1929 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: Street Scene by Elmer Rice 1/10 at New York's Playhouse, with Mary Servoss, Leo Bulgakov, Erin O'Brien Moore, Beulah Bondi, 601 perfs.; Journey's End by London insurance man-playwright R. C. (Robert Cedric) Sherriff, 33, 1/21 at London's Savoy Theatre (later to the Prince of Wales's Theatre), with Melville Cooper, Richard Caldicott, Colin Clive, Maurice Evans, 594 perfs. (Sherriff served as a lieutenant at Vimy Ridge, his play fills audiences with the horror of wartime trench life, and it is staged at Paris, Berlin, and New York); Dynamo by Eugene O'Neill 2/11 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Dudley Digges, Glenn Anders, Helen Wylie, French-born actress Claudette Colbert (Lily Claudette Chauchoin), 23, 50 perfs.; My Girl Friday by William A. Grew 2/12 at New York's Republic Theater, with Grew, Andes, N.Y.-born actress Esther Muir, 25, Nat Pendleton, 253 perfs.; The Bedbug (Klop) by Vladimir Mayakofsky 2/13 at Moscow's Meyerbold Theater; Marius by Marcel Pagnol 3/9 at Paris, with Raimu (Jules Muraire), 46, as Cesar, Pierre Fresnay, 32, as Marius; It's a Wise Child by Lawrence E. Johnson 8/6 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Humphrey Bogart, Minnesota-born actor Harlan Briggs, 49, Sidney Toler, 378 perfs; Strictly Dishonorable by Chicago-born playwright Preston Sturges (originally Edmund Preston Biden), 31, 9/18 at New York's Alvin Theater with Ed McNamara, a former police officer who plays the role of a cop, and Muriel Kirkland, who falls ill in December and is replaced by Antoinette Perry's 17-year-old daughter Marguerite, 557 perfs.; The Silver Tassle by Sean O'Casey 10/11 at London's Apollo Theatre, with a large cast that includes Charles Laughton, Barry Fitzgerald, Emlyn Williams, Beatrice Lehmann, Una O'Connor, 66 perfs.; The Clairvoyant (Hellseherei) by Georg Kaiser 10/19 at Düsseldorf's Schauspielhaus; The Unconquerable (Die Unübrwinlichen) by Karl Kraus 10/29 at Berlin, with Peter Lorre, Ernst Ginsberg, Leonhad Steckel, Kurt Gerron (Kraus has satirized Vienna's chief of police and the corrupt Hungarian press lord Imre Békessy; performances are canceled at the request of the Austrian emperor); Berkeley Square by John L. Balderston 11/4 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Leslie Howard, Margalo Gilmore, 229 perfs.; Amphitryon '38 by French playwright Jean Giraudoux, 47, 11/8 at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, Paris; It Never Rains by Aurania Rouverol 11/19 at New York's Republic Theater, with Sidney Fox as Dorothy Donovan, 185 perfs.; Good Times (Die gut Zeit by Ernst Barlach 11/29 at Gera; Death Takes a Holiday by Green Bay, Wis.-born playwright Walter Ferris, 47 (who has adapted a work by Alberto Casella) 12/26 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Philip Merivale, Wallace Erskine, now 67, Rose Hobart, 180 perfs.

Playwright Henry Arthur Jones dies at London January 7 at age 77; actor Wallace Eddinger at Pittsburgh January 8 at age 47; Orlando Daly at Boston January 17 at age 55; actress Lillie Langtry of heart failure at Monte Carlo February 12 at age 77; Broadway producer H. H. Frazee at New York June 5 at age 48; playwright-actor Dion Boucicault at London June 25 at age 70; actor Cyril Keightley at New York August 14 at age 53; actor-playwright Grant Stewart at Woodstock, N.Y., August 18 at age 63; playwright Jesse Lynch Williams of heart disease at the home of a woman friend in Herkimer County, N.Y., September 14 at age 58; actress Jeanne Eagels of alcohol and a sleeping-pill overdose at New York October 3 at age 35.

Radio: Let's Pretend (initially, The Adventures of Helen and Mary) 9/27 on CBS (to 10/23/1954); The Goldbergs (initially, The Rise of the Goldbergs) 11/20 on NBC's Blue Network, with Gertrude Berg, 30, in the role of Molly Goldberg in a series whose backup cast will include Menasha Skulnik, Everett Sloane, Arnold Stang, and Joan Tetzel (see television, 1949).

Films: G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, both with Louise Brooks, 23, who co-stars in Pandora's Box with Prague-born actor Francis (originally Frantisek) Lederer, 29, who is billed as Franz Lederer. Also: Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel with German actress Marlene Dietrich (née Maria Magdalena von Losch), 28, Emil Jannings; Alfred E. Green's Disraeli with English stage actor George Arliss, now 61, Palisades, N.J.-born ingénue Joan Bennett, 19; Lionel Barrymore's His Glorious Night with John Gilbert, whose silent-screen lover image loses something when audiences hear his tenor actor's voice; Alan Dwan's The Iron Mask with Douglas Fairbanks; Erich von Stroheim's Queen Kelly with Gloria Swanson (censored in the United States, the picture will be shown briefly in Europe); Dorothy Arzner's The Wild Party with Clara Bow, Fredric March in M-G-M's first sound movie.

Actor Dustin Farnum dies at New York July 3 at age 55.

Warner Brothers acquires the Stanley Co. of America to gain control of some 250 theater outlets and free itself of distribution worries (see 1918; The Jazz Singer, 1927).