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.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented by her younger sister and brother-in-law.
Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, was an English actress, theatrical manager and producer, whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television.
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).
An Ideal Husband is a four-act play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It was first produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London in 1895 and ran for 124 performances. It has been revived in many theatre productions and adapted for the cinema, radio and television.
Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born in Berlin to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.
The Chalk Garden is a play by Enid Bagnold that premiered in the US in 1955 and was produced in Britain the following year. It tells the story of the imperious Mrs St Maugham and her granddaughter Laurel, a disturbed child under the care of Miss Madrigal, a governess, whose past life is a mystery that is solved during the action of the play. The work has been revived numerous times internationally, and was adapted for the cinema in 1964.
Dame Mary Susan Etherington,, known professionally as Marie Tempest, was an English singer and actress.
Constance Collier was an English stage and film actress and acting coach. She wrote hit plays and films with Ivor Novello and she was the first person to be treated with insulin in Europe.
Katherine Burton is a Swiss-American actress, the daughter of Welsh actors Richard Burton and Sybil Christopher. On television, Burton received critical acclaim as Ellis Grey in the Shonda Rhimes drama series Grey's Anatomy, and as Vice President Sally Langston on Scandal. She has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards.
The Sacred Flame (1928) is William Somerset Maugham's 21st play, written at the age of 54. Maugham dedicated the publication to his friend Messmore Kendall.
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.
Marie Lohr was an Australian-born actress, active on stage and in film in Britain. During a career of more than 60 years she created roles in plays by, among others, Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, Frederick Lonsdale, Somerset Maugham, William Douglas-Home and Noël Coward. She appeared mainly in the West End, but toured the British provinces at intervals throughout her career, appeared in Broadway productions and toured Canada.
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.
Charming Sinners is a 1929 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Robert Milton and Dorothy Arzner, with a screenplay by Doris Anderson adapted from the 1926 play The Constant Wife written by W. Somerset Maugham. The film stars Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook, Mary Nolan, William Powell, Laura Hope Crews and Florence Eldridge. The film was released on August 17, 1929, by Paramount Pictures.
Lady Frederick is a comedy by the British writer W. Somerset Maugham, written early in his career. The play was first seen in London in 1907, and was very successful, running for 422 performances. The title role was played by Ethel Irving. In New York it was first performed in 1908, with Lady Frederick played by Ethel Barrymore, who reprised her role in the play's film adaptation, The Divorcee.
The Circle: a Comedy in Three Acts is a play by W. Somerset Maugham. It was first produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London on 3 March 1921, and has been revived several times in the West End and on Broadway.
Our Betters is a comedy play by the British writer Somerset Maugham. Set in Mayfair and a country house in Suffolk, the plot revolves around the interaction between newly wealthy Americans and upper-class British society.
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.
