1922 | Theater, Film
Theater, Film
Theater: Lawful Larceny by Samuel Shipman 1/2 at New York's Republic Theater, with Alan Dinehart, Lowell Sherman, Gail Kane, 190 perfs.; The Cat and the Canary by John Willard 2/7 at New York's National Theater, with Willard, Brooklyn-born actress Florence Eldridge (née McKechnie), 20, Henry Hull; To the Ladies by Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman 2/20 at New York's Liberty Theater, 128 perfs.; Back to Methusaleh by George Bernard Shaw 2/27 at New York's Garrick Theater (Parts I and II), with English-born actor Dennis King, 23, Edinburgh-born actor Moffat Johnston, 35, Margaret Wycherley, St. Paul, Minn.-born actor Walter Abel, 23 (Parts III and IV) 3/6, (Part V) 3/13, 72 perfs. total; Loyalties by John Galsworthy 3/8 at St. Martin's Theatre, London with Edmund Gwenn, Eric Maturin, Dorothy Massingham, 407 perfs.; The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill 3/9 at New York's Provincetown Playhouse (and then uptown at the Plymouth Theater) with Louis Wolheim, 127 perfs.; It Is the Law by Elmer Rice 11/29 at New York's Ritz Theater, with Alma Tell, 125 perfs.; Abie's Irish Rose by Georgia-born playwright Anne Nichols, 30, 5/23 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Bernard Gorcey, 34, in a play about a mixed marriage, 2,532 perfs. (a new record); The Machine Wreckers (Die Maschinensturmer) by Ernst Toller 6/30 at Berlin's Grosses Schauspielhaus; So This Is London by New Britain, Conn.-born playwright Arthur (Frederick) Goodrich, 44, 8/30 at New York's Hudson Theater, with Lily Cahill, 343 perfs.; East of Suez by W. Somerset Maugham 9/2 at His Majesty's Theatre, London, with Basil Rathbone, Henry Kendall, Malcolm Keen, Ivor Barnard, 209 perfs.; Why Men Leave Home by Avery Hopwood 9/12 at New York's Morosco Theater, 135 perfs.; The Fool by Channing Pollock 10/23 at New York's Times Square Theater with James Kirkwood, Lowell Sherman, 773 perfs.; Seventh Heaven by Austin Strong 10/30 at New York's Booth Theater, with Alfred Kappeler, Helen Menken, Frank Morgan, Marion Kerby, 704 perfs.; The World We Live In (The Insect Comedy) by Karel and Josef Capek 10/31 at New York's Al Jolson Theater, with Mary Blair as a butterfly, Vinton Freedley as a male cricket, 112 perfs.; Rain by Minnesota-born playwright John Colton, 36, and Clemence Randolph 11/7 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Boston- (or Kansas City)-born actress Jeanne Eagels (Aguilar), 30, as Somerset Maugham's Sadie Thompson, 321 perfs.; The '49ers by Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman 11/13 at New York's Cort Theater, with Howard Lindsay, Roland Young, Ruth Gillmore, 16 perfs.; The Texas Nightingale by Zoë Akins 11/20 at New York's Empire Theater, with Jobyna Howland as soprano Hollyhock Jones who becomes the Wagnerian diva "Brasa Canava," Cyril Keightly, 31 perfs.; The God of Vengeance by Sholom Ash 12/20 at New York's Provincetown Playhouse, with St. Louis-born actor Morris Carnovsky, 25, New York-born actor Sam Jaffe, 31, 133 perfs.
The Last Days of Mankind (Die letzten Tage der Menschheit) by Austrian playwright-poet Karl Kraus, now 45, is published but not performed (the five-act pacifist play contains 209 scenes, some of them one-line blackouts).
Worchester, Mass.-born Life magazine drama critic Robert Charles Benchley, 33, presents The Treasurer's Report at an amateur revue; his comedy monologue launches Benchley on a new career as humorist.
Actor Sidney Ainsworth dies at Madison, Wisconsin, May 21 at age 49; actor-playwright Frank Bacon at Chicago November 19 at age 58 while touring in his 1918 play Lightnin'; playwright George Bronson Howard kills himself by inhaling gas at Los Angeles November 20 at age 38.
Films: Sam Wood's Beyond the Rocks with Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson; Fred Niblo's Blood and Sand with Rudolph Valentino; Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (Dr. Mabuse: Der Spieler) with Rudolf Klein-Rogge; Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives with Maud George, Mae Busch (produced by Carl Laemmle of Universal Pictures, it is the first picture to cost $1 million); Frederick W. Murnau's Nosferatu with Max Schreck; Nanook of the North by British explorer-writer-documentary director Robert J. Flaherty, 28, who has obtained about $35,000 in financing from the 199-year-old Paris furrier and fur-trading firm Revillon Frères; D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm with Dorothy and Lillian Gish; Rex Ingram's The Prisoner of Zenda with Lewis Stone, Alice Terry; Allan Dwan's Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks.
The February 1 murder of Irish-born Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor (originally William Deane Taylor) at age 49 creates a sensation. Comedienne Mabel Normand admits that she saw him only moments before he was shot with a .38-caliber revolver, and although she is innocent the resultant furor produces a public outcry for censorship of her films (Taylor's murder will go unsolved, although teen-aged actress Mary Miles Minter and her mother, Charlotte Shelby, will be suspected, and another actress, Patricia Palmer, will confess to having shot Taylor just before she dies decades hence). When Normand's chauffeur shoots a rich friend of hers in 1924 the scandal will end her career, already jeopardized by alcohol and cocaine abuse.
A San Francisco jury acquits film comedienne Roscoe C. "Fatty" Arbuckle of murder April 12 after deliberating only 1 minute. Now 35, Arbuckle attended a Labor Day party at the St. Francis Hotel last year; one of the other guests, actress Virginia Rappe, complained afterwards of stomach pains and died a few days later of a ruptured bladder. It is rumored that Arbuckle raped her with a champagne bottle, distributors have withdrawn his pictures, and Paramount has fired him. His arrest has ruined Arbuckle's career and suggested wide use of drugs in the film capital, outraging clergymen and in combination with other news stories prompting formation of a Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) pledged to "clean up" Hollywood pictures and thereby avoid censorship. The studios pay former postmaster general Will H. Hays, 43, a spectacular $100,000 per year to head the new MPPDA, a position which requires him to make speeches, testify before congressional committees, and review films for content before their release (see 1934; Scarface, 1932).
Grauman's Egyptian Theater opens on Hollywood Boulevard, charging $1.50 per ticket to see the new film Robin Hood. Designed by Meyer & Holler, the theater has a red tile roof because it was originally to be in a Moorish style, but the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb has aroused interest in things Egyptian (see Grauman's Chinese, 1927).