Charles Cyprian Strong Cushing (October 27, 1879 – March 6, 1941) [1] was an American playwright who wrote under the name Tom Cushing.
Cushing was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of William Lee Cushing, founder and headmaster of the Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut, and Mary Lewis Strong Cushing. His aunt was mathematics professor Eleanor P. Cushing. He attended Westminster and later Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He graduated in 1902. He was a tutor in the English Sudan in 1903 and a teacher of English and Greek at Westminster from 1909 to 1917. [1] During World War II, he served in France in the entertainment division of the YMCA. [1] [2] Cushing died at Baker Memorial Hospital in Boston following an operation for a brain tumor. [2]
He made his Broadway in 1912 debut authoring the musical comedy Sari, an English language adaptation of the operetta Der Zigeunerprimas . [2] Cushing complained to P. G. Wodehouse that he was only paid $500 for the play. [3]
In 1921, his play Thank You, co-written with Winchell Smith, debuted at the Longacre Theatre. [4] : 458 Dorothy Parker wrote that it was "deftly done..and gently amusing. The small-town characters are not so obtrusively comic as they might be, and you can guess what a relief that is. If ever a play ended at the second act, Thank You is that very play, but there is, of course, a third act, so that the dress suits can be brought in, and the audience can feel that it has had its money's worth." [5] 1925 John Ford directed a film version Thank You .
Another 1921 premiere, at the Empire Theatre, was Blood and Sand , his adaptation of the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez novel Sangre y arena (1908). Otis Skinner starred as the toreador Juan Gallardo, and while his performance was acclaimed, critics thought he was too old for the part. Cushing's play was its adapted into a 1922 silent film version starring Rudolph Valentino. [4] : 48 [6]
In 1923, his play Laugh, Clown, Laugh, co-written with David Belasco, debuted at the Belasco Theatre. It was adapted from the Italian play Ridi, Pagliaccio by Fausto Maria Martini. Lionel Barrymore starred as the depressed clown Tito Beppi. [4] : 251 Lon Chaney played the role in a 1928 silent film adaptation.
Out O'Luck, a comedy about doughboys in France, was performed by the Yale Dramatic Association in 1925 and later went on tour. Yale alumni Cole Porter contributed three songs to the play and its success provided him with badly needed confidence at a time when he considered abandoning songwriting. [7]
Cushing's 1926 play The Devil in the Cheese premiered at the Charles Hopkins Theatre. In it, an American couple, played by (Robert McWade and Catherine Calhoun Doucet) and their daughter (Linda Watkins) visit Meteora, where they are held for ransom by a Greek bandit posing as a priest and archaeologist (Bela Lugosi) and later rescued by the daughter's boyfriend (Fredric March). The second act takes place within the daughter's imagination, and includes adventurous travels in the South Seas and on a desert island, domestic life, and her becoming First Lady. After her father eats a piece of mummified cheese he is made privy to his daughter's daydreams thanks to the Egyptian god Min. The New York Times wrote of Lugosi's performance that he "acts with an authority and cadence worthy of better things". [8]
La Gringa (1928) premiered at the Little Theatre, starring Claudette Colbert. [4] : 369 It was adapted as the now lost film South Sea Rose (1929).
Barely Proper was a 1929 play that went unperformed on Broadway during his lifetime – Cushing subtitled it An Unplayable Play – but it was published. The play about a family of nudists was finally performed in 1970 at the Belasco by Ken McGuire to very poor reviews. [4] : 369 Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times that it was "making teensy-weensy headlines as being the first Broadway nudist play. It should probably be the last". [9]
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, known professionally as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian–American actor, best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror classic Dracula, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago ". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.
Dennistoun Franklyn John Rose Price was an English actor. He played as Louis Mazzini in the Ealing Studios film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and the omnicompetent valet Jeeves in 1960s television adaptations of P. G. Wodehouse's stories.
Guy Reginald Bolton was an Anglo-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the US, he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G. Wodehouse and Fred Thompson, with whom he wrote 21 and 14 shows respectively, and the American playwright George Middleton, with whom he wrote ten shows. Among his other collaborators in Britain were George Grossmith Jr., Ian Hay and Weston and Lee. In the US, he worked with George and Ira Gershwin, Kalmar and Ruby and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code supernatural horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi in the title role. It is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Lugosi portrays Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée.
