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The Silver Whistle is a play by Robert E. McEnroe. It ran for 219 performances on Broadway from November 24, 1948 to May 28, 1949, with Jose Ferrer in the lead. [1] The play was selected as one of the best plays of 1948-1949, with an excerpted version published in "The Burns Mantle Best Plays of 1948-1949." [2]
Wilfred Tasbinder impersonates 77 year old Oliver Erwenter to get in an old-folks home. While there he shows the inmates that they are only as old as they feel. He helps a reverend have a romance.
It was the twelfth three-act play written by McEnroe, who worked at a factory as a day job. The previous eleven plays had not been commercially produced, although there had been some interest in the eleventh. McEnroe had been told there was no audience for plays about old people and was determined to prove them wrong. He says he was also inspired by the various vagabonds he met at a bar in Hartford, Connecticut. [3] At one stage the play was known as Oliver Erwenter. [4]
The play was picked up by the Theatre Guild who previewed it in Westport Connecticut. This was a success so they took the play to Broadway. [5] Jose Ferrer starred in production which Brooks Atkinson from the New York Times called "delightful". [6]
Lloyd Nolan performed in the play in Los Angeles. [7] John Carradine also starred in it. [8]
The play was adapted several times
Film rights were originally bought by Charles Feldman in June 1949 for a reported $50,000. [9] In October 1950 he sold them to 20th Century Fox [10] who turned it into a vehicle for Clifton Webb. [11] [12] Henry Koster was assigned to direct and Ranald MacDougall wrote a script. [13] The film became Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell .
Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair. He then gained worldwide fame in three Orson Welles films: Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Journey into Fear (1943), for which Cotten was also credited with the screenplay.
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón was a Puerto Rican actor and director of stage, film and television. He was one of the most celebrated and esteemed Hispanic American actors—or, indeed, actors of any ethnicity—during his lifetime, and after, with a career spanning nearly 60 years between 1935 and 1992. He achieved prominence for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the play of the same name, which earned him the inaugural Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1947. He reprised the role in a 1950 film version and won an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the first Hispanic actor and the first Puerto Rican-born to win an Academy Award.
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John Baragrey was an American film, television, and stage actor who appeared in virtually every dramatic television series of the 1950s and early 1960s.
"The Silver Whistle" was an American television play broadcast live on December 24, 1959, as part of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90. It was the seventh episode of the fourth season of Playhouse 90 and the 124th episode overall.
Robert E. McEnroe was an American playwright.