Ah, Wilderness!

Last updated

Ah, Wilderness!
Ah-Wilderness-FE.jpg
First edition 1933
Written by Eugene O'Neill
Date premieredOctober 2, 1933
Place premiered Guild Theatre
New York City
Original languageEnglish
GenreComedy
SettingThe Miller family home in small town Connecticut, July 4, 1906

Ah, Wilderness! is a comedy play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill that premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on October 2, 1933. It differs from a typical O'Neill play in its happy ending for the central character, and depiction of a happy family in turn-of-the-century America. It is O'Neill's only well-known comedy.

Contents

The play was successful in its first Broadway production and the touring production that followed. It has since become a staple of community repertory.

Theme

The play takes place on the Fourth of July 1906 and focuses on the Miller family, presumably of New London, Connecticut. The main plot deals with the middle son, 16-year-old Richard, and his coming of age in turn-of-the-century America. "Perhaps the most atypical of the author's works, the play presents a sentimental tale of youthful indiscretion in a turn-of-the-century New England town." [1]

Title

The title derives from Quatrain XII of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th edition, 1889), one of Richard's favorite poems:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Opening night credits

Around the table in the original 1933 Broadway production of Ah, Wilderness! are (from left) George M. Cohan (Nat Miller), Eda Heinemann (Lily), Elisha Cook, Jr. (Richard), Gene Lockhart (Sid), Marjorie Marquis (Mrs. Nat Miller), Walter Vonnegut, Jr. (Tommy) and Adelaide Bean (Mildred). Ah-Wilderness-1933.jpg
Around the table in the original 1933 Broadway production of Ah, Wilderness! are (from left) George M. Cohan (Nat Miller), Eda Heinemann (Lily), Elisha Cook, Jr. (Richard), Gene Lockhart (Sid), Marjorie Marquis (Mrs. Nat Miller), Walter Vonnegut, Jr. (Tommy) and Adelaide Bean (Mildred).

Theatre Guild Producer
Philip Moeller Director
Robert Edmond Jones Scenic Designer
CAST
George M. Cohan as Nat Miller
Adelaide Bean as Mildred Miller
John Butler as Salesman
Ruth Chorpenning as Norah
Elisha Cook, Jr. as the son, Richard Miller
Ruth Gilbert as Muriel McComber
Eda Heinemann as Lily Miller
Ruth Holden as Belle
Gene Lockhart as Sid Davis
Marjorie Marquis as David's mother, Essie Miller
Donald McClelland as Bartender
William Post, Jr. as Arthur Miller
Richard Sterling as David McComber
Walter Vonnegut, Jr. as Tommy Miller
John Wynne as Wint Selby

When the play first toured, Will Rogers took the role of the warmhearted Nat, perhaps contributing to the critical and audience success of the play, a staple of community repertory since the original production. [1]

Reception

The play was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1933–1934 with George M. Cohan in the cast [2] and again as a revival in 1941–42. [3]

In a review of a 1998 production of the play at The Huntington Theatre in Boston, the reviewer noted O'Neill, who "penned [it] in a single month in 1932, the Harvard educated playwright takes a well deserved vacation from this cold and unrelenting world, and gives us a surprisingly warm portrayal of middle-class family life in "large small-town America."" He further remarked about the play "The character Richard Miller was clearly modeled on O'Neill's image of himself as an aspiring poet, but unlike O'Neill, Richard's rebellion is quelled and his craving for romantic endeavors extinguished by a loving family who cares and wishes him the best." [4]

Adaptations

Newspaper advertisement for The Campbell Playhouse presentation of "Ah, Wilderness" (September 17, 1939) Campbell-Playhouse-Ah-Wilderness.jpg
Newspaper advertisement for The Campbell Playhouse presentation of "Ah, Wilderness" (September 17, 1939)

The play was made into a 1935 film of the same title and again in 1948 as the musical Summer Holiday . Mickey Rooney starred as Tommy in the former and Richard in the latter. The success of the first film led MGM to reunite much of the cast in another film based on a small town coming of age play, A Family Affair , which became the basis for the Andy Hardy series.

