Alias Jimmy Valentine | |
---|---|
Written by | Paul Armstrong |
Based on | A Retrieved Reformation by O. Henry (1903) |
Directed by | Hugh Ford |
Date premiered | January 21, 1910 |
Place premiered | Wallack's Theatre |
Original language | English |
Subject | Safecracker goes straight |
Genre | Melodrama |
Setting | Sing Sing, an Albany hotel, a Springfield bank |
Alias Jimmy Valentine is a 1909 play written by Paul Armstrong, based on the 1903 short story A Retrieved Reformation by O. Henry. It has four acts, a large cast, four settings, and fast pacing. The story follows a former safecracker's attempt to go straight, and the choice he must make between saving a child's life and exposing himself to arrest.
The play was produced by Liebler & Company, staged by Hugh Ford, with settings from Gates and Morange. The play starred H. B. Warner and introduced Laurette Taylor. It opened Christmas night 1909 in Chicago, moving to Broadway during January 1910 where it played through June 1910.
Alias Jimmy Valentine had a brief Broadway revival during December 1921. It was adapted for four motion pictures between 1915 and 1942, and was turned into a radio serial during 1938–1939.
Lead
Supporting
Featured
Bit Players
The following was compiled from a large extract of the play published in Current Literature during 1910, and from newspaper reviews of 1909–1910.
Act I (The Warden's office at Sing Sing prison.) Rose Lane and two women from the Gate of Hope Society are visiting the Warden. Rose has brought along her mom's brother, Robert Fay. The four of them are discussing prison reform and criminal types with the Warden. Also present is Blickendolfenbach, with his new keyed lock that he hopes to sell to the state prison. Smith fetches Blinky Davis, who casually alters a $5.00 check into $50,000. Then Smith brings in Dick the Rat, who picks the new lock with just a hairpin. Smith, the prisoners and the inventor depart. The women ask the Warden about other convict types, and he promises to show them a romantic one. While he's gone, Rose tells the others about how a criminal tried to molest her on a train two years ago, but was thwarted by a young stranger. The Warden returns with Jimmy Valentine. Rose instantly recognizes him as the young stranger. Valentine enrages the Warden by refusing to pick the combination lock of the prison safe, claiming he has no knowledge of safecracking. Fay intervenes when the Warden berates Valentine, and urges the latter to apply for a pardon. (Curtain)
Act II (Hotel parlor in Albany, New York, a few weeks later.) Valentine has been pardoned and released. He is due to meet Rose and her father at the hotel. While waiting, he is approached by old friends Bill Avery and Red Joclyn, fellow yeggs. They urge Valentine to resume his old profession, but he has fallen in love with Rose and repudiates crime. Suddenly Detective Doyle is spotted. Red and Bill hide, while Valentine verbally spars with Doyle, who wants him to sell out Bill Avery. Valentine refuses, and Doyle threatens to prosecute him over a safecracking in Springfield, Massachusetts. He leaves frustrated by Valentine's aplomb. Bill and Red reappear, and Valentine hands Bill a message from Rose, promising him a job out west. Bill thanks Valentine and departs promising to go straight. Rose and her father now appear. William Lane offers Valentine a position in his bank. Valentine allows himself to be persuaded, and reveals his real name, Lee Randall. When they leave, he tells Red to follow him to Illinois, where he'll get him an honest job. (Curtain)
Act III (Randall's office at Fourth National Bank of Springfield, three years later.) Randall is now Assistant Cashier of Lane's bank, while Red Joclyn has been appointed a watchman. Randall's clerk Williams brings in a man called Cronin, who is actually Bill Avery. He is now prosperous through marriage, and brings a "doctored" photo for Randall to alibi himself for the Massachusetts safecracking. They both know Doyle is in town. After he leaves, Rose visits Randall with her younger siblings, Bobby and Kitty. Rose and Valentine are close to being engaged. Rose goes to her father's office, while the kids leave to inspect the newly installed bank vault. Doyle now enters, and begins to question Valentine, who stymies him by claiming to be Lee Randall. [fn 1] Doyle isn't quite fooled, but can't find a way to break Randall's alibi. Doyle starts to leave but lingers when he hears Red rush into Randall's office. Bobby has accidentally locked Kitty into the new vault, the combination for which hasn't been delivered by the manufacturer. (Curtain)
