1926 | Theater, Film
Theater, Film
Theater: The Great God Brown by Eugene O'Neill 1/23 at New York's Greenwich Village Theater, with William Harrigan, Indiana-born actor Robert Keith, 27, 171 perfs.; The Paper Mill (Papiermühle) by Georg Kaiser 1/26 at Dresden's Alberttheater; The Shanghai Gesture by John Colton 2/1 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Cyril Keightley, Florence Reed, 206 perfs.; The Great Gatsby by Owen Davis (who has adapted last year's Scott Fitzgerald novel) 2/2 at New York's Ambassador Theater, with Florence Eldridge as Daisy Buchanan, James Rennie as Jay Gatsby, Catherine Willard as Jordan Baker, 112 perfs.; Love 'em and Leave 'em by George Abbott and Charlotte, N.C.-born playwright John V. A. Weaver, 32, 2/3 at New York's Sam H. Harris Theater, with Donald Meek, 152 perfs.; The Plough and the Stars by Sean O'Casey 2/8 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, 133 perfs.; Love in a Mist by Amelie Rives and Gilbert Emery 4/12 at New York's Gaiety Theater, with Salisbury, N.C.-born actor Sidney Blackmer, 30, Madge Kennedy, 118 perfs.; Twice Oliver (Zweimal Oliver) by Georg Kaiser 4/15 at Dresden's Schauspielhaus; Sex by Jane Mast (Mae West) 4/26 at Daley's 63rd Street Theater, New York, with Brooklyn-born entertainer Mae West, 30 (who will be brought to trial and convicted of indecency next year), 375 perfs.; The Queen Was in the Parlour by Noël Coward 8/24 at Martin's Theatre, London, with Herbert Marshall, Lady Tree, Francis Lister, Madge Titheradge, 137 perfs.; Broadway by Philip Dunning and George Abbott 9/16 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Millard Mitchell, Philadelphia-born actress Clare Woodbury, 46, Lee Tracy, 332 perfs.; Yellow by Margaret Vernon 9/21 at New York's National Theater, with Hale Hamilton, Milwaukee-born actor Spencer Tracy, 26, Chester Morris, Frank Kingdon, Harry Bannister, 135 perfs.; Man Equals Man (Mann ist Mann) by Bertolt Brecht 9/25 at Darmstadt's Landestheater and at Dusseldorf; "And So to Bed" by English playwright J. B. (James Bernard) Fagan 9/26 at the Queen's Theatre, London, with Edmund Gwenn in a play about the 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys, 334 perfs.; The White Guard (Dni Turbrukykh) by Mikhail Bulgakov 10/5 at the Moscow Art Theater; An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser 10/11 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Miriam Hopkins, House Jameson, Grace Griswold, 216 perfs.; Juarez and Maximilian by Franz Werfel 10/11 at New York's Guild Theater, with Bucharest-born actor Edward G. Robinson (originally Emanuel Goldenburg), 32, Alfred Lunt, Oregon-born actor Earle Larimore, 27, New York-born actor Harold Clurman, 25, Sam Jaffe, Morris Carnovsky, Akron, Ohio-born actress Cheryl Crawford, 24, Clare Eames, 48 perfs.; The Blue Boll (Die blaue Boll) by Ernst Barlach 10/13 at Stuttgart; White Wings by Philip Barry 10/15 at New York's Booth Theater, with J. M. Kerrigan, Winifred Lenihan, 31 perfs.; Caponsacchi by Arthur Goodrich, now 48, 10/26 at Hampden's Theater, New York, with Moffat Johnston, Goodrich's brother-in-law Walter Hampden as the canon Giuseppe Gaposacchi, from Robert Browning's dramatic monologues The Ring and the Book of 1868 and 1869, 269 perfs.; The Play's the Thing by Ferenc Molnár 11/3 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with Holbrook Blinn, Reginald Owen, Catherine Dale Owen, 326 perfs.; Dorothea Augermann by Gerhart Hauptmann 11/20 at Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt, Munich's Kammerspiele, and 15 other German theaters; "This Was a Man" by Noël Coward 11/23 at New York's Klaw Theater, with Francine Larrimore, Harry Challoner, A. C. Matthews, Violet Campbell, Nigel Bruce, 31 perfs.; The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham 11/29 at New York's Maxine Elliott Theater, with Ethel Barrymore, Veree Teasdale, C. Aubrey Smith, Frank Conroy, Cora Witherspoon, 295 perfs.; The Silver Cord by Sidney Howard 12/20 at New York's John Golden Theater, with comedienne Laura Hope Crews, London-born actress Margalo Gilmore, 25, and Earle Larimore in a play about mother-son love, 112 perfs.; Wooden Kimono by John Floyd 12/27 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Dudley Clements, Leonore Harris, Waterbury, Conn.-born ingénue Jean Dixon, 30; Chicago by Maurine Watkins 12/30 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Cambridge, Mass.-born actor Charles Bickford, 35, Indiana-born actress Dorothy Stickney (originally Dorothy Hugo), 30, Francine Larrimore, directed by George Abbott, 172 perfs.; In Abraham's Bosom by North Carolina-born playwright Paul (Eliot) Green, 32, 12/30 at New York's Provincetown Playhouse, with Waco, Texas-born actor Jules Bledsoe, 29, as a man trying to establish a school for his fellow blacks, 123 perfs. (many after it moves uptown).