The play was also adapted for radio on The Campbell Playhouse in a one-hour version produced by and starring Orson Welles on September 17, 1939. [5] Additional one-hour radio adaptations were performed on the Theatre Guild on The Air on October 7, 1945, [6] Studio One on July 15, 1947, [7] and the Ford Theater on November 2, 1947. [8]

On June 15, 1955, a televised adaptation was shown on Front Row Center on CBS. [9]

The story was also made into the 1959 Broadway musical Take Me Along starring Jackie Gleason as the drunken Uncle Sid (Beery's role in the film), Walter Pidgeon as Nat and Robert Morse as Richard. The production ran for 448 performances. Gleason won the 1960 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. A revival in 1984 had a successful run for six months in Connecticut and Washington, D.C., but closed on Broadway after only a short debut and a week of previews.

Related Research Articles

Life with Father is a 1939 play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, adapted from a humorous autobiographical book of stories compiled in 1935 by Clarence Day. The Broadway production ran for 3,224 performances over 401 weeks to become the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway, a record that it still holds. The play was adapted into a 1947 feature film and a television series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason Robards</span> American actor (1922–2000)

Jason Nelson Robards Jr. was an American actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he gained a reputation as an interpreter of the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Robards received numerous accolades and is one of 24 performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting having earned competitive wins for two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, and an Emmy Award. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979, earned the National Medal of Arts in 1997, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Morse</span> American actor (1931–2022)

Robert Alan Morse was an American actor. Morse, known for his gap-toothed boyishness, started his career as a star on Broadway acting in musicals and plays before expanding into film and television. He earned numerous accolades including two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gene Lockhart</span> Canadian-American actor (1891–1957)

Edwin Eugene Lockhart was a Canadian-American character actor, playwright, singer and lyricist. He appeared in over 300 films, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Regis in Algiers (1938), the American remake of Pepe le Moko.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Edmond Jones</span> American costume designer (1887–1954)

Robert Edmond Jones was an American scenic, lighting, and costume designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eileen Herlie</span> American actress

Eileen Herlie was a Scottish-American actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre Guild</span> New York City theatrical society

The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Coulouris</span> Greek/ English actor (1903–1989)

George Alexander Coulouris was an English film and stage actor. He was perhaps best known for his collaborations with Orson Welles, most notably Citizen Kane.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Powers</span> American actor (1890–1955)

Thomas McCreery Powers was an American actor in theatre, films, radio and television. A veteran of the Broadway stage, notably in plays by George Bernard Shaw, he created the role of Charles Marsden in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude. He succeeded Orson Welles in the role of Brutus in the Mercury Theatre's debut production, Caesar. In films, he was a star of Vitagraph Pictures and later became best known for his role as the victim of scheming wife Barbara Stanwyck and crooked insurance salesman Fred MacMurray in the film noir classic Double Indemnity (1944).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margalo Gillmore</span> American actress (1897–1986)

Margaret Lorraine "Margalo" Gillmore was an English-born American actress who had a long career as a stage actress on Broadway. She also appeared in films and TV series, mostly in the 1950s and early 1960s.

<i>Studio One</i> (American TV series) Television program (1948–1958)

Studio One is an American anthology drama television series that was adapted from a radio series. It was created in 1947 by Canadian director Fletcher Markle, who came to CBS from the CBC. It premiered on November 7, 1948, and ended on September 29, 1958, with a total of 467 episodes over the course of 10 seasons.

<i>Take Me Along</i> 1959 musical

Take Me Along is a 1959 musical based on the 1933 Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness!, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell.

<i>A Moon for the Misbegotten</i> A play in four acts by Eugene ONeill

A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. The play is a sequel to O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, with the Jim Tyrone character as an older version of Jamie Tyrone. He began drafting the play late in 1941, set it aside after a few months and returned to it a year later, completing the text in 1943 – his final work, as his failing health made it physically impossible for him to write. The play premiered on Broadway in 1957 and has had four Broadway revivals, plus a West End engagement.

