditionally satisfying ending may account for the play’s relatively short run. A 1927 movie, We’re All Gamblers, was adapted from Lucky Sam McCarver, and the Equity Library Theatre* revived the play in 1950.
Born in Lugos, Hungary, as Béla Ferenc Dezsö Blaskó, Bela Lugosi quit school before his teens and began acting circa 1901. With experience in stock companies in contemporary plays, operettas, and Shakespeare, Lugosi moved to Budapest, where he became a supporting player with the National Theatre of Hungary between 1913 and 1919, though he was in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. Lugosi arrived in the United States in 1920 (becoming a citizen in 1931) and acted in the Hungarian community in New York. He formed a stock company prior to his first Broadway role in The Red Poppy (1925). His other Broadway credits include Arabesque (1925), Open House (1925), and Devil in the Cheese (1926), but his greatest stage success, and the role that provided him with an enduring movie career, was Dracula (1927), adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston from Bram Stoker’s novel. It ran for 261 performances prior to a lucrative tour. Though Lugosi had appeared on screen since 1917, Dracula (1931) made him a star. He returned to Broadway in Murder at the Vanities (1934) but often toured in Dracula and had a stint in Arsenic and Old Lace.* Post-Dracula, Lugosi’s films were typically in the horror category, including Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), The Ape Man (1943), and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). He even spoofed his Dracula persona in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) before addiction to drugs ended his career.
This lurid, melodramatic four-act drama by Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur* was produced by David Belasco at his theater on 9 February 1926 for 461 performances, an impressive run inspired, in part, by highly publicized attempts to ban the play. Lulu Belle, a black prostitute in Harlem, seduces white family man George Randall but leaves him for a boxer. She similarly deserts the boxer for the wealthy Vicompte de Villars, who sets her up in a luxurious Paris apartment. Tragedy befalls all of the characters, including Lulu Belle, who is strangled to death by the obviously insane Randall. Aside from moral protesters, there were also outcries from African American organizations condemning the play’s content and the fact that leading lady Lenore Ulric was white and played Lulu Belle in blackface makeup, an increasingly outmoded stage tradition by the 1920s. Heavily rewritten, Lulu Belle became a movie in 1948. See also †*CENSORSHIP.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Alfred David Lunt attended Carroll College to study architecture, but instead he became an actor. He appeared in stock with Boston’s Castle Square Theatre and toured with Lillie Langtry and Margaret Anglin. He had his first Broadway part in a failure, Romance and Arabella (1917), but he won acclaim in the title role of Booth Tarkington’s Clarence (1919). When he married actress Lynn Fontanne in 1922, they began working together almost exclusively, first in a revival of Sweet Nell of Old Drury (1923) and the next year in their first dual triumph in Ferenc Molnár’s The Guardsman (1924), appearing in a 1931 movie version, their only significant screen appearance. In a few rare solo roles, Lunt was well received as Mr. Prior in Sutton Vane’s Outward Bound (1924), as bootlegger Babe Callahan in Sidney Howard’s Ned McCobb’s Daughter (1926), and as Marco Polo in Eugene O’Neill’s Marco Millions (1928), among others.
In the 1920s, Lunt and Fontanne began a long string of critical and commercial successes establishing them as the greatest acting couple in the history of the American theater, admired for their individual gifts and the skill with which they worked together. Their major joint appearances include a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man (1925), C. K. Munro’s At Mrs. Beam’s (1926), Jacques Copeau and Jean Croue’s adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov (1927), S. N. Behrman’s The Second Man (1927), Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma (1927), Sil-Vara’s Caprice (1928), and Behrman’s Meteor (1929). From 1930 to the late 1950s, their careers continued unabated in Elizabeth the Queen* (1930), Reunion in Vienna* (1931), Design for Living (1933) costarring with Noël Coward,* Point Valaine (1935), a 1935 revival of The Taming of the Shrew, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Idiot’s Delight* (1936), Amphitryon 38 (1937), a 1938 revival of The Seagull, the Pulitzer Prize–winning There Shall Be No Night* (1940), The Pirate* (1942), O Mistress Mine (1946), I Know My Love (1949), Quadrille (1954), The Great Sebastians (1956), and Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit (1958). Lunt also directed many of their vehicles, as well as Candle in the Wind (1941), Ondine (1954), and First Love (1961). Lunt and Fontanne were respected for their exacting professionalism and for the exhausting tours they did, bringing the finest plays and acting of the period to all corners of the United States.
Produced by Lee Shubert, George Scarborough’s melodrama, originally titled Other Men’s Daughters, opened at Maxine Elliott’s Theatre on 14 August 1913 for 132 performances and featured a cast including Mary Nash and Vincent Serrano. The controversial play dealt with white slavery in a midwestern town based on a true incident. Sylvia, a young woman caring for her ailing mother but unable to afford necessary nourishment and medicine, goes to the house of a woman advertising work opportunities for young women. Sylvia goes there and instead is imprisoned and taken across state lines by her captor. Having violated the Mann Act in doing so, Sylvia’s captor is subsequently arrested by a federal agent who happens to be Sylvia’s boyfriend. Scarborough reportedly wrote the play in eight days after Shubert suggested it. Theatre Magazine referred to The Lure as “the most talked of production this season.” The talk extended to controversy when a summons was issued in preparation for arrests of those involved. Shubert defended the play and was quoted as saying, “This is a shame and an injustice. . . The play is a great moral lesson.” Despite this, the play was withdrawn prematurely as a result of the legal maneuverings.