Red Harvest (play)

Last updated

Red Harvest is a play in three acts by Walter Charles Roberts that uses pages from an American Red Cross nurse's diary detailing her experiences working with the Red Cross in France on the Western Front during World War I as its source material. [1] Set in American Red Cross Hospital 111, a field hospital in Jouy-sur-Morin, the play takes place in 1918 at the time of the Battle of Château-Thierry. [2] The play centers around the head nurse, Zinna Meek, as she struggles to lead the under staffed and under supplied hospital through a dangerous time when the hospital itself is experiencing air raids, shell fire, and a large crowd of severely wounded soldiers, many of whom are difficult surgical cases. [2]

Produced by Brock Pemberton and The Theatre Foundation of America, Red Harvest premiered on Broadway on March 30, 1937 at the National Theatre. [1] The cast included Leona Powers as Zinna Meek, John Alexander as Sergeant Bennett, Walter Burke as Courier Rockman, Michael Carlo as Private Transky, Frances Creel as Sally Farrell, Malan Cullen as Charlotte Van Worter, Lloyd Gough as Private Hawley, Allan Hale as Private Breen, Jeanne Hart as Rose Clarkson, Martha Hodge as Carol Whiting, Phyllis Langner as Holly Farrell, Drue Leyton as Ruth Bissley, Elizabeth Love as Veronica Ellis, Robert Marcato as Courier, G.H.Q., Doro Merande as Belle Smith, Margaret Mullen as Dorothy Bruffel, Edwin Rand as Corporal Topley, Carl Benton Reid as Major McCann, M.C., C.O., Amelia Romano as Mary Luddy, Chester Stratton as Private Adams, Joan Sudlow as Soeur Therese, and Frederic Tozere as Major David Allison, M.C. [2]

Roberts was the head of the drama department at Ithaca College at the time his play premiered on Broadway. [3]

Related Research Articles

<i>The Front Page</i> 1928 Broadway comedy

The Front Page is a Broadway comedy about newspaper reporters on the police beat. Written by former Chicago reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, it was first produced in 1928 and has been adapted for the cinema several times. The play entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1937.

<i>Angels in America</i> 1993 Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Tony Kushner

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a 1991 American two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The two parts of the play, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, may be presented separately. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Part one of the play premiered in 1991, followed by part two in 1992. Its Broadway opening was in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glenda Farrell</span> American actress (1904-1971)

Glenda Farrell was an American actress. Farrell personified the smart and sassy, wisecracking blonde of the Classic Hollywood films. Farrell's career spanned more than 50 years, appearing in numerous Broadway plays, films and television series. She won an Emmy Award in 1963 for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her performance as Martha Morrison in the medical drama television series Ben Casey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Darwell</span> American actress (1879–1967)

Jane Darwell was an American actress of stage, film, and television. With appearances in more than 100 major movies spanning half a century, Darwell is perhaps best remembered for her poignant portrayal of the matriarch and leader of the Joad family in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Château-Thierry (1918)</span> 1918 World War I battle

The Battle of Château-Thierry was fought on July 18, 1918 and was one of the first actions of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) under General John J. Pershing. It was a battle in World War I as part of the Second Battle of the Marne, initially prompted by a German Spring Offensive. German and local actions at Château-Thierry recommenced on May 31 to July 22, 1918, against the AEF, an American Expeditionary Force, consisting of troops from both the United States Army and Marine Corps units. These units were the newest troops on the front in France and just barely out of training.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin McDonagh</span> British-Irish filmmaker and playwright (born 1970)

Martin Faranan McDonagh is a British-Irish playwright, screenwriter, director, and producer. He is known for his absurdist black humour which often challenges the modern theatre aesthetic. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, six BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three Olivier Awards, and nominations for five Tony Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Meeker</span> American actor

Ralph Meeker was an American film, stage, and television actor. He first rose to prominence for his roles in the Broadway productions of Mister Roberts (1948–1951) and Picnic (1953), the former of which earned him a Theatre World Award for his performance. In film, Meeker is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Mike Hammer in Robert Aldrich's 1955 Kiss Me Deadly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Catlett</span> American actor (1889–1960)