<i>Summer Holiday</i> (1948 film) 1948 film by Rouben Mamoulian

Summer Holiday is a 1948 American musical-comedy film, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Mickey Rooney and Gloria DeHaven. The picture is based on the play Ah, Wilderness! (1933) by Eugene O'Neill, which had been filmed under that name by MGM in 1935 with Rooney in a much smaller role, as the younger brother. Although completed in October 1946, the film sat on the shelf until 1948.

<i>Three Men on a Horse</i> Play by George Abbott and John Cecil Holm

Three Men on a Horse is a three-act farce co-authored by John Cecil Holm and George Abbott. The comedy focuses on a man who discovers he has a talent for choosing the winning horse in a race as long as he never places a bet himself. Originally titled Hobby Horse by John Cecil Holm, Three Men On A Horse was a property controlled and produced by Alex Yokel, who reached out to Warner Bros. for financial assistance; Warners agreed to provide financing on the condition Yokel find someone to doctor the script and direct the Broadway production. George Abbott, the director, who had since 1932 directed and produced each of his Broadway productions, immediately saw the potential and rewrote the script and agreed to direct if he received co-author credit and split the author's royalties with Holm. Abbott wrote a third act, resulting in a new three-act play titled Three Men on a Horse.

<i>Ah, Wilderness!</i> (film) 1935 film

Ah, Wilderness! is a 1935 American comedy-drama film adaptation of the 1933 Eugene O'Neill play of the same name. Directed by Clarence Brown, the film stars Wallace Beery and features Lionel Barrymore, Eric Linden, Cecilia Parker, Spring Byington, and a young Mickey Rooney. Rooney stars as Richard in MGM's musical remake Summer Holiday (1948).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George M. Cohan</span> American actor, singer, composer and playwright (1878–1942)

George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.

Ruth Gilbert was an American actress, best known for her role as Alice in the first sound version of Alice in Wonderland in 1931, and as Max in The Milton Berle Show.

<i>Seven Keys to Baldpate</i> (play) 1913 play by George M. Cohan

Seven Keys to Baldpate is a 1913 play by George M. Cohan based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers. The dramatization was one of Cohan's most innovative plays. It baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit, running for nearly a year in New York, another year in Chicago and receiving later revivals; Cohan starred in the 1935 revival. Cohan adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, and later for TV and radio. The play "mixes all the formulaic melodrama of the era with a satirical [farcical] send-up of just those melodramatic stereotypes."

The Comedy Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 110 West 41st Street in Manhattan that opened in 1909. It presented the first Broadway appearances of Katharine Cornell and Ruth Draper, as well as Eugene O'Neill's first Broadway play. Shuttered in the wake of the Depression, it reopened in 1937 as the Mercury Theatre — the venue for Orson Welles's groundbreaking adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and other productions for the Mercury Theatre repertory company. In 1939 it began presenting classic Yiddish theatre. The building was demolished in 1942.

References

  1. 1 2 "Ah, Wilderness! Play by O'Neill". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 9, 2015.
  2. "Dramatic Compositions, No. 10, 1934". Catalogue of Copyright Entries: Dramatic Compositions, Motion Pictures. Vol. 6. 1934. p. 5835. Retrieved July 9, 2015.
  3. Burns Mantle, ed. (1942). The Best Plays of 1941–42 and the Yearbook of the Drama in America. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. Retrieved July 9, 2015.
  4. Olveczky, Bence (June 12, 1998). "Ah, Wilderness!: Eugene O'Neill's play about his best friends as a kid". Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Tech. Retrieved July 9, 2015.
  5. "The Campbell Playhouse: Ah, Wilderness!". Orson Welles on the Air, 1938–1946. Indiana University Bloomington. September 17, 1939. Retrieved July 31, 2018.
  6. "Sunday Selections". Toledo Blade (Ohio). October 6, 1945. p. 4 (Peach Section). Retrieved November 6, 2024.
  7. "Radio Programs". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. July 15, 1947. p. 19. Retrieved November 6, 2024.
  8. "Sunday Selections". Toledo Blade (Ohio). November 1, 1947. p. 4 (Peach Section). Retrieved November 6, 2024.
  9. "Previews". The Pittsburgh Press. June 15, 1955. p. 51. Retrieved November 6, 2024.

Further reading