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.
Pago Pago is the capital of American Samoa. It is in Maoputasi County on Tutuila, which is American Samoa's main island.
Sadie Thompson is a 1928 American silent drama film that tells the story of a "fallen woman" who comes to Pago Pago to start a new life, but encounters a zealous missionary who wants to force her back to her former life in San Francisco. The film stars Gloria Swanson, Lionel Barrymore, and Raoul Walsh, and it is one of Swanson's more successful films. Due to the public's apathy towards silent films, a sound version was prepared in the latter half of 1928. While the sound version has no audible dialog, it features a synchronized musical score with sound effects along with a theme song.
The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, first published on 15 April 1919. It is told in episodic form by a first-person narrator providing a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker, who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist. The story is, in part, based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin.
Tutuila is the largest and most populous island of American Samoa and is part of the archipelago of the Samoan Islands. It is the third largest island in the Samoan Islands chain of the Central Pacific. It is located roughly 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi) northeast of Brisbane, Australia and lies over 1,200 kilometers (750 mi) to the northeast of Fiji. It contains a large, natural harbor, Pago Pago Harbor, where Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, is situated. Pago Pago International Airport is also located on Tutuila. The island's land expanse is about 68% of the total land area of American Samoa. With 56,000 inhabitants, it is also home to 95% of the population of American Samoa. The island has six terrestrial and three marine ecosystems.
Rain is a 1932 pre-Code drama film that stars Joan Crawford as prostitute Sadie Thompson. Directed by Lewis Milestone and set in the South Seas, the production was filmed in part at Santa Catalina Island and what is now Crystal Cove State Park in California. The film also features Walter Huston in the role of a conflicted missionary who insists that Sadie end her evil ways, but whose own moral standards and self-righteous behavior steadily decay. Crawford was loaned out by MGM to United Artists for this film.
"The Vessel of Wrath" is a short story by W. Somerset Maugham. Written in 1931 it first appeared in the April 1931 edition of Hearst's International Cosmopolitan. Maugham often introduced short stories as a contribution to periodicals and then later included them in books or collected editions. In 1933 "The Vessel of Wrath" was included in his book Ah King.
Frederick Gerald Haxton, a native of San Francisco, was the long term secretary and lover of novelist and playwright W. Somerset Maugham.
Fagatogo is the downtown area of Pago Pago. Located in the low grounds at the foot of Matafao Peak, it was the location of the first American settlement on Tutuila Island. It includes the sub-village of Malaloa. Today, Fagatogo is the government, commercial, financial, and shipping center of Tutuila. It is also the administrative capital of American Samoa. It is the location of the American Samoa Fono (legislature), and is listed in the Constitution of American Samoa as the territory's official seat of government. Its population is 1,737.
Miss Sadie Thompson is a 1953 3-D American musical romantic drama film directed by Curtis Bernhardt and starring Rita Hayworth, José Ferrer, and Aldo Ray. The film was released by Columbia Pictures. The film is based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1921 short story "Miss Thompson". Other film versions include Sadie Thompson (1928) starring Gloria Swanson, Rain (1932) starring Joan Crawford, and Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946).
The Letter is a 1927 play by W. Somerset Maugham, dramatised from a short story that first appeared in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree. The story was inspired by the real-life Ethel Proudlock case which involved the wife of the headmaster of Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting dead a male friend in April 1911. She was eventually pardoned.
Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. is a 1946 race film directed by Spencer Williams and produced and distributed by Sack Amusement Enterprises.
The Sadie Thompson Inn is a historic building in Malaloa, one of the constituent villages of Pago Pago in American Samoa. The building is noted as the guest house where from mid-December 1916 author W. Somerset Maugham resided for six weeks during an extended trip through the South Sea Islands. He described it as a "dilapidated lodging house with a corrugated tin roof" and complained that he contracted "a stubborn rash, no doubt fungus" while at the hotel, and of the weeks it took to cure it.
Rain, originally entitled Sadie Thompson (1997), is an American opera by Richard Owen, based on the 1921 short story Rain by Somerset Maugham. The first version, named not after the story title, but like the 1928 Gloria Swanson film named after the female leading character, Sadie Thompson, was premiered 20 November 1997. The revised version of the opera, Rain, was premiered by Camerata New York at Alice Tully Hall 20 February 2003. A recording of the 2003 performances was issued on Albany Records.
Prostitution in American Samoa is illegal, as are related activities such as brothel keeping and pimping. These acts are punishable by law, including a fine of more than $500 or a jail sentence of up to a year for customers of prostitution. Prostitution occurs in bars and nightclubs, and in boats moored in the harbours.
Malaloa is a sub-village of Fagatogo and is located at the end of Pago Pago Harbor in American Samoa. It is located in-between Fagatogo proper and the village of Pago Pago. Cruising boats entering and leaving Pago Pago should clear at Malaloa Marina. The Malaloa Marina was opened for cruisers’ use and has added a customs wharf to handle inbound and outbound clearances.
Sadie Thompson is a 1944 musical in two acts and three scenes by composer Vernon Duke and lyricist Howard Dietz. The musical book, written by Dietz and Rouben Mamoulian, is based on the short story "Rain" by W. Somerset Maugham, published in the literary magazine The Smart Set in 1921. Originally written as a vehicle for Ethel Merman, the actress withdrew from production on September 29, 1944 after just a week and a half of rehearsals, and the lead part went to June Havoc. The work premiered at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia on October 26, 1944 where it ran for two weeks of tryout performances, then moved to New York. The original production was produced by A.P. Waxman, directed by Mamoulian, and choreographed by Edward Caton. Boris Aronson designed the sets, and the Motley Theatre Design Group designed the costumes.
Sadie Thompson refers to the main character from "Rain" by W. Somerset Maugham (1921). Several adaptations of that story exist with that title:
The playwright, novelist and short-story writer W. Somerset Maugham, was a prolific author from the late 19th century until the 1960s. Most of his earliest successes were for the theatre, but he gave up writing plays after 1932. Many of his plays have been adapted for broadcasting and the cinema, as have several of his novels and short stories. The New York Times commented in 1964, "There are times when one thinks that British television and radio would have to shut up shop if there were not an apparently inexhaustible supply of stories by Maugham to turn into 30-minute plays. One recalls, too, the long list of movies that have been made from his novels − Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, The Painted Veil, The Razor's Edge and the rest.
The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands is a collection of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, first published in New York in 1921 by the George H. Doran Company.
