Born Leonora Ulrich in New Ulm, Minnesota, this actress spent some years in stock in Milwaukee and Chicago before making her Broadway debut in Richard Walton Tully’s The Bird of Paradise (1912) with Laurette Taylor, after which she acted in The Mark of the Beast (1915). Specializing in exotic, tempestuous roles, Ulric starred in David Belasco’s The Heart of Wetona (1915) and had a long run in the Belasco-produced Tiger Rose (1917). Ulric stayed with Belasco for several hits, including The Son-Daughter (1919), Kiki (1921), The Harem (1924), and Mima (1928), and scored a particular triumph in blackface as a Harlem prostitute in the controversial Edward Sheldon–Charles MacArthur* melodrama titled Lulu Belle (1926). After leaving Belasco, she appeared successfully, but with diminishing luster, in Pagan Lady (1930), The Social Register (1931), Nona (1932), Her Man of Wax (1933), The Fifth Column* (1940), and, most effectively, as Charmian in Antony and Cleopatra, starring Katharine Cornell, in 1947. Ulric also appeared in several silent movies, as well as a half dozen sound films, including Camille (1936).
This three-act drama by Louis Kaufman Anspacher opened on 9 October 1915 at the 39th Street Theatre, produced by Oliver Morosco, for 193 performances. Emily Stevens starred as Caroline Knollys, a despicable woman who attempts to seduce a married artist; she is caught making a false declaration at customs by an official who was once her husband’s mistress. Caroline attempts to bribe the woman by publicly revealing this indiscretion, but her husband, played by H. Reeves-Smith, and others force her to withdraw the claim. Caroline, however, remains the “unchastened” woman. Violet Kemble-Cooper appeared in an unsuccessful 1926 revival and the second of two movie treatments (1918, 1925) starred Theda Bara.
Selwyn & Co. produced this four-act thriller by Roi Cooper Megrue. The play opened on 26 August 1914 for 349 performances at the Cort Theatre starring William Courtenay as Steven Denby, who appears to be a jewel smuggler hiding a valuable necklace in the country. Denby is playing a game of cat and mouse with a detective, but before the final curtain, Denby’s true identity is revealed. The cast also included Lily Cahill, Lucille Watson, and Ralph Morgan. The long-running hit led to a 1916 movie version.
Charles Frohman produced this four-act Edward E. Rose play at the Empire Theatre, where it opened on 28 December 1896 for 216 performances. Rose’s play was adapted from a Stanley Weyman novel and premiered successfully in London before a New York production starring William Faversham as Gil de Berault, who defies Cardinal Richelieu’s ban on dueling. As punishment, the cardinal cruelly gives Berault the choice of either losing his life or betraying the trust of the brother of his lover, Renée de Cochefort, played by Viola Allen. Outwitting the cardinal, Berault is reunited with Renée. Three movie versions appeared (1915, 1923, 1937), and it was adapted into a 1928 musical, titled The Red Robe.
This four-act temperance melodrama by E. C. Whalen was published in 1890. It took a typically strong stand against alcohol in its plot involving various machinations during an election in which Colonel Wilbur is running for Congress, but his daughter, Laura, is compelled to face the facts of alcoholism while being courted by an attorney, Harold Fitzmaurice. In the denouement of the play, Laura, a young woman touched by the alcoholic death of her brother and its impact on her family, and the near ruination of her husband from drink, finds a cautious tone as redemption comes. Laura noted that “while we rejoice in our own deliverance let us not forget that this awful traffic in human woe still goes on throughout the length and breadth of our land; and let us each bear some small part in hastening the day when the last dram-shop shall have yielded to the awakened conscience of the nation.”
Paul M. Potter’s five-act adaptation of Ouida’s (Marie Louise Ramé) popular novel was produced lavishly by Charles Frohman and David Belasco for Belasco’s star attraction Blanche Bates, despite the fact that various other dramatizations of the novel had previously toured. This production, which opened on 5 February 1901 for 135 performances at the Garden Theatre, became the definitive version of the story of Cigarette (Bates), a strong-willed girl following the French army through North Africa, battling opposing armies and a dust storm in the Chellelah Gorge to win the soldier she loves. The cast also included Maclyn Arbuckle and Winchell Smith. Marie Dressler toured in one of many stock productions of it, and Theda Bara played Cigarette in a 1916 movie version, with Claudette Colbert taking over the role for a 1936 release, with many screen subsequent adaptations.
San Francisco–born Gladys Buchanan Unger began her prolific playwriting career in 1903. Most of her successes were adaptations of French and German works, including The Marionettes (1911), The Goldfish (1922), The Love Habit (1923), The Business Widow, The Werewolf (1924), Starlight (1925), Stolen Fruit (1925), and Two Girls Wanted (1926), as well as books for operettas and musicals and numerous movie scripts in the 1930s.
In 1871, Sheridan Shook,† owner of the Union Place Hotel, opened a theater within the hotel, turning it over to manager A. M. Palmer the following year. Palmer staged a series of successful romantic plays, mostly with French origins, including Agnes, Camille, and The Two Orphans.† The glory days of the theater ended when Palmer passed the management to J. M. Hill in 1883. Destroyed by fire in 1888, the theater was rebuilt and operated by the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit until 1893, after which it continued as a burlesque and movie house.
Founded on 20 September 1912, this organization of United States scene designers and artists eclipsed an earlier organization, the Protective Alliance of Scenic Painters of America, which had been founded on 11 September 1885 by Harley Merry and Richard Marston. The USAA, whose membership also included costume and lighting designers, worked for better working conditions and pay. In 1918, the USAA affiliated with the Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers of America.
