The Guardsman is a 1931 American pre-Code film based on the play Testőr by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Roland Young and ZaSu Pitts. It opens with a stage re-enactment of the final scene of Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen, with Fontanne as Elizabeth and Lunt as the Earl of Essex, but otherwise has nothing to do with that play.
Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town as the companion of a faded movie star, Alexandra del Lago, whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies. The main reason for his homecoming is to get back what he had in his youth: primarily, his old girlfriend, whose father had run him out of town years before. The play was written for Tallulah Bankhead, a good friend of Williams.
Marsha Mason is an American actress and director. She has been nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Actress: for her performances in Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Goodbye Girl (1977), Chapter Two (1979), and Only When I Laugh (1981). The first two films also won her Golden Globe Awards. She was married for ten years (1973–1983) to the playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who was the writer of three of her four Oscar-nominated roles.
William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, including Picnic, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the American heartland, Inge became known as the "Playwright of the Midwest".
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
William Gibson was an American playwright and novelist. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for The Miracle Worker in 1959, which he later adapted for the film version in 1962.
Samson Raphaelson was a leading American playwright, screenwriter and fiction writer.
Filumena Marturano, sometime performed in English as The Best House in Naples, is a play written in 1946 by Italian playwright, actor and poet Eduardo De Filippo. It is the basis for the 1950 Spanish language Argentine musical film Filomena Marturano, multiple Italian adaptations under its original title, and the 1964 film Marriage Italian Style.
Kenneth Lonergan is an American film director, playwright, and screenwriter. He is the co-writer of the film Gangs of New York (2002), and wrote and directed You Can Count on Me (2000), Margaret (2011), and Manchester by the Sea (2016). Lonergan is also known for his work as a playwright. His most noted plays include This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero and The Waverly Gallery. Each also had a successful revival engagement on Broadway, which resulted in each play receiving a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney is a 1925 play by British playwright Frederick Lonsdale. A popular success in London, it was adapted four times as a film, three times in the United States from 1929 to 1951, and the last, in 1961, as a German production.
The River Niger is a play by Joseph A. Walker, first performed by New York City's Negro Ensemble Company off-Broadway in 1972. The production made its Broadway debut with a transfer to the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 27 March 1973 for a run of 162 performances. Titled after the West African river, The River Niger sits squarely with the African centered aspirations of the Black Arts Movement.
Boesman and Lena is a small-cast play by South African playwright Athol Fugard, set in the Swartkops mudflats outside of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, that shows the effect of apartheid on a few individuals, featuring as characters a "Coloured" man and woman walking from one shanty town to another.
Mary Caswell Orr was an American actress and author whose short story "The Wisdom of Eve", published in the May 1946 issue of Cosmopolitan, was the basis of the Academy Award-winning film All About Eve (1950). In private life, Orr used her married name, Mary Orr Denham.
Fast and Loose is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and starring Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard and Frank Morgan. The film was written by Doris Anderson, Jack Kirkland and Preston Sturges, based on the 1924 play The Best People by David Gray and Avery Hopwood. Fast and Loose was released by Paramount Pictures.
Craig's Wife is a 1925 play written by American playwright George Kelly. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and has been adapted for three feature films.
But Not for Me is a 1959 American comedy film directed by Walter Lang and starring Clark Gable, Carroll Baker and Lilli Palmer. It was distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is based on the 1934 play Accent on Youth written by Samson Raphaelson.
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a 1976 play by Ed Graczyk, originally performed at the Players Theatre Columbus in Columbus, Ohio. Despite the interpretation of the name in the title, it refers to the legendary "Rebel Without a Cause", James Dean, as opposed to Jimmy Dean, the country-western singer who had a hit in 1961 with Big Bad John. The play revolves around a James Dean fan club that reunites at a Texas five-and-dime store.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is an original stage comedy in three acts and four scenes by George Axelrod. After a try-out run at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston from 26 September 1955, it opened at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway on 13 October, starring Jayne Mansfield, Walter Matthau and Orson Bean. Directed by the author and produced by Jule Styne, it closed on 3 November 1956 after 444 performances.
The Flowering Peach is a 1954 dramatic play by American playwright Clifford Odets with music by Alan Hovhaness. The plot is a modern take on the Bible stories of Noah and Noah's Ark.
Accent on Youth is a 1935 American comedy film directed by Wesley Ruggles and written by Herbert Fields and Claude Binyon based on the 1934 play of the same name written by Samson Raphaelson. The film stars Sylvia Sidney and Herbert Marshall and features Phillip Reed, Holmes Herbert, Catherine Doucet, Astrid Allwyn and Lon Chaney Jr. The film was released on August 23, 1935, by Paramount Pictures.
