Film adaptations
The Everyman play was first brought to the cinema in 1913 using the Kinemacolor two-color process that projected black-and-white film through red and green filters to produce an early form of color movie. [6] Linda Arvidson, a well-known actress who was recently separated from her movie producer husband D.W. Griffith, was cast in the title role, as she at the time was the leading lady for the Kinemacolor Company of America's studios. The Natural Color Kinematograph Company in Britain was defunct in 1914 after they lost the patent for the Kinemacolor process in a lawsuit. Consequently, Kinemacolor lost its commercial value. [7] Arvidson's estranged husband bought out the California operations of Kinemacolor, which included rights to their United States film releases. [8] Griffith's acquisition of the Everyman film meant that distribution was a low priority, and despite the Broadway success of the play, the casting of a high-profile actress, and the novelty of color, the film made little impact. Subsequently, Crawley-Maude Features, which was owned by former Everyman leading lady Constance Crawley and her manager Arthur Maude, produced in 1914 their own film adaptation of Everyman, which did little better than the Kinemacolor version. [9]
The Somonyng of Everyman, usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century morality play by an anonymous English author, printed circa 1530. It is possibly a translation of the Dutch play Elckerlijc (Everyman).
Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden, known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American actress and stage designer who achieved her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway production of Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Adams' personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than $1 million during her peak.
Ben Iden Payne, also known as B. Iden Payne, was an English actor, director and teacher. Active in professional theater for seventy years, he helped the first modern Repertory Theatre in the United Kingdom, was an early and effective advocate for Elizabethan staging of Shakespeare plays, and served as an inspiration for Shakespeare Companies and University theater programs throughout North America and the British Isles. His name lives on as the name of a theater at the University of Texas as well as annual theater awards presented in Austin, Texas.
Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike, Lady Casson, was an English actress whose stage career lasted from 1904 to 1969.
Sir Lewis Thomas Casson MC was an English actor and theatre director, and the husband of actress Dame Sybil Thorndike.
Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process. Used commercially from 1909 to 1915, it was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. It was a two-colour additive colour process, photographing a black-and-white film behind alternating red/orange and blue/green filters and projecting them through red and green filters. It was demonstrated several times in 1908 and first shown to the public in 1909. From 1909 on, the process was known and trademarked as Kinemacolor and was marketed by Charles Urban’s Natural Color Kinematograph Company, which sold Kinemacolor licences around the world.
Daniel Frohman was an American theatrical producer and manager, and an early film producer.
Arthur Russell Thorndike was a British actor and novelist, best known for the Doctor Syn of Romney Marsh novels. Less well-known than his sister Sybil but equally versatile, Russell Thorndike's first love was writing and, after serving in World War I, he devoted himself to it.
Sir Edward Seymour Hicks, better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and producing Edwardian musical comedy, often together with his famous wife, Ellaline Terriss. His most famous acting role was that of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
Medieval theatre encompasses theatrical performance in the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century. The category of "medieval theatre" is vast, covering dramatic performance in Europe over a thousand-year period. A broad spectrum of genres needs to be considered, including mystery plays, morality plays, farces and masques. The themes were almost always religious. The most famous examples are the English cycle dramas, the York Mystery Plays, the Chester Mystery Plays, the Wakefield Mystery Plays, and the N-Town Plays, as well as the morality play known as Everyman. One of the first surviving secular plays in English is The Interlude of the Student and the Girl.
Henrietta Foster Crosman was an American stage and film actress.
Carlotta Nillson was a Swedish-born American actress who appeared in at least ten Broadway productions over the first decade of the twentieth century. She was probably best remembered for her portrayal of Rhys Macchesney in the play The Three of Us.
The Garden Theatre was a major theatre on Madison Avenue and 27th Street in New York City, New York. The theatre opened on September 27, 1890, and closed in 1925. Part of the second Madison Square Garden complex, the theatre presented Broadway plays for two decades and then, as high-end theatres moved uptown to the Times Square area, became a facility for German and Yiddish theatre, motion pictures, lectures, and meetings of trade and political groups.
The Lyceum Theatre was a theatre in New York City located on Fourth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets in Manhattan. It was built in 1885 and operated until 1902, when it was torn down to make way for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower. It was replaced by a new Lyceum Theatre on 45th Street. For all but its first two seasons, the theatre was home to Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Theatre Stock Company, which presented many important plays and actors of the day.
William Courtenay was a noted Broadway star and later film actor. He was born William Hancock Kelly. At age 19 in 1894, before his Broadway career took off, Courtenay appeared in Alexander Black's slide show Miss Jerry. This was a sort of alternative entertainment to a new device by Thomas Edison called a Kinetoscope à la moving pictures.
George Gaston Bell was an American stage and film actor active over the early decades of the twentieth century.
Constance Crawley was an English actress best known for leading roles in Shakespeare tragedies. She gained notice on the American stage at the start of the 20th century, and later starred in and wrote several silent films.
John Sayer Crawley was an English actor who, as Sayre Crawley, spent more than 40 years in American theatre playing roles on Broadway and at the Garden Theatre, among other venues.
Francis Henry Westerton was a British stage and silent film actor of the 19th and early 20th centuries who carved a successful career on Broadway from 1905 to 1922.
Charles Childerstone was an English operatic tenor and actor who after a career on the stage including a period with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1896 to 1903 later had a career on the music halls and in film. His theatrical career spanned four decades and included musical comedy and the legitimate theatre.
