Alfred David Lunt was an American actor and director, best known for his long stage partnership with his wife, Lynn Fontanne, from the 1920s to 1960, co-starring in Broadway and West End productions. After their marriage, they nearly always appeared together. They became known as "the Lunts" and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.
Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead. In the 1910s and 1920s he was considered the United States' greatest living author. Several of his stories were adapted to film.
Charles Robert William Howes was a British entertainer who was a leading musical comedy performer in London's West End theatres in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Belle of New York is a musical comedy in two acts, with book and lyrics by Hugh Morton and music by Gustave Kerker, about a Salvation Army girl who reforms a spendthrift, makes a great sacrifice and finds true love.
Clarence is a 1922 American silent comedy drama, based on the 1919 play by Booth Tarkington, produced by Famous Players–Lasky and distributed through Paramount Pictures. It was directed by William C. deMille and starred Wallace Reid in his penultimate screen appearance.
Viva Birkett was a British stage actress active on both sides of the Atlantic over the early decades of the twentieth century.
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.
Clarence is a 1937 American comedy film directed by George Archainbaud and written by Grant Garett and Seena Owen. The film stars Roscoe Karns, Eleanore Whitney, Eugene Pallette, Johnny Downs, Inez Courtney and Charlotte Wynters. It is based on the play Clarence by Booth Tarkington. The film was released on February 12, 1937, by Paramount Pictures.
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.
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, is a 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 a 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.
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 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".
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.
Seventeen is a 1917 play by writers Hugh Stanislaus Stange, Stannard Mears, and Stuart Walker, based on Booth Tarkington's 1916 novel. It is a four-act comedy with six scenes and two settings. The story concerns a seventeen-year-old boy in a small town who is smitten with a visiting beauty, enduring the pangs of a crush with the humiliation of not being accepted as adult by his family and friends.
Gregory Kelly was an American stage actor, who began performing as a child. He was a Broadway attraction, starring in such long-running productions as Seventeen and The Butter and Egg Man. His early death precluded him from appearing in more than two films. He is remembered today as the first husband of Ruth Gordon, who credited him with teaching her acting.
Dulcy is a 1920 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. It is a fast-paced three-act comedy with one setting and eleven characters. The story concerns a warm-hearted and wrong-headed woman who is a compulsive meddler and bromide; she cheerfully arranges other people's lives to their dismay. The action takes place within the living room of a house in Westchester County, New York, from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning. The authors based the play on the character Dulcinea, created by Franklin P. Adams for his newspaper column The Conning Tower.
To the Ladies is a 1922 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. The play's title occasionally appears with an exclamation point at the end. It is a fast-paced three-act comedy with four scenes, three settings, and fourteen characters. The story concerns the efforts of a newly married wife to help her scatter-brained husband rise in his career. It was written to order as a vehicle for Helen Hayes, to give her a domestic role rather than the flappers she had been playing.
The Intimate Strangers is a 1921 play by Booth Tarkington. It is a three-act comedy with two settings and eight characters. The action of the play takes place within 24 hours. The story concerns a naive old-fashioned bachelor, teased by a pretend spinster, with a younger couple serving as competition. Tarkington wrote the play with Maude Adams in mind, but when she was unavailable, it became a vehicle for Billie Burke.
The Country Cousin is a 1917 play by Booth Tarkington and Julian Street, a revised version of their failed 1915 play The Ohio Lady. It is a four-act comedy that skirts melodrama, with three settings and thirteen characters. The action of the play takes place on a June 1916 morning, and during 24 hours in August 1916. The story concerns an intelligent young farmer, who saves her little cousin from being cheated while also causing a young man to realize there is a larger world that demands his participation.