Act IV (Vault room of bank, moments later.) Red Joclyn has cleared the bank to cut down on noise. They can hear Kitty's muffled cries for help. Randall turns off the lights to avoid distraction as he tries to feel the tumblers click. Each time he feels one, Red lights a match to check the dial number. Doyle has crept silently into the room to watch, and a moment later, so does Rose. Randall sandpapers his fingertips to sensitize them. Painstakingly he works the dial, number by number. Joclyn grows worried; he can no longer hear Kitty. Finally, the last number is felt, and the vault door is swung open. Kitty is unconscious but alive; Red picks her up and rushes her to a doctor. Randall spots Doyle and realizes the game is up. But Doyle yields his captive to Rose, who now knows the truth about Randall but still wants him. (Curtain)
Liebler & Company was a partnership between investor T. A. Liebler and producer George C. Tyler. In his 1934 memoir, Tyler mentioned having bought the stage rights to A Retrieved Reformation as soon as he read it. [1] Tyler commissioned Paul Armstrong to dramatize it, having been burnt before by Sydney Porter on turning his The World and the Door into a stage play. [2] Armstrong wrote the play in a week, as he had for Liebler & Company's Salomy Jane in 1907. [3]
Tyler intended the play as a reward for H. B. Warner, who had performed in several Liebler & Company productions. [4] He also wanted Laurette Taylor for the female lead. [5] Taylor was then appearing on Broadway in a supporting role for Mrs. Dakon's Daughter, and drawing praise from critics. Chicago Tribune critic Percy Hammond informed his readers "Miss Loretta Taylor... has precipitately left that play for reasons not made public and will appear as Mr. Warner's leading woman". [6] Taylor penned a tart reply to the Tribune: "Just to ease your curiosity about why I have left the cast of Mrs. Dakon... I inform you that the Messrs. Shubert have rented me like real estate to the Messrs. Liebler to play in Alias Jimmy Valentine. My part is not good, but the play, I think, is original and wonderful and Mr. Warner is going to be splendid. What sins I have committed that I should be punished by having to play this role I don't know." [7]
Role | Actor | Dates | Notes and sources |
---|---|---|---|
Rose Lane | Laurette Taylor | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | Despite her disdain for being "rented out" for a lightweight role, [7] Taylor garnered favorable reviews. [8] [9] |
Lee Randall | H. B. Warner | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | This was Warner's first Broadway starring role; [4] he had top billing in newspaper ads. [10] |
Handler | Harold Hartsell | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Doyle | Frank Monroe | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Bill Avery | Edmund Elton | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
William Lane | William T. Clifton | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Red Joclyn | Joseph Touhy | Dec 25, 1909 - Jan 15, 1910 | Touhy strained his vocal cords just before the Broadway premiere and had to be replaced. [11] |
Earl Brown | Jan 21, 1910 - Jun 11, 1910 | ||
Blickendolfenbach | Loudan McCormack | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Blinky Davis | Edward Bayes | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Dick the Rat | Charles E. Graham | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Mrs. Moore | Gail Y. Towers | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Mrs. Webster | Maude Turner Gordon | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Robert Fay | Frank Kingdon | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Bobby Lane | Donald Gallaher | Dec 25, 1909 - Jun 11, 1910 | |
Kitty Lane | Alma Sedley | Jan 21, 1910 - Jun 11, 1910 | This character was added during the rewrite for Broadway. |
Smith | Albert Elliott | Jan 21, 1910 - Jun 11, 1910 | This character was added during the rewrite for Broadway. |
Williams | E. Coddington | Jan 21, 1910 - Jun 11, 1910 | This character was added during the rewrite for Broadway. |
The play opened on December 25, 1909, at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago. [8] The leading lady, Laurette Taylor had been in a taxicab accident the night before, and appeared on stage with a discolored eye and patches coverings cuts on her face. [12] The Chicago Tribune reviewer remarked on how quickly Paul Armstrong had written the play and said it showed on stage: "It is palpably patched, with most of the characters and some of the scenes obviously introduced for the mere purposes of exposition and then fading away into unimportance". [8] However, they admitted the play as entertainment worked well and the audience loved it. H. B. Warner's "prediliction to be artificial was not greatly in evidence" according to the Tribune critic, who saved their greatest accolades for Laurette Taylor. [8] The Inter Ocean reviewer called Alias Jimmy Valentine "a likeable play, an effective play" and was generous with praise for the supporting actors. [13]
