June Moon | |
---|---|
Written by | George S. Kaufman Ring Lardner |
Date premiered | October 9, 1929 |
Place premiered | Broadhurst Theatre New York City |
Original language | English |
Subject | A young man from upstate New York seeks fame as a Tin Pan Alley lyricist |
Genre | Comedy |
Setting | New York City, 1929 |
June Moon is a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. Based on the Lardner short story "Some Like Them Cold," about a love affair that loses steam before it ever gets started, it includes songs with words and music by Lardner but is not considered a musical.
At the center of June Moon is Fred Stevens, a young aspiring lyricist who journeys from Schenectady to New York City, where he hopes to make a name for himself in the world of song publishing and night clubs. On the train, he meets dental assistant Edna Baker, and the two embark upon a friendship that evolves into love for her and fondness for him. While struggling to become a Tin Pan Alley notable, Fred takes a shine to his composer partner Paul's glamorous, gold-digging sister-in-law Eileen. The two men sell a song to a music publisher and it develops into a hit. Ultimately, revelations about Eileen's true character help return Fred to his senses and Edna, whom he realizes he truly loves.
The original Broadway production opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on October 9, 1929, and ran for 273 performances. It was directed by Kaufman, and the cast included Norman Foster as Fred, Linda Watkins as Edna, Frank Otto as Paul, and Lee Patrick as Eileen.
A preview production was presented at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C., on September 23, 1929.
Milano Tilden and Carl Hunt directed a revival that opened at the Ambassador Theatre on May 15, 1933, and ran for 49 performances. The cast included Thomas Gillen as Fred, Emily Lowry as Edna, Fred Irving Lewis as Paul, and Lee Patrick reprising the role of Eileen.
Mark Nelson directed an off-Broadway revival that had a short run at the Ohio Theater in January 1997. Writing in the New York Times, Ben Brantley observed "There is indeed a discernible streak of anxiety in the comedy. It may have been written as fluff, but it's flavored with a subliminal sadness that belies its own happy ending." [1] The production won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play. Actor Albert Macklin, who portrayed sardonic accompanyist Maxie, received a Best Actor Obie Award. On January 15, 1998, it reopened at the Variety Arts Theatre and ran for 101 performances. The cast included Geoffrey Nauffts as Fred, Robert Joy as Paul, and Cynthia Nixon as Eileen. Albert Macklin reprised his Obie-winning role as Maxie. Other notable actors in the cast included Billy Crudup, Hope Davis, Peter Frechette, K. Todd Freeman, Peter Gallagher, Justin Kirk, John Cameron Mitchell, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mary Beth Peil, and J. Smith-Cameron. [2]
A production was performed at UC San Diego from February 24 to March 3, 2012, directed by Jonathan Silverstein and featuring Jack Mikesell as Fred and Vi Flaten as Edna.
Jessica Stone directed a Williamstown Theatre Festival production in July 2014. [3]
Vincent Lawrence, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and Keene Thompson adapted the play for a 1931 movie directed by A. Edward Sutherland. The cast included Jack Oakie as Fred, Frances Dee as Edna, Ernest Wood as Paul, and June MacCloy as Eileen.
Paramount Pictures produced a 1937 version titled Blonde Trouble .
June Moon was adapted for the CBS Radio series The Campbell Playhouse on March 24, 1940. The cast included Orson Welles (Candy Butcher), Jack Benny (Fred Stevens), Benny Rubin (Maxie Schwartz), Gus Schilling (Paul Sears), Bea Benaderet (Lucille Sears) and Virginia Gordon (Edna Baker). Lee Patrick reprised her Broadway role as Eileen. [4] [5]
June Moon was presented on Philip Morris Playhouse October 3, 1941. Eddie Cantor starred in the 30-minute adaptation. [6]
On June 2, 1949, CBS Television broadcast an hour-long adaptation of June Moon on the live anthology show Studio One . The production was directed by Walter Hart, adapted by Gerald Goode, and featured Jack Lemmon as Fred Stevens, Eva Marie Saint as Edna, Edward Andrews as Paul, and Jean Carson as Eileen.
Kirk Browning and Burt Shevelove staged the play for Great Performances , airing on January 30, 1974. The cast included Tom Fitzsimmons as Fred, Barbara Dana as Edna, Jack Cassidy as Paul, Beatrice Colen as Goldie and Susan Sarandon as Eileen, with Kevin McCarthy, Lee Meredith, Estelle Parsons, Austin Pendleton, and Stephen Sondheim in supporting roles. A DVD of this production was released by Kultur Video on April 16, 2002.
