The Naughty Wife, originally titled Losing Eloise, is a farce in 3 acts by Fred Jackson. It was adapted into the 1919 silent film Let's Elope . [1]
The play premiered on Broadway at the Harris Theatre on November 17, 1917, with the name Losing Eloise. [2] The play's producers, brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, retitled the show The Naughty Wife three weeks into its Broadway run with the hope of increasing box office sales with a more salacious title. [3] A sex farce, the original production starred Violet Heming as Eloise Farrington, Charles Cherry as Hilary Farrington, Francis Byrne as Darryl McKnight, Charles Harbury as Bishop Kennelly, Lucile Watson as Nora Gail, Ethel Intropidi as Annette, Charles Mather as Thompson, and S. Harry Irvine as Carter. [2] The play finished its Broadway run in January 1918 after 78 performances, after which the play went on tour throughout the United States with one of its earlier stops being the Park Square Theatre in Boston. [4]
Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.
The Prince of Wales Theatre is a West End theatre in Coventry Street, near Leicester Square in London. It was established in 1884 and rebuilt in 1937, and extensively refurbished in 2004 by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, its current owner. The theatre should not be confused with the former Scala Theatre in London that was known as the Prince of Wales Royal Theatre or Prince of Wales's Theatre from 1865 until its demolition in 1903.
Edith Taliaferro was an American stage and film actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was active on the stage until 1935 and had roles in three silent films. She is best known for portraying the role of Rebecca in the 1910 stage production of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Sir Edward Seymour Hicks, better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and producing Edwardian musical comedy, often together with his famous wife, Ellaline Terriss. His most famous acting role was that of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
Madge Kennedy was a stage, film and television actress whose career began as a stage actress in 1912 and flourished in motion pictures during the silent film era. In 1921, journalist Heywood Broun described her as "the best farce actress in New York".
Henry Martyn Blossom Jr. was an American writer, playwright, novelist, opera librettist, and lyricist. He first gained wide attention for his second novel, Checkers: A Hard Luck Story (1896), which was successfully adapted by Blossom into a 1903 Broadway play, Checkers. It was Blossom's first stage work and his first critical success in the theatre. The play in turn was adapted by others creatives into two silent films, one in 1913 and the other in 1919, and the play was the basis for the 1920 Broadway musical Honey Girl. Checkers was soon followed by Blossom's first critical success as a lyricist, the comic opera The Yankee Consul (1903), on which he collaborated with fellow Saint Louis resident and composer Alfred G. Robyn. This work was also adapted into a silent film in 1921. He later collaborated with Robyn again; writing the book and lyrics for their 1912 musical All for the Ladies.
Rida Johnson Young was an American playwright, songwriter and librettist. In her career, Young wrote over 30 plays and musicals and approximately 500 songs. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Some of her better-known lyrics include "Mother Machree" from the 1910 show Barry of Ballymore, "Italian Street Song", "I'm Falling in Love with Someone" and "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" from Naughty Marietta, and "Will You Remember?" from Maytime.
Frederick J. Jackson, also known professionally as Fred Jackson and Frederick Jackson and under the pseudonym Victor Thorne, was an American author, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and producer for both stage and film. A prolific writer of short stories and serialized novels, most of his non-theatre works were published in pulp magazines such as Detective Story Magazine and Argosy. Many of these stories were adapted into films by other writers.
Three Men on a Horse is a three-act farce co-authored by John Cecil Holm and George Abbott. The comedy focuses on a man who discovers he has a talent for choosing the winning horse in a race as long as he never places a bet himself. Originally titled Hobby Horse by John Cecil Holm, Three Men On A Horse was a property controlled and produced by Alex Yokel, who reached out to Warner Bros. for financial assistance; Warners agreed to provide financing on the condition Yokel find someone to doctor the script and direct the Broadway production. George Abbott, the director, who had since 1932 directed and produced each of his Broadway productions, immediately saw the potential and rewrote the script and agreed to direct if he received co-author credit and split the author's royalties with Holm. Abbott wrote a third act, resulting in a new three-act play titled Three Men on a Horse.
The Better 'Ole, also called The Romance of Old Bill, is an Edwardian musical comedy with a book by Bruce Bairnsfather and Arthur Elliot, music by Herman Darewski, and lyrics by Percival Knight and James Heard, based on the cartoon character Old Bill, an infantryman, drawn by Bairnsfather. In the musical, Old Bill intercepts a spy's plan to destroy a bridge, trapping a French regiment after they cross it. Bill saves them by blowing up the bridge before they pass; his actions are misunderstood, however, and he is arrested for disobeying orders and holding an enemy document. After Victoire explains the situation, Bill is released and given a medal.
Louis Mann was an American theatre actor and sometime director, who in his later life made a few appearances in motion pictures. He was married to actress and playwright Clara Lipman.
Frederic Chapin was an American screenwriter and composer. His name was also written as Frederick Chapin. He wrote the scores for several Broadway musicals. In addition he worked writing screenplays during the silent and early sound eras.
Violet Heming was an English stage and screen actress. Her name sometimes appeared as Violet Hemming in newspapers.
The Park Square Theatre was a theatre in Park Square in Boston, Massachusetts, designed by architect Clarence Blackall. It opened January 19, 1914, as the Cort Theatre, named for impresario John Cort. It was his first theatrical venue in Boston.
George Gaston Bell was an American stage and film actor active over the early decades of the twentieth century.
Let's Elope is a lost 1919 American silent comedy film starring Marguerite Clark and directed by John S. Robertson. It was produced by Famous Players–Lasky and released through Paramount Pictures. The film is based on The Naughty Wife by Frederick J. Jackson.
John Lionel Golden was an American actor, songwriter, author, and theatrical producer. As a songwriter, he is best-known as lyricist for "Poor Butterfly" (1916). He produced many Broadway shows and four films.
Ivy Troutman was an American supporting actress active during the first half of the twentieth century. She acted in at least twenty-one Broadway productions between 1902 and 1945, appearing in such long-running plays as A Pair of Sixes, Baby Mine and The Late George Apley. In the 1920s Troutman, with her husband, portrait painter Waldo Peirce, joined the colony of American expatriates in Paris that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
A Pair of Sixes, originally titled The Party of the Second Part, is a farce in three acts by Edward Peple that made its Broadway debut at the Longacre Theatre on March 17, 1914. The piece was produced by Harry Frazee and achieved a run of two hundred and twenty-seven performances at the Longacre before closing in the third week of September 1914.
Cheating Cheaters is a 1916 play written by Max Marcin. Producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway. The play is a melodramatic farce about two groups of jewel thieves who are each posing as a wealthy family in order to rob the other.