Between Chicago and the Broadway premiere there was some minor rewriting, as evidenced by cast list and review discrepancies. Three minor characters were added: Smith, Williams and Kitty Lane. The latter became the child locked in the bank vault, instead of Bobby Lane. [8] [9]
Alias Jimmy Valentine opened at Wallack's Theatre on January 21, 1910. [14] Originally scheduled for Tuesday, January 18, the unusual Friday premiere came as a result of an actor's vocal chord injury. [11] Joseph Touhy, who was to play the major supporting role of Red Joclyn, could not go on. The producers cancelled performances until replacement Earl Brown was ready. [15]
In spite of the delay, the first night audience was receptive to the melodrama. The reviewer for the Brooklyn Daily Times said: "...last night a good-sized crowd of Broadway's most proud and skeptical first nighters, armed with a polar coutenance and prepared to dislike anything, was thrilled". [14] That reviewer also reported "The play occasionally rose above melodrama, but as one lady in the orchestra, who was low-necked in both gown and vocabulary, said, it was 'loose-jointed'." [14] The New-York Tribune critic praised the acting and Armstrong's writing, saying each act had "an effective climax", but noted Police Headquarters declared safecracking by touch impossible. [9]
The author gave a curtain speech at the audience's insistence, [fn 2] in which he acknowledged the play's debt to O. Henry's A Retrieved Reformation. [16]
The play closed on Saturday, June 11, 1910, at Wallack's Theatre. [17] The production then went on hiatus for two months, reopening for its second season on August 22, 1910, again at Wallack's Theatre, [18] but with Elsie Leslie as the leading lady. [19]
Alias Jimmy Valentine had a brief revival on Broadway starting December 8, 1921, at the Gaiety Theatre. It starred Otto Kruger and Margalo Gillmore, with Harold Hartsell, Edmund Elton, and Earl Brown reprising their original roles. [20]
Bertram Mortimer Lytell was an American actor in theater and film during the silent film era and early talkies. He starred in romantic, melodrama, and adventure films.
Sag Harbor, sub-titled An Old Story, is an 1899 comedy, the last play written by American author James Herne. It has four acts and three settings, all within Sag Harbor, New York, while the action covers a two-year time span. The play is a rural comedy, with two brothers competing for the same girl, and an older widower wooing a shy spinster. The play avoids melodrama, emphasising the realistic nature of its characters, though as one critic pointed out they occasionally do unreal things.
Three New York City playhouses named Wallack's Theatre played an important part in the history of American theater as the successive homes of the stock company managed by actors James W. Wallack and his son, Lester Wallack. During its 35-year lifetime, from 1852 to 1887, that company developed and held a reputation as the best theater company in the country.
"A Retrieved Reformation" is a short story by American author O. Henry first published in The Cosmopolitan Magazine, April 1903. The original title was "A Retrieved Reform". It was illustrated by A.I. Keller.
Alias Jimmy Valentine is a 1920 American silent crime drama film starring Bert Lytell, directed by Edmund Mortimer and Arthur Ripley, and released through Metro Pictures.
Disraeli is a play by the British writer Louis N. Parker. The comedy with dramatic overtones has four acts and four settings, with a large cast, and moderate pacing. It is a fictional depiction of Benjamin Disraeli's life around 1875, when he arranged the purchase of the Suez Canal. It also contains dual love stories: Disraeli and his wife, and a young couple.
Alias Jimmy Valentine is an old-time radio crime drama in the United States. It was broadcast on NBC-Blue January 18, 1938 - February 27, 1939.
The Garden of Allah is a play written by Robert Hichens and Mary Anderson. It was based on Hichens 1904 novel of the same name. It consists of four acts and an epilogue, with a medium-sized speaking cast and slow pacing. The play is concerned with the romance between a wealthy young Englishwoman and a half-Russian, half-English man of mysterious background. The settings are various locales in French Algeria and French Tunis around 1900, particularly the oasis town of Beni-Mora, a fictional name for Biskra. The title stems from an Arabic saying that the desert is the Garden of Allah.
