1930 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: Waterloo Bridge by Robert Sherwood 1/6 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Glenn Hunter, Cora Witherspoon, 64 perfs.; Children of Darkness by New York playwright Edwin Justus Mayer, 33, 1/7 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with Basil Sydney, Charles Dalton, J. Kerby Hawkes, Eugene Powers, Mary Ellis, Walter Kingsford, 79 perfs.; Tonight We Improvise (Questa sera Si recite a soggetto) by Luigi Pirandello 1/25 at Königsberg's Neues Schauspielhaus, 4/14 at Turin's Teatro di Turino; The Bathhouse (Banya) by Vladimir Mayakovski 1/30 at Leningrad's People's House, 3/16 at Moscow's Meyerhold Theater; As You Desire Me (Come tu mi vuoi) by Pirandello 2/18 at Milan's Teatro de Filodrammatici; The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly 2/21 at New York's Mansfield Theater, with Charles H. Moore, Wesley Hill, New York-born ingénue Juanita Hall, 28, Josephine Byrd in an adaptation of a 1928 collection of tales by Roark Bradford, now 34, depicting heaven, the angels, and the Lord as envisioned by a black country preacher for a Louisiana congregation, 640 perfs.; Hotel Universe by Philip Barry 4/14 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Ruth Ford, Glenn Anders, Earle Larimore, Morris Carnovsky, 81 perfs.; Moscow Is Burning (Moskva golid) by Vladimir Mayakovski 4/21 at Moscow's Circus I (Gostsirk I); The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Java-born English playwright Rudolph Besier, 52, at England's Malvern Festival (the play will open next year at New York's Empire Theater with Katharine Cornell and have 370 performances); Private Lives by Noël Coward 9/24 at London's Phoenix Theatre, with Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence (Kerr) Olivier, 23, Coward's song "Someday I'll Find You," 101 perfs.; Once in a Lifetime by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 9/24 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Kaufman, Spring Byington, 401 perfs.; The Greeks Had a Word for It by Zoë Akins 9/25 at New York's Sam H. Harris Theater, with Dorothy Hall, Verree Teasdale, and Muriel Kirkland as three ex-Follies girls on the make, Ernest Glendenning, 253 perfs.; Mississippi by Georg Kaiser 10/19 at Frankfurt am Main's Schauspielhaus; The Sailors of Cattaro (Die Matrosen von Cattaro) by German playwright Friedrich Wolf, 42, 11/8 at Berlin's Lobe Theater; Grand Hotel by W. A. Drake 11/13 at New York's National Theater, with Henry Hull, Sam Jaffe, Russian-born actress Eugenie Leontovich, 30, as the dancer Grusinskaya in an adaptation of the Vicki Baum novel, 459 perfs.; Tonight or Never by Lili Halvany 11/18 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Helen Gahagan, Macon, Ga.-born actor Melvyn Douglas, 29, 232 perfs.; Alison's House by novelist-playwright Susan Glaspell 12/1 at New York's Civic Repertory Theater, 41 perfs.; The Measures Taken (Die Massnahme) by Bertolt Brecht 12/10 at Berlin's Grosses Gaspielhaus (a short play in eight scenes); The Shoemaker's Prodigal Wife (La Zapatera prodigiosa) by Federico García Lorca 12/24 at Madrid's Teatro Español.

Theater owner Abraham Lincoln Erlanger dies of cancer at New York March 7 at age 69; showman Edward F. Albee of heart failure at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., March 11 at age 72; playwright-poet Vladimir Mayakovski by his own hand at Moscow April 14 at age 36; actor Charles S. Gilpin at Eldridge Park, N.J., near Trenton May 6 at age 50; actress Clare Eames at London November 8 at age 34.

Los Angeles hails the opening of the Greek Theater in Griffith Park September 25.

Radio: The Lone Ranger 1/20 on Detroit's WXYZ begins with the overture from the 1829 Rossini opera Guillaume Tell and an announcer saying, "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty 'Hi-yo Silver'—the Lone Ranger rides again." The serial has been developed from Curly Edwards and the Cowboys by James E. Jewell, 23, who will soon give his masked hero an Indian friend—Tonto—who will call the Lone Ranger "Kemo Sabe" (trusting brave) as the program takes listeners "back to those thrilling days of yesteryear"; Death Valley Days 7/30 on NBC Blue Network stations. New York advertising writer Ruth Cornwall Woodman has researched background for the show by visiting Panamint City and introduces "The Old Ranger" to give the story authenticity (to 1945); The First Nighter Program 12/4 on NBC (the show emanates not from Broadway but rather from NBC studios in Chicago's new Merchandise Mart).

The Pantages Theater opens June 30 at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard for the premiere of Henry Beaumont's Floradora Girl, with Marion Davies (part has been filmed in Technicolor). Designed in art deco style by architect B. Marcus Priteca and built at a cost of $1.25 million, the Pantages has the world's most elaborate sound equipment, seats about 2,700, offers a short stage play and orchestra selections as well as films that include a Walt Disney cartoon and Metronome News, will be taken over in 1949 by Howard Hughes, serve as the site of the Academy Awards from 1949 to 1959, and become a legitimate theater in 1977.

U.S. moviegoing increases as all studios rush to make "talkies" and a new Vitascope widens theater screens.

Films: Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or with Gaston Modot, Max Ernst; Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front with Minneapolis-born actor Lew Ayres, 21; Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Earth with Semyon Svashenko, Stepan Shkurat. Also: D. W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln with Walter Huston, Una Merkel; Clarence Brown's Anna Christie with Greta Garbo ("Garbo Talks," advertisements cry), screenplay by Frances Marion based on the Eugene O'Neill play; George Hill's The Big House with Chester Morris, Robert Montgomery, Wallace Beery, screenplay by Frances Marion; Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail with Iowa-born actor John Wayne (originally Marion Michael Morrison), 23, who hates horses but will star in dozens of Westerns; Howard Hawks's The Dawn Patrol with Richard Barthelmess, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; Robert Z. Leonard's The Divorcée with Norma Shearer, Chester Morris; Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels with Ben Lyon, now 29, Kansas City-born actress Jean Harlow (originally Harlean Carpentier), 19; Henry King's Lightnin' with Will Rogers, Louise Dresser, Los Angeles-born actor Joel McCrea, 24; Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson; George Hill's Min and Bill with Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, screenpay by Frances Marion; Josef von Sternberg's Morocco with Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Adolphe Menjou; Alfred Hitchcock's Murder with Herbert Marshall, 40, Norah Baring; Robert Milton's Outward Bound with London-born actor Leslie Howard (originally Leslie Stainer), 37; Richard Wallace's The Right to Love with Ruth Chatterton is the first picture made with a new process that eliminates popping, cracking, grating, and other surface noises; George Cukor and Cyril Gardner's The Royal Family of Broadway with Racine, Wis.-born actor Frederic March (originally Frederic McIntyre Bickel), 33, Ina Claire; John Cromwell's Tom Sawyer with Jackie Coogan, Mitzi Green; G. W. Pabst's Westfront 1918.

Mabel Normand dies of tuberculosis at a Monrovia, Calif. sanitarium February 23 at age 36 (scandals in 1922 and 1924 ended her career); Lon Chaney dies of throat cancer at Los Angeles August 26 at age 47 (he is remembered as "the man with a thousand faces" because of his ingenious make-up devices); actor Milton Sills dies of a heart attack September 10 at age 48 while playing tennis at his Santa Barbara home.