Arsenic and Old Lace is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. It has become best known through the 1944 film adaptation starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra.
David Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director, and playwright. He was the first writer to adapt the short story Madame Butterfly for the stage. He launched the theatrical career of many actors, including James O'Neill, Mary Pickford, Lenore Ulric, and Barbara Stanwyck. Belasco pioneered many innovative new forms of stage lighting and special effects in order to create realism and naturalism.
Horace Raymond Huntley was an English actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s to the 1970s. He also appeared in the ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs as the pragmatic family solicitor Sir Geoffrey Dillon.
Donald Ogden Stewart was an American writer and screenwriter best known for his sophisticated golden age comedies and melodramas such as The Philadelphia Story, Tarnished Lady and Love Affair. Stewart worked with a number of the directors of his time, including George Cukor, Michael Curtiz and Ernst Lubitsch. Stewart was a member of the Algonquin Round Table and, with Ernest Hemingway's friend Bill Smith, the model for Bill Gorton in The Sun Also Rises. His 1922 parody on etiquette, Perfect Behavior, published by George H. Doran and Co., was a favourite book of P. G. Wodehouse.
The Princess Theatre was a joint venture between the Shubert Brothers, producer Ray Comstock, theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury and actor-director Holbrook Blinn. Built on a narrow slice of land located at 104–106 West 39th Street, just off Sixth Avenue in New York City, and seating just 299 people, it was one of the smallest Broadway theatres when it opened in early 1913. The architect was William A. Swasey, who designed the Winter Garden Theatre two years earlier.
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.
John L. Balderston was an American playwright and screenwriter best remembered for his horror and fantasy scripts. He wrote the 1926 play Berkeley Square and the 1927 American adaptation of the 1924 play Dracula.
Arthur Edmund Carewe, born Hovsep Hovsepian, was an Armenian-American stage and film actor of the silent and early sound film era.
Charlotte Ganahl Walker was a Broadway theater actress.
Dracula is a stage play written by the Irish actor and playwright Hamilton Deane in 1924, then revised by the American writer John L. Balderston in 1927. It was the first authorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. After touring in England, the original version of the play appeared at London's Little Theatre in July 1927, where it was seen by the American producer Horace Liveright. Liveright asked Balderston to revise the play for a Broadway production that opened at the Fulton Theatre in October 1927. This production starred Bela Lugosi in his first major English-speaking role.
Horace Brisbin Liveright was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Library and Boni & Liveright publishers. He published the books of numerous influential American and British authors. Turning to theatre, he produced the successful 1927 Broadway play Dracula, with Béla Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan in the roles they would make famous in the 1931 film by the same name.
Oh, Lady! Lady!! is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse and lyrics by Wodehouse. It was written for the Princess Theatre on Broadway, where it played in 1918 and ran for 219 performances. The story concerns an engaged young man, Bill, whose ex-fiancée arrives unexpectedly on his wedding day. Bill works to convince his old flame that he was not worthy to marry her, but his clumsy efforts do not make him look good to his new fiancée, whose mother already dislikes Bill. A couple of crooks cause further complications.
Leave It to Jane is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the 1904 play The College Widow, by George Ade. The story concerns the football rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College, and satirizes college life in a Midwestern U.S. town. A star halfback, Billy, forsakes his father's alma mater, Bingham, to play at Atwater, to be near the seductive Jane, the daughter of Atwater's president.
Friendly Enemies is a play written by Aaron Hoffman and Samuel Shipman. Producer Albert H. Woods made it the debut play for his Woods Theatre in Chicago, where it opened on March 11, 1918. It played successfully in Chicago for several months before Woods opened a production on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre on July 22, 1918.
The Werewolf is a three-act comedy play adapted by Gladys Unger from Der Werwolf, a German-language play written by Rudolf Lothar. Producer George B. McLellan staged it on Broadway in 1924. In the story, a Spanish noblewoman investigates a spirit that she believes is haunting her castle.