Walter Leland Catlett was an American actor and comedian. He made a career of playing excitable, meddlesome, temperamental, and officious blowhards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Burke</span> American actor (1908–1984)

Walter Lawrence Burke was an American character actor of stage, film, and television whose career in entertainment spanned over a half century. Although he was a native of New York, Burke's Irish ancestry often led to his being cast in roles as an Irishman or Englishman. His small stature and distinctive voice and face also made him easily recognizable to audiences even when he was performing in minor supporting roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voluntary Aid Detachment</span> Voluntary unit of the British Empire

The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The most important periods of operation for these units were during World War I and World War II. Although VADs were intimately bound up in the war effort, they were not military nurses, as they were not under the control of the military, unlike the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service, and the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. The VAD nurses worked in field hospitals, i.e., close to the battlefield, and in longer-term places of recuperation back in Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Meeker</span> American actor (1904–1984)

George Meeker was an American character film and Broadway actor.

The Death of Bessie Smith is a one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee, written in 1959 and premiered in West Berlin the following year. The play consists of a series of conversations between Bernie and his friend Jack, Jack and an off-stage Bessie, and black and white staff of a whites-only hospital in Memphis, Tennessee on the death date of the famous blues singer, Bessie Smith, who died in a car wreck.

<i>The First Year</i> (1932 film) 1932 film

The First Year is a 1932 American pre-Code film based on a 1920 play of the same name that originally ran on Broadway at the Little Theatre. The play was written by Frank Craven and produced by John Golden. It closed in 1922 after 760 performances.

Helen Dore Boylston was the American writer of the popular "Sue Barton" nurse series and "Carol Page" actor series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doris Lloyd</span> English-born American actress (1891–1968)

Hessy Doris Lloyd was an English–American film and stage actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in The Time Machine (1960) and The Sound of Music (1965). Lloyd appeared in two Academy Award winners and four other nominees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melville Cooper</span> English actor (1896–1973)

George Melville Cooper was an English actor. His many notable screen roles include the High Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice (1940) and the wedding-rehearsal supervisor Mr. Tringle in Father of the Bride (1950).

<i>Too True to Be Good</i> Play by George Bernard Shaw (1931)

Too True to Be Good (1932) is a comedy written by playwright George Bernard Shaw at the age of 76. Subtitled "A Collection of Stage Sermons by a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature", it moves from surreal allegory to the "stage sermons" in which characters discuss political, scientific and other developments of the day. The second act of the play contains a character based on Shaw's friend T. E. Lawrence.

<i>Yellow Jack</i> (play) 1934 play written by Sidney Howard

Yellow Jack is a 1934 docudrama play starring James Stewart and produced by Guthrie McClintic that was later adapted into a 1938 Hollywood movie by the same title. Both were co-written by Sidney Howard and Paul de Kruif. The play is the work of Sidney Howard and is based on a chapter in Paul de Kruif's 1927 book Microbe Hunters.

<i>Billy Budd</i> (play) Play written by Louis O. Coxe and Robert Chapman

Billy Budd is a play by Louis O. Coxe and Robert H. Chapman based on Herman Melville's novella of the same name. Originally titled Uniform of Flesh, the play premiered Off-Broadway in 1949. Coxe and Chapman restructured and retitled the work for its Broadway debut in 1951. The revised version was a critical success, winning the Donaldson Award for Best First Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 1951. In 1952 the play was adapted for the television anthology series Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, and Peter Ustinov adapted the play into a film which premiered in 1962.

References

  1. 1 2 "NEWS OF THE STAGE; ' Red Harvest". The New York Times . March 30, 1937. p. 20.
  2. 1 2 3 Brooks Atkinson (March 31, 1937). "THE PLAY; ' Red Harvest,' From a Diary of the Red Cross at the Front During the War". The New York Times . p. 29.
  3. V.T.Y. (April 13, 1937). "Local Boy Doesn't". The Cornell Daily Sun . Vol. 57, no. 137.