The Little Foxes is a 1939 play by Lillian Hellman, considered a classic of 20th century drama. Its title comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15, of the Song of Solomon in the King James version of the Bible, which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Set in a small town in Alabama in 1900, it focuses on the struggle for control of a family business. Tallulah Bankhead starred in the original production as Regina Hubbard Giddens.
Mame is a musical with the book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. Originally titled My Best Girl, it is based on the 1955 novel Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis and the 1956 Broadway play by Lawrence and Lee. A period piece set in New York City and spanning the Great Depression and World War II, it focuses on eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis, whose famous motto is "Life is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death." Her fabulous life with her wealthy friends is interrupted when the young son of her late brother arrives to live with her. They cope with the Depression in a series of adventures.
Show Boat is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over 40 years from 1887 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love. The musical contributed such classic songs as "Ol' Man River", "Make Believe", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".
A Lie of the Mind is a play written by Sam Shepard, first staged at the off-Broadway Promenade Theater on 5 December 1985. The play was directed by Shepard himself with stars Harvey Keitel as Jake, Amanda Plummer as Beth, Aidan Quinn as Frankie, Geraldine Page as Lorraine, and Will Patton as Mike. The music was composed and played by the North Carolina bluegrass group the Red Clay Ramblers.
42nd Street is a 1980 stage musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble, lyrics by Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer and music by Harry Warren. The 1980 Broadway production won the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Choreography and it became a long-running hit. The show was also produced in London in 1984 and its 2001 Broadway revival won the Tony Award for Best Revival.
Floyd Collins is a musical with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, and book by Tina Landau. The story is based on the death of Floyd Collins near Cave City, Kentucky in the winter of 1925. The musical opened Off-Broadway on February 9, 1996, where it ran for 25 performances. There have been subsequent London productions as well as regional U.S. productions.
Parade is a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The musical is a dramatization of the 1913 trial and imprisonment, and 1915 lynching, of Jewish American Leo Frank in Georgia.
Lucille Lortel was an American actress, artistic director, and theatrical producer. In the course of her career Lortel produced or co-produced nearly 500 plays, five of which were nominated for Tony Awards: As Is by William M. Hoffman, Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson, Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina!, and A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing. She also produced Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, a production which ran for seven years and according to The New York Times "caused such a sensation that it...put Off-Broadway on the map."
The Unexpected Man is a play written in 1995 by Yasmina Reza. The play is set in a train from Paris to Frankfurt, with two people sharing a compartment. One is a famous author, and the other is a woman who admires his work.
Twentieth Century is a 1932 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles B. Millholland, inspired by his experience working for the eccentric Broadway impresario David Belasco.
Lois Arlene Smith is an American character actress whose career spans eight decades. She made her film debut in the 1955 drama film East of Eden, and later played supporting roles in a number of movies, including Five Easy Pieces (1970), Resurrection (1980), Fatal Attraction (1987), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Falling Down (1993), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), Dead Man Walking (1995), Twister (1996), Minority Report (2002), The Nice Guys (2016), Lady Bird (2017), and The French Dispatch (2021).
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.
Orson's Shadow is a play by Austin Pendleton. The play received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Play and won the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance.
The Irish Repertory Theatre is an Off Broadway theatre founded in 1988.
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.
The Waverly Gallery is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. It is considered a "memory play". The show, first produced Off-Broadway in 2000, follows a grandson watching his grandmother slowly die from Alzheimer's disease. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001.
Blonde Trouble is a 1937 American musical comedy film directed by George Archainbaud and starring Eleanore Whitney, Johnny Downs and Lynne Overman. Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures, it is based on the plot of the 1929 musical June Moon by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner
This is a comprehensive listing of the radio programs made by Orson Welles. Welles was often uncredited for his work, particularly in the years 1934–1937, and he apparently kept no record of his broadcasts.
Radio is what I love most of all. The wonderful excitement of what could happen in live radio, when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I was making a couple of thousand a week, scampering in ambulances from studio to studio, and committing much of what I made to support the Mercury. I wouldn't want to return to those frenetic 20-hour working day years, but I miss them because they are so irredeemably gone.
The Bad Man is a 1920 three-act comedy play by American playwright Porter Emerson Browne. The Broadway production at the Comedy Theatre ran for 342 performances beginning August 30, 1920. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1920–1921.
June Moon is a 1931 American Pre-Code comedy film based upon the play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. It was adapted by Vincent Lawrence, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Keene Thompson and directed by A. Edward Sutherland. It stars Jack Oakie, Frances Dee, Wynne Gibson, Harry Akst and June MacCloy. The film was released on March 21, 1931, by Paramount Pictures.
{{cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (help)