| Harriet | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements |
| Based on | the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe |
| Directed by | Elia Kazan |
| Date premiered | March 3, 1943 |
| Place premiered | Henry Millers Theatre New York |
| Original language | English |
Harriet is a 1943 American play by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements.
The original production was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Helen Hayes. It ran for 377 performances.
Hayes had enjoyed several successes playing historical figures and heard about a play on Harriet Beecher Stowe. She and her producing partner Gilbert Miller watched it being performed in an experimental production at Syracuse University and optioned it. Miller was originally going to direct the play but Elia Kazan was brought in to direct it. [1] [2] The play was very popular, though little remembered now; Kazan received a great deal of acclaim although he put the play's success mostly down to Hayes. [3]
The play was adapted for Australian radio in 1946 starring Muriel Steinbeck and Peter Finch. [4]
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. The musical score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. The black-and-white film was inspired by "Crime on the Waterfront" by Malcolm Johnson, a series of articles published in November–December 1948 in the New York Sun which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, but the screenplay by Budd Schulberg is directly based on his own original story. The film focuses on union violence and corruption among longshoremen, while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey.
Elias Kazantzoglou, known as Elia Kazan, was an American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history".

Death of a Salesman is a 1949 stage play written by the American playwright Arthur Miller. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances. It is a two-act tragedy set in late 1940s Brooklyn told through a montage of memories, dreams, and arguments of the protagonist Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who is despondent with his life and appears to be slipping into senility. The play addresses a variety of themes, such as the American Dream, the anatomy of truth, and infidelity. It won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. It is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. The play was selected as one of the best plays of 1948–1949, with an excerpted version published in The Burns Mantle Best Plays of 1948–1949.

Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams that tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his hometown 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.
Eva Marie Saint is an American retired actress of film, theatre, radio and television. In a career that spanned nearly 80 years, she won an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award, alongside nominations for a Golden Globe Award and two British Academy Film Awards. Saint is the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award-winner, and one of the last living stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Karl Malden was an American stage, movie and television actor who first achieved acclaim in the original Broadway productions of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in 1946 and 1947. Recreating the role of Mitch in the 1951 film of Streetcar, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935, Odets's socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play Clash by Night in the 1941–42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood until mid-1948. He returned to New York for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and, in the early- to mid-1950s, William Inge.
The Group Theatre was a theater collective based in New York City and formed in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg. It was intended as a base for the kind of theatre they and their colleagues believed in—a forceful, naturalistic and highly disciplined artistry. They were pioneers of what would become an "American acting technique", derived from the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, but pushed beyond them as well. The company included actors, directors, playwrights, and producers. The name "Group" came from the idea of the actors as a pure ensemble; a reference to the company as "our group" led them to "accept the inevitable and call their company The Group Theatre."
Martin Ritt was an American director, producer, and actor, active in film, theatre and television. He was known mainly as an auteur of socially-conscious dramas and literary adaptations, described by Stanley Kauffmann as "one of the most underrated American directors, superbly competent and quietly imaginative."
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor, known both for film roles and his work on the Broadway stage, as well as for his television role in the series, The Virginian. He often played arrogant, intimidating and abrasive characters, but he also acted as respectable figures such as judges and police officers. Cobb originated the role of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's 1949 play Death of a Salesman under the direction of Elia Kazan, and was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for On the Waterfront (1954) and The Brothers Karamazov (1958).

All My Sons is a three-act play written in 1946 by Arthur Miller. It opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947, and ran for 328 performances. It was directed by Elia Kazan, produced by Kazan and Harold Clurman, and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. It starred Ed Begley, Beth Merrill, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl Malden and won both the Tony Award for Best Author and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. The play was adapted for films in 1948 and 1987.

Luther Adler was an American actor who worked in theatre, film, television, and directed plays on Broadway.
Barbara Ann Loden was an American actress and director of film and theater. Richard Brody of The New Yorker described Loden as the "female counterpart to John Cassavetes".
Paul Osborn was an American playwright and screenwriter. Osborn's original plays are The Vinegar Tree, Oliver Oliver, and Morning's at Seven and among his several successful adaptations, On Borrowed Time has proved particularly popular. He wrote the screenplays for East of Eden (1955) and South Pacific (1958), among other films.
James Ridley Osgood Perkins was an American actor.
My Life and Times is an American drama television series that aired on ABC from April 24, 1991, to May 30, 1991. The series co-starred Helen Hunt.
Ruth Gloria Nelson was an American stage and film actress. She is known for her roles in films such as Wilson, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Humoresque, 3 Women, The Late Show and Awakenings. She was the wife of John Cromwell, with whom she acted on multiple occasions.
Deep Are the Roots is a 1945 play by Arnaud d'Usseau and James Gow about a decorated African-American soldier who has returned from World War II.
Seth Arnold was an American theater and film character actor.
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