Alfred David Lunt was an American actor and director, best known for his long stage partnership with his wife, Lynn Fontanne, from the 1920s to 1960, co-starring in Broadway and West End productions. After their marriage, they nearly always appeared together. They became known as "the Lunts" and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.
Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead. In the 1910s and 1920s he was considered the United States' greatest living author. Several of his stories were adapted to film.
Anna Christie is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. It made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921. O'Neill received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this work. According to historian Paul Avrich, the original of Anna Christie was Christine Ell, an anarchist cook in Greenwich Village, who was the lover of Edward Mylius, a Belgian-born radical living in England who libeled the British king George V.
Lynn Fontanne was an English actress. After early success in supporting roles in the West End, she met the American actor Alfred Lunt, whom she married in 1922 and with whom she co-starred in Broadway and West End productions over the next four decades. They became known as "The Lunts", and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke, better known as Billie Burke, was an American actress who was famous on Broadway and radio, and in silent and sound films. She is best known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the MGM film musical The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Florence Eldridge was an American actress. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1957 for her performance in Long Day's Journey into Night.
Roland Young was an English-born actor. He began his acting career on the London stage, but later found success in America and received an Academy Award nomination for his role in the film Topper (1937).
Janet Blair was an American big-band singer who later became a popular film and television actress.
Frances Howard Goldwyn was an American actress. She was the second wife of producer Samuel Goldwyn, and the paternal grandmother of actors Tony and John Goldwyn.
The Washington Square Players (WSP) was a theatre troupe and production company that existed from 1915 to 1918 in Manhattan, New York City. It started as a semi-amateur Little Theatre then matured into a Repertory theatre with its own touring company and drama school. It received national newspaper coverage and sparked like-minded companies across the country. After it ceased operating, three of its members founded the Theatre Guild.
Ethel Levey, born Grace Ethelia Fowler, was an American actress, dancer, and singer in musical theatre and on the vaudeville stage. She was the first wife of George M. Cohan, and the second wife of aviator Claude Grahame-White.
Gilda Varesi, also known as Gilda Varesi Archibald, was an Italian-born actress and playwright.
Cora Green was an American actress, singer, and dancer, billed as "The Famous Creole Singer".
Mattie Vera Wilkes was an African American theater and film actress who appeared in vaudeville shows and films from the 1890s through the 1920s. Beginning as the prima donna for the Williams & Walker Company in the 1890s, she starred in multiple vaudeville performances as a soprano singer. She would go on to perform in multiple shows alongside Ernest Hogan, whom she would later marry. They would have a falling out, however, within a year and would remain estranged until his death in 1909. During and after, Wilkes would feature in multiple theater shows, including tours across Europe and Russia, even up until her death in 1927.
José Ruben was a French-born actor whose career from 1910 on was in the United States. He first rose to prominence in 1916-1917 with the Washington Square Players, and for the next ten years was a highly regarded lead player. He acted in over twenty silent films and was a fixture on Broadway stages, as both performer and director, for over forty years. He also taught drama at Barnard College and was a stage director for the New York City Opera.
Seventeen is a 1917 play by writers Hugh Stanislaus Stange, Stannard Mears, and Stuart Walker, based on Booth Tarkington's 1916 novel. It is a four-act comedy with six scenes and two settings. The story concerns a seventeen-year-old boy in a small town who is smitten with a visiting beauty, enduring the pangs of a crush with the humiliation of not being accepted as adult by his family and friends.
Clarence is a 1919 play by Booth Tarkington. It is a four-act comedy with two settings and eleven characters. The story concerns an ailing recently discharged soldier who is given a handyman job by a financial tycoon because he has overheard family gossip in the tycoon's waiting room. Tarkington wrote the play with Alfred Lunt in mind, after having seen him perform in his earlier work, The Country Cousin.
Gregory Kelly was an American stage actor, who began performing as a child. He was a Broadway attraction, starring in such long-running productions as Seventeen and The Butter and Egg Man. His early death precluded him from appearing in more than two films. He is remembered today as the first husband of Ruth Gordon, who credited him with teaching her acting.
Dulcy is a 1920 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. It is a fast-paced three-act comedy with one setting and eleven characters. The story concerns a warm-hearted and wrong-headed woman who is a compulsive meddler and bromide; she cheerfully arranges other people's lives to their dismay. The action takes place within the living room of a house in Westchester County, New York, from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning. The authors based the play on the character Dulcinea, created by Franklin P. Adams for his newspaper column The Conning Tower.
The Country Cousin is a 1917 play by Booth Tarkington and Julian Street, a revised version of their failed 1915 play The Ohio Lady. It is a four-act comedy that skirts melodrama, with three settings and thirteen characters. The action of the play takes place on a June 1916 morning, and during 24 hours in August 1916. The story concerns an intelligent young farmer, who saves her little cousin from being cheated while also causing a young man to realize there is a larger world that demands his participation.