Children of the Ghetto is an 1899 play written by British author Israel Zangwill. It is loosely based on Zangwill's 1892 novel of the same name. It is a drama in four acts, each with a subtitle and its own setting. The play is set around 1874, within the Jewish Quarter of London. The main plot centers on the love-affair of a young couple, thwarted from marrying by an obscure religious law and an unfortunate joke. The action of the play spans a hundred days time starting at Hanukkah.
The Christian is an 1898 play written by British author Hall Caine. It is a drama, with a prologue and four acts. Caine insisted the play was not an adaptation of his 1896 novel of the same name, but rather a new story using the same principal characters. It was more a romance than the theological drama of the novel, as an Anglican vicar of a slum parish in 1890's London tries to persuade a music hall performer to give up her career.
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, is an 1903 comedy by American author Anne Crawford Flexner. It was based on two books by Alice Hegan Rice, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901) and Lovey Mary (1903). It has three acts and two settings, all within the "Cabbage Patch", an impoverished neighborhood on the fringes of Louisville, Kentucky. The character-driven play covers three weeks time and has multiple storylines, including an ill-starred mail-order marriage, two refugees from an orphanage, the return of a long-lost husband, and a handful of young romances.
Merely Mary Ann is an 1903 play by British author Israel Zangwill. It is based on his own work of the same name, written in 1893 and later included in The Grey Wig (1903). It has four acts and three settings. The story explores the changing relationship between the younger son of a baronet, who has forsaken inheritance for composing, and an orphaned country girl, now working in a cheap London lodging house.
Salomy Jane, is a 1907 play by Paul Armstrong. It was loosely based on the short story Salomy Jane's Kiss by Bret Harte, but also pulled in characters from other Harte works. It has four acts and five scenes, taking place over sixteen hours in Calaveras County, California around 1855.
The Deep Purple is a 1910 play written by Paul Armstrong and Wilson Mizner. It is a melodrama with four acts, a large cast, three settings, and fast pacing. The story concerns an attempted badger game broken up by the intended victim who rescues the unwitting female lure from a gang. The title refers to the nobility of the protagonist's character, that he was "bred in the deep purple".
Going Some is a 1908 play written by Paul Armstrong and Rex Beach, based on some short stories by Beach. It is a farce with four acts, three settings, and fast pacing. The play's action covers one week, and concerns a Yale man with no athletic ability roped into running a footrace for the honor of New Mexico ranch hands and the affection of a Smith College girl.
The Greyhound is a 1911 play written by Paul Armstrong and Wilson Mizner. It is a melodrama with four acts, six settings, a large cast and fast pacing. The story is episodic, following four criminals working likely victims on an ocean liner, and showing how they are thwarted. Although containing elements of a thriller, comedy dominates, as a glance at names of featured characters suggests. The title comes from the contemporary description of fast transatlantic passenger ships as "ocean greyhounds".
Paul Armstrong was an American playwright, whose melodramas provided thrills and comedy to audiences in the first fifteen years of the 20th century. Originally a steamship captain, he went into journalism, became a press agent, then a full time playwright. His period of greatest success was from 1907 through 1911, when his four-act melodramas Salomy Jane (1907), Via Wireless (1908), Going Some (1909), Alias Jimmy Valentine (1909), The Deep Purple (1910), and The Greyhound (1911), had long runs on Broadway and in touring companies. Many of his plays were adapted for silent films between 1914 and 1928.
The Man from Home is a 1907 play written by Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson. It is a comedy with four acts, three settings, and moderate pacing. The story concerns an Indiana lawyer who has travelled to Italy to save his ward from an ill-conceived marriage. The action of the play all takes place within 24 hours.
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman is a 1903 play written by Eugene W. Presbrey and E. W. Hornung, based on two of Hornung's short stories from The Amateur Cracksman. It also draws one of its characters from an 1886 play called Jim the Penman, by Charles Young. It has four acts, and two settings. The story concerns a gentleman jewel thief who steals as much for excitement as necessity, and the efforts of a detective to catch him.
Joseph and His Brethren is a 1906 play by the British writer Louis N. Parker, that was not produced until 1913. This biblical pageant has four acts, each with its own subtitle, comprising thirteen scenes and eleven settings, with a very large cast. The story is taken from the Book of Genesis.