The Road to Rome | |
---|---|
Written by | Robert Sherwood |
Date premiered | January 31, 1927 |
Place premiered | Playhouse Theatre |
Original language | English |
Genre | historical comedy |
Setting | Rome |
The Road to Rome is a play by American author Robert Sherwood. The plot revolves around Hannibal's attempt to capture Rome during the Second Punic War. It was Sherwood's first published play. [1]
The play opened on January 31, 1927 at the Playhouse Theatre in New York City starring Jane Cowl and Philip Merivale and was considered a success, running until the next January. [2] [3] [4] It was subsequently revived two months later at the same theater, running from March 21, 1928 until Jun 1929. [2]
In 1930 it was played in Melbourne, Australia, by the Edith Taliaferro company as The Road to Romance. [5]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the play in 1933 as a potential starring vehicle for Clark Gable. [3] In 1955, the play was adapted for the screen as a widescreen musical by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Jupiter's Darling starring Esther Williams and Howard Keel.
Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE, known professionally as Deborah Kerr, was a British actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first person from Scotland to be nominated for any acting Oscar. Kerr was known for her roles as elegant, ladylike but also sexually repressed women that deeply yearn for sexual freedom.
Friedrich Robert Donat was an English actor. He is best remembered for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), winning for the latter the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel (1932), as the pirate Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934), as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934), and his title role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid film actor in the world during the early 1930s. He was the brother of actor Noah Beery and uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.
Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, producer and actor. In his youth he played juvenile roles in vaudeville and silent film comedies.
The following is an overview of 1931 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Marie Josephine Hull was an American stage and film actress who also was a director of plays. She had a successful 50-year career on stage while taking some of her better known roles to film. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the movie Harvey (1950), a role she originally played on the Broadway stage. She was sometimes credited as Josephine Sherwood.
Walter Andrew Brennan was an Irish-American actor and singer. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Come and Get It (1936), Kentucky (1938) and The Westerner (1940), making him one of only 3 actors to win three Academy Awards, and the only male or female actor to win three awards in the supporting actor category. Brennan was also nominated for his performance in Sergeant York (1941). Other noteworthy performances were in To Have and Have Not (1944), My Darling Clementine (1946), Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959). On television, he starred in the sitcom The Real McCoys (1957-1963).
Charles William Haines was an American actor and interior designer.
Robert Montgomery was an American actor, director, and producer. He began his acting career on the stage, but was soon hired by MGM. Initially assigned roles in comedies, he soon proved he was able to handle dramatic ones, as well. He appeared in a wide variety of roles, such as the weak-willed prisoner Kent in The Big House (1930), the psychotic Danny in Night Must Fall (1937), and Joe, the boxer mistakenly sent to Heaven in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). The last two earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Julius "Jules" Dassin was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor. A subject of the Hollywood blacklist, he subsequently moved to France, and later Greece, where he continued his career. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Directors' Guild.
John Lee Mahin was an American screenwriter and producer of films who was active in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was known as the favorite writer of Clark Gable and Victor Fleming. In the words of one profile, he had "a flair for rousing adventure material, and at the same time he wrote some of the raciest and most sophisticated sexual comedies of that period."
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright and screenwriter.
William Brian de Lacy Aherne was an English actor of stage, screen, radio and television, who enjoyed a long and varied career in Britain and the United States.
Charles Ellsworth Grapewin was an American vaudeville and circus performer, a writer, and a stage and film actor. He worked in over 100 motion pictures during the silent and sound eras, most notably portraying Uncle Henry in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz (1939), "Grandpa" William James Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road (1941), Uncle Salters in Captains Courageous (1937), Gramp Maple in The Petrified Forest (1936), Wang's Father in The Good Earth (1937), and California Joe in They Died With Their Boots On (1941).
Samuel Goldwyn Films, LLC is an American film company that licenses, releases and distributes art-house, independent and foreign films. It was founded by Samuel Goldwyn Jr., the son of the Hollywood business magnate/mogul, Samuel Goldwyn. The current incarnation is a successor to The Samuel Goldwyn Company.
Irene Mary Purcell was an American film and stage actress, who appeared mostly in comedies, and later married Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., the wealthy grandson of the founder of S. C. Johnson & Son.
The film appearances of movie actor Errol Flynn (1909–1959) are listed here, including his short films and one unfinished feature.
Jupiter's Darling is a 1955 American Eastman Color musical romance film released by MGM and directed by George Sidney filmed in CinemaScope. It starred Esther Williams as the Roman woman Amytis, Howard Keel as Hannibal, the Carthaginian military commander and George Sanders as Fabius Maximus, Amytis's fiancé. In the film, Amytis helps Hannibal swim the Tiber River to take a closer look at Rome's fortifications.
William Horatio Powell was an American actor, known primarily for his film career. Under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the Thin Man series based on the Nick and Nora Charles characters created by Dashiell Hammett. Powell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: for The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Life with Father (1947).
Harry Rapf, was an American film producer.