The Silent Voice is a four-act play by Jules Eckert Goodman adapted from the short story The Man Who Played God by Gouverneur Morris. The play was produced by Charles Frohman and made its Broadway debut at the Liberty Theatre on December 29, 1914. The Silent Voice closed on March 19, 1915 after a run of 71 performances and later was taken on tour. Morris’ story also served as the basis for four motion pictures produced between 1915 and 1955. [1] [2] [3]
The Silent Voice tells the story of Montgomery Starr, an amateur musician of means, who becomes embittered after the loss of his hearing and the discovery that his young wife married him out of a sense of duty and that her true love was his nephew Bobby. Feeling dejected, Starr retreats to the roof of his mansion where, with the aid of binoculars, he spends his time watching people in a nearby park. An accomplished lip reader, Starr soon realizes that others were as unhappy as he and that he had the means to help some of those in want. To this end, Starr employs his valet to deliver the necessary aid. Eventually Starr's disposition improves, and by the end of the play, reconciles with his wife after his binoculars enabled him to observe her reject Bobby's request to elope. [3]
Charles Sherman Ruggles was an American comic character actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films, often in mild-mannered and comic roles. He was also the elder brother of director, producer, and silent film actor Wesley Ruggles (1889–1972).
Rachel Crothers was an American playwright and theater director known for her well-crafted plays that often dealt with feminist themes. Among theater historians, she is generally recognized as "the most successful and prolific woman dramatist writing in the first part of the twentieth century." One of her most famous plays was Susan and God (1937), which was made into a film by MGM in 1940 starring Joan Crawford and Fredric March.
Milton George Gustavus Sills was an American stage and film actor of the early twentieth century.
Otis Skinner was an American stage actor active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Thomas Meighan was an American actor of silent films and early talkies. He played several leading-man roles opposite popular actresses of the day, including Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. At one point he commanded $10,000 per week.
Eugene O'Brien was an American silent film star and stage actor.
The Man Who Played God is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by John G. Adolfi. George Arliss stars as a concert pianist embittered by the loss of his hearing, who eventually finds redemption by helping others; it also features a then little-known Bette Davis as the much younger woman engaged to the protagonist.
George Periolat was an American actor.
Fritzi Brunette was an American actress.
Harold George Bryant Davenport was an American film and stage actor who worked in show business from the age of six until his death. After a long and prolific Broadway career, he came to Hollywood in the 1930s, where he often played grandfathers, judges, doctors, and ministers. His roles include Dr. Meade in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Grandpa in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Bette Davis once called Davenport "without a doubt [. . .] the greatest character actor of all time."
Gail Kane was an American stage and silent movie actress.
Elisabeth Risdon was an English film actress. She appeared in more than 140 films between 1913 and 1952. A beauty in her youth, she usually played in society parts. In later years in films she switched to playing character parts.
Herbert Yost was an American actor who in a career that spanned nearly half a century performed predominantly on stage in stock companies and in numerous Broadway productions. Yost also acted in motion pictures, mostly in one-reel silent shorts released by the Biograph Company and Edison Studios between November 1908 and July 1915. By the time he began working in the film industry, Yost already had more than a decade of stage experience in hundreds of dramatic and comedic roles and was widely regarded in the theatre community "as one of the country's finest stock actors". Reportedly, to reduce the risk of tarnishing his reputation as a professional actor by being identified as a screen performer, Yost often billed himself as "Barry O'Moore" while working in films. He was ultimately cast in scores of motion pictures in the early silent era, although with the exceptions of appearing in three more films in the sound era, Yost spent the remaining decades of his career acting in major theatre productions, almost exclusively on Broadway.
James F. Neill was an American stage actor and film actor of the silent era. He appeared in more than 110 films between 1913 and 1930.
Kismet is a three-act play written in 1911 by Edward Knoblauch. The title means Fate or Destiny in Turkish and Urdu. The play ran for 330 performances in London and later opened in the United States. It was subsequently revived, and the story was later filmed several times and adapted for the 1953 musical.
Jules Eckert Goodman was an American playwright and author. He was best known for his plays The Man Who Came Back (1916), The Silent Voice (1914), Chains (1923), and a series of plays featuring Potash and Permutter written with Montague Glass.
Gouverneur Morris IV (1876–1953) was an American author of pulp novels and short stories during the early 20th century.
George Gaul was an American stage actor in the first half of the 20th century. As far as is known Gaul never appeared in motion pictures but was one America's most successful stage actors in the 1920s. He was born in Philadelphia to John Gall and his wife Rebecca. He was educated at Lawrenceville Preparatory School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and made his Broadway debut in 1909. Over the course of his career he toured with Billie Burke, Otis Skinner and Charles Coburn. In the 1920s he appeared in the Theatre Guild's The S.S. Tenacity and Back to Methuselah. He's best remembered for originating the part of Chico in the original Broadway production of Seventh Heaven in 1922. One of his last plays was Eugene O'Neill's Dynamo(1929). Gaul made his last stage appearance in 1932.
The Silent Voice is a six-reel silent film melodrama produced in 1915 by Quality Pictures and distributed by Metro Pictures. The motion picture was directed by William J. Bowman and was adapted from the Jules Eckert Goodman play The Silent Voice by I. K. Freedman and Eve Unsell.
Hamilton Revelle was a British-born stage and later silent screen actor.