George Burns and Gracie Allen form a new vaudeville comedy team. San Francisco-born Gracie (Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen), 19, has married New York-born George (Nathan Birnbaum), 29, at Cleveland January 7 and will play his stooge for 30 years (see radio, 1932).
English actress Eva Le Gallienne, 27, founds the Civic Repertory Theater of New York.
Actor-director-producer Henry Miller dies at New York April 9 at age 66; actor-manager Sir Squire Bancroft at his native London April 19 at age 84; playwright Rida Johnson Young at Southfield Point, Conn., May 8 at age 51; playwright Israel Zangwill at Midhurst, West Sussex, August 1 at age 62.
Harry Houdini makes headlines August 6 by remaining underwater for 91 minutes in an airtight case containing only enough air to sustain a man for 5 or 6 minutes. The 52-year-old escape artist has practiced breath control and has remained absolutely still in order to minimize his oxygen consumption, but the Great Houdini suffers a subsequent stomach injury and dies of peritonitis at Detroit October 31. His body is buried at Machpetah Cemetery in Queens, N.Y.; markswoman Annie Oakley (Phoebe Mozee) dies at Greenville, Ohio, November 2 at age 66; circus owner Charles Ringling at Sarasota, Fla., December 3 at age 63. His older brothers Albert, Otto, and Alfred have predeceased him, and his brother John, now 60, takes over management of the now vast enterprise (see 1936).
Films: Alan Crosland's Don Juan with John Barrymore opens August 6 at New York's Manhattan Opera House and is accompanied by sound electrically recorded on disks in the Warner Brothers Vitaphone process developed by Western Electric engineers. It is the first motion picture with sound (see communications [De Forest], 1923). Film czar Will H. Hays of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) appears on screen to predict that Vitaphone will revolutionize the industry, the film gets an enthusiastic response in October when shown at Grauman's Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, but few exhibitors are willing to install the costly equipment needed for the sound-on-disk system. Fox Pictures head William Fox opts instead for a sound-on-film system that uses an optical sound-track and is called Movietone. Better established film studios (the Big Five) try to buy Vitaphone, which Western Electric has licensed to Warner Brothers (whose biggest star has been the dog Rin Tin Tin); Warner Brothers outfits its own theaters for sound; Fox Pictures buys New York's Roxy Theater as a showcase for its Movietone system (see 1927).
Other films: Sam Taylor's For Heaven's Sake with Harold Lloyd; Fritz Lang's Metropolis with Brigitte Helm, 18, as an oppressed working girl transformed into an evil, robotic doppelgänger in the year 2006, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Also: Buster Keaton's The Battling Butler with Keaton; Herbert Brenon's Beau Geste with Ronald Colman; King Vidor's A Bohème with Lillian Gish, John Gilbert, Lille-born actress Renée Adorée, 27; Herbert Brenon's Dancing Mothers with Clara Bow, Alice Joyce; Lewis Seiler's The Great K&A Train Robbery with Texas-born cowboy star Tom (Thomas Edwin) Mix, 46; Harry Edwards's His First Flame with Council Bluffs, Iowa-born vaudeville veteran Harry Langdon, 42; Vsevlod Pudovkin's Mother with Vera Baranovskaia; Sergei Eisenstein's Oktober; James Cruze's Old Ironsides with Massachusetts-born actor Charles Farrell, 25, Esther Ralston, Wallace Beery; Hal Roach's Putting Pants on Philip with English-born comic Stan (Arthur Stanley Jefferson) Laurel, 36, and Georgia-born comic Oliver Hardy, 34; Victor Seastrom's The Scarlet Letter with Lillian Gish as Hester Prynne, Lars Hanson, Henry B. Walthall, screenplay by Frances Marion based on the 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne novel; G. W. Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (Geheiminnisse einer Seele); George Fitzmaurice's Son of the Sheik with Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky (as the exotic Yasmin); William Beaudine's Sparrows with Mary Pickford; Frank Capra's The Strong Man with Harry Langdon; John Ford's Three Bad Men with former stuntman George O'Brien, 26; Harry Edwards's Tramp Tramp Tramp with Harry Langdon, San Antonio, Texas-born ingénue Joan Crawford (originally Lucille Le Sueur), 17; Raoul Walsh's What Price Glory? with English-born actor Victor McLaglen, 42, Edmund Lowe, 34, Mexican-born actress Dolores Del Rio (originally Dolores Asunsolo), 18.
Rudolph Valentino dies of peritonitis in New York August 23 at age 31 after surgery for an inflamed appendix and two perforated gastric ulcers. Press agents hired by Joseph Schenck of United Artists have the matinee idol's body placed in an ornate coffin at Frank E. Campbell's Broadway funeral parlor; 100,000 mourners line up for 11 blocks to view the remains.