William Somerset Maugham was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.
Dame Alice Ellen Terry was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Sir Charles Henry Hawtrey was an English actor, director, producer and manager. He pursued a successful career as an actor-manager, specialising in debonair, often disreputable, parts in popular comedies. He occasionally played in Sheridan and other classics, but was generally associated with new works by writers including Oscar Wilde and Somerset Maugham.
The Paradine Case is a 1947 courtroom drama with elements of film noir set in England, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick. Selznick and an uncredited Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay from an adaptation by Alma Reville and James Bridie of the 1933 novel by Robert Smythe Hichens. The film stars Gregory Peck, Ann Todd, Alida Valli, Charles Laughton, Charles Coburn, Ethel Barrymore, and Louis Jourdan. It tells of an English barrister who falls in love with a woman who is accused of murder, and how it affects his relationship with his wife.
Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regarded as "The First Lady of the American Theatre". She received four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, winning for None but the Lonely Heart (1944).
A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde is "a new and original play of modern life", in four acts, first given on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, London. Like Wilde's other society plays, it satirises English upper-class society. It has been revived from time to time since his death in 1900, but has been widely regarded as the least successful of his four drawing room plays.
Bruce McRae was an American stage and early silent film actor. He was the nephew of actor Sir Charles Wyndham.
What Every Woman Knows is a four-act play written by J. M. Barrie. It was first presented by impresario Charles Frohman at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 3 September 1908. It ran for 384 performances, transferring to the Hicks Theatre between 21 December 1908 and 15 February 1909.
Lottie Venne was a British comedian, actress and singer of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, who enjoyed a theatre career spanning five decades. Venne began her stage career in musical burlesque before moving into farce and comedy. She appeared in several works by each of F. C. Burnand and W. S. Gilbert and was often in plays with Charles Hawtrey later in her career.
For Services Rendered is a play by Somerset Maugham. First performed in London in 1932, the play is about the effects of World War I on an English family.
Viva Seton Montgomerie was a British socialite and minor author, daughter of the Hon. Seton Montolieu Montgomerie and his wife, Nina Janet Bronwen Peers Williams, daughter of Lt.-Col. Thomas Peers Williams.
Rookery Nook is a farce by the English playwright Ben Travers based on his own 1923 novel. It was first given at the Aldwych Theatre, London, the third in the series of twelve Aldwych farces presented by the actor-manager Tom Walls at the theatre between 1923 and 1933. Several of the actors formed a regular core cast for the Aldwych farces. The play depicts the complications that ensue when a young woman, dressed in pyjamas, seeks refuge from her bullying stepfather at a country house in the middle of the night.
Money is a comic play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, premièred at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket on 8 December 1840.
The Divorcee is a 1919 American society drama starring Ethel Barrymore in her last silent feature film. The film is based on a 1907 play, Lady Frederick by young Somerset Maugham, which had starred Barrymore on Broadway. The play was already quite dated when this film was made, but the actress was always comfortable with this kind of soap-operish melodramatic material. Herbert Blaché directed, and June Mathis wrote the scenario based on Maugham's play. The film was produced and distributed by the Metro Pictures company.
The Silver Box is a three-act comedy, the first play by the English writer John Galsworthy. It was originally produced in London in 1906, and attracted much attention. In New York it was first seen in 1907.
Theatre is a novel by the British writer W. Somerset Maugham, first published in 1937 by William Heinemann (UK) and Doubleday Doran (US).
Leave it to Psmith, subtitled "A comedy of youth, love and misadventure", is a 1930 comedy play by Ian Hay and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the latter's 1923 novel of the same title. It premiered in London's West End at the Shaftesbury Theatre on 29 September 1930.
Otho Stuart was a British actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who specialised in performing in the plays of Shakespeare. Stuart played the range of Shakespearean leading men, both with the Company of F. R. Benson and with his own Company during his management of the Adelphi Theatre in London. Of independent means, he used his own money to help finance Benson's productions and his own. The theatre critic J. C. Trewin described him as 'one of the handsomest Oberons of all time.'
Mary Charlotte Moore, Lady Wyndham, was an English actress and theatrical manager. She was known for her appearances in comedies alongside the actor-manager Charles Wyndham between 1885 and his retirement in 1913. Over these three decades they acted mainly in contemporary plays, many written for them by authors including Henry Arthur Jones and Hubert Henry Davies, but also appeared in classic comedies together. She continued to act on stage until 1919. She was married to the playwright James Albery from 1879 to 1889, and after his death her relationship with Wyndham eventually became romantic. After the death of Wyndham's estranged wife in 1916, he and Moore married.
Smith is a comedy by the British writer W. Somerset Maugham, written when he was becoming a successful dramatist. The play was first seen in London in 1909.
