The High Road is a comedy play by the British writer Frederick Lonsdale which was first staged in 1927. It opened in the West End at the Shaftesbury Theatre, and ran for 234 performances. [1] The following year, it opened on Broadway at the Fulton Theatre, where ran for 144 performances, with Alfred Drayton and Frederick Kerr from the London cast. [2]
Frederick Lonsdale was a British playwright known for his librettos to several successful musicals early in the 20th century, including King of Cadonia (1908), The Balkan Princess (1910), Betty (1915), The Maid of the Mountains (1917), Monsieur Beaucaire (1919) and Madame Pompadour (1923). He also wrote comedy plays, including The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1925) and On Approval (1927) and the murder melodrama But for the Grace of God (1946). Some of his plays and musicals were made into films, and he also wrote a few screenplays.
West End theatre is mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London. Along with New York City's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London.
The Shaftesbury Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the London Borough of Camden. Opened in 1911 as the New Prince's Theatre, it was the last theatre to be built in Shaftesbury Avenue.
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In 1930 it was adapted into the American film The Lady of Scandal directed by Sidney Franklin and starring Ruth Chatterton and Basil Rathbone. [3]
The Lady of Scandal is a 1930 American pre-Code romance, comedy film, melodrama directed by Sidney Franklin based on the 1927 play The High Road by Frederick Lonsdale and starring Ruth Chatterton, Basil Rathbone and Ralph Forbes. Its plot follows a British actress who becomes involved with a member of an aristocratic family, who try desperately to thwart the match. It is also known by the alternative title of The High Road.
Sidney Arnold Franklin was an American film director and producer. Franklin, like William C. deMille, specialized in adapting literary works or Broadway stage plays.
Ruth Chatterton was an American stage, film, and television actress. She was at her most popular in the early to mid-1930s, and in the same era gained prominence as an aviator, one of the few female pilots in the United States at the time. In the late 1930s, Chatterton retired from film acting but continued her career on the stage. She had several TV roles beginning in the late 1940s and became a successful novelist in the 1950s. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1961.