One of the most prolific scene designers of his time, Edward Unitt was also associated with some of the most important plays, operettas, and musicals staged in New York between 1890 and 1920, including Aristocracy (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), Under the Red Robe (1896), The Little Minister (1897), The Conquerors (1898), The Liars (1898), Barbara Frietchie (1899), David Harum (1900), The Pride of Jennico (1900), Richard Carvel (1900), L’aiglon (1900), Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901), If I Were King (1901), Quality Street (1901), The Girl with Green Eyes (1902), The Red Mill (1906), Mlle. Modiste (1906), The Great Divide (1906), A Grand Army Man (1907), and The Blue Bird (1910). He often worked for managers Charles Frohman and Daniel Frohman; he also designed E. H. Sothern’s 1900 production of Hamlet and several George M. Cohan musicals and plays, including The American Idea (1908), The Man Who Owns Broadway (1909), The Little Millionaire (1911), Hello, Broadway! (1914), The Royal Vagabond (1919), and Mary (1920), as well as the 1911 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies.
Established in 1928 at Falmouth, Massachusetts, this stock theater was first called the University Players Guild by founders Bretaigne Windust* and Charles Leatherbee. Although it closed in 1932, it became legendary for the numerous young theater talents who began there and went on to distinguished careers, including Henry Fonda,* Joshua Logan,* James Stewart,* Margaret Sullavan,* Kent Smith, Mildred Natwick,* and Myron McCormick.
Roland West and Carlyle Moore collaborated on this three-act (plus prologue) drama produced by West at the Lyric Theatre, where it opened on 14 September 1918 for 273 performances. Charles H. Smith and Ira Hards codirected. Richard Bennett’s performance as Peter Marchmont, an inventor framed for a crime by his cheating wife and her lover, was credited with much of the production’s success, as well as the use of flashbacks, a technique Elmer Rice had pioneered effectively in On Trial four years earlier. Once out of jail, Marchmont invents a machine that makes him invisible (except for a telltale purple light), allowing him to seek revenge. West directed a 1923 movie version starring Henry B. Walthall.
Wilson Collison and Otto Harbach’s three-act farce opened on 15 January 1919 for 229 performances at the Eltinge Theatre, produced by A. H. Woods. Among the first of a long series of “sex comedies,” Up in Mabel’s Room has a simple plot involving the efforts of Garry Ainsworth, an awkward new husband, to retrieve a bit of lingerie he gave to his ex-girlfriend, Mabel Essington. Hoping to spare his wife Geraldine any embarrassment, he goes to Mabel’s apartment and spends considerable effort to retrieve the garment while contending with a number of unwanted arrivals of friends and family. This slight comedy proved quite durable in stock and amateur productions; it spawned movie versions in 1926 and 1944.
This three-act Fanny and Frederic Hatton satiric farce opened on 25 September 1916 for 320 performances at the Cort Theatre, where it was produced by Oliver Morosco. Nancy Ives, a well-to-do woman living on Long Island, is troubled by the selfishness and hypocrisy of her peers and opts for a life among her servants, only to discover that the same human frailties exist among the servant class. As a result, Nancy returns to the comforts of the world of the rich. Olive Thomas starred in a 1919 movie version.
Born in Vienna, Joseph Urban became one of the most acclaimed theater architects and scene designers in early 20th-century American theater and may be credited with launching the New Stagecraft. He studied at the Vienna Art Academy with Baron Carl Hassauer and at the Polytechnicum, after which he designed palaces and even a bridge before coming to the United States in 1904 to design the Austrian Pavilion for the St. Louis World’s Fair. Urban returned to Europe upon completing the task; he worked for the Vienna Burgtheater and designed operas throughout Europe. He did not return to the United States until 1911 when Alice Nielsen invited him to be resident designer for the new Boston Opera Company. His settings for Madame Butterfly (1913) there were inspired by the design of a kimono Nielsen had brought from Japan, and they in turn inspired Robert Edmond Jones’s innovative design for The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife.
Impressed with Urban’s designs for The Garden of Paradise (1914), producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. began a long association with Urban, who designed 16 editions of Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 to 1931, the lavish Ziegfeld Theatre itself, and a series of Ziegfeld-produced musicals and operettas, including Sally (1920), Sunny (1925), Rio Rita (1927), Show Boat (1927), The Three Musketeers (1928), Rosalie (1928), Whoopee (1928), and Music in the Air (1932). Between 1917 and 1933, Urban designed and supervised construction of settings for 54 productions, including Shakespearean revivals for actor James K. Hackett and Smilin’ Through (1919), starring Jane Cowl. His other nonmusical design credits include Caliban of the Yellow Sands (1916) and The Good Fairy (1931).
New York–born Isabelle Urquhart was educated in a convent and began her theatrical career as a chorus girl in a D’Oyly Carte light operetta production of Billee Taylor (1881). The following year, Urquhart appeared in Claude Duval with the D’Oyly Carte as well. She acted with Augustin Daly’s company during 1882–1883, appearing in The Passing Regiment, Needles and Pins, and The Squire. Though stating that she preferred legitimate theater to operetta, Urquhart appeared in Erminie (1886), in which she performed for two seasons, causing a fashion trend when she pointedly eliminated the use of petticoats to enhance her figure. She also appeared in The Yeoman of the Guard (1888) and The Brigands (1889). Urquhart worked in vaudeville in the 1890s and made a desired return to legitimate theater when she appeared in The Diplomat (1902) and 1906 revivals of Arms and the Man and How He Lied to Her Husband. Urquhart was married to actor Guy Standing.
An “all-purpose” actor in a stock company was expected to be capable of playing all types of small parts. This line of business was low in the company hierarchy, and the salary was correspondingly modest.