1934 - Theater, Film
Theater, Film
Theater: Thunderstorm by Chinese playwright Cao Yu (Tsao Yu [Wan Jia-bao, or Wan Chia-pao]), 24, who adopts a style similar to that of Greek tragedy and awes Beijing (Peking) audiences with the disruptive powers abroad in the world, but critics perceive his play as an attack on the tyranny of the traditional family system; Days Without End by Eugene O'Neill 1/18 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with Earle Larimore, Stanley Ridges, Ilka Chase, 57 perfs.; Dodsworth by Sidney Howard (who has adapted the 1929 Sinclair Lewis novel) 2/24 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Walter Huston, Fay Bainter, Harlan Briggs, Leonore Harris, sets by Jo Mielzner, 147 perfs.; Yellow Jack by Sidney Howard and Paul de Kruif 3/6 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Pennsylvania-born actor James (Maitland) Stewart, 25, Havana-born actor Millard Mitchell, 28, Russian-born actor Sam Levene, 28, Indiana-born actor Myron McCormick, 26, Robert Keith in a play about the conquest of yellow fever, 79 perfs.; The Infernal Machine (La Machine infernale) by Jean Cocteau 4/10 at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, Paris; Touch Wood by C. L. Anthony (Dorothy Smith) 5/16 at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket, with Flora Robson, Stafford Hilliard, Jack Lambert, 213 perfs.; Merrily We Roll Along by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 9/9 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Kenneth MacKenna, Jessie Royce Landis, Mary Philips, 155 perfs.; The Distaff Side by John Van Druten 9/25 at New York's Booth Theater, with Mildred Natwick, 26, English actress Sybil Thorndike, 51, English actress Estelle Winwood (née Goodwin), 51, 177 perfs.; Small Miracle by Corona, Queens-born playwright-screenwriter Norman Krasna, 24, 9/26 at New York's John Golden Theater, with Ilka Chase, Los Angeles-born Allan Hale, 16, Myron McCormick, staged by George Abbott, 117 perfs.; The Farmer Takes a Wife by Frank B. Elser and Marc Connelly (from the Walter D. Edmonds novel Rome Haul) 10/30 at New York's 46th Street Theater, with Grand Island, Neb.-born actor Henry Fonda, 29, Margaret Hamilton, June Walker, scenic design by Donald Oenslager, 104 perfs.; The Children's Hour by New Orleans-born playwright Lillian Hellman, 29, 11/20 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Colorado-born ingénue Eugenia Rawls, 21, Robert Keith. Hellman's lover Dashiell Hammett has suggested the story, which hints at a lesbian relationship, 691 perfs. (set designer Aline Bernstein [née Frankau], now 52, ended her affair with novelist Thomas Wolfe several years ago but will figure in the person of Esther Jack in his posthumous 1939 novel The Web and the Rock); Rain from Heaven by S. N. Behrman 11/24 at New York's Golden Theater, with Jane Cowl protests Nazi treatment of German Jews, 99 perfs.; Professor Mamlock by Friedrich Wolf 12/8 at Zürich's Schauspielhaus; No One Knows Him (Non si sa come) by Luigi Pirandello 12/19 at Rome's Teatro Argentina; Accent on Youth by New York playwright Samson Raphaelson, 40, 12/25 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Constance Cummings, 229 perfs.; The Hangman (Bödeln) by Pär Lagerkvist 12/28 at Stockholm's Rossa Theater; Yerma by Federico García Lorca 12/29 at Madrid's Teatro Español.
Actor-theater manager Sir Gerald du Maurier dies at his native London April 11 at age 61; actor Max Pallenberg is killed in an airplane crash at Karlsbad June 26 at age 56 while en route to a theatrical appearance (he left Germany last year because his wife, an operetta star, was Jewish); playwright Sir Arthur Wing Pinero dies following surgery at London November 23 at age 79.
Radio: Lux Radio Theatre 10/14 on NBC. Cecil B. DeMille will be host of the weekly drama show beginning next year, and it will move to CBS in mid-July of next year (to 6/7/1955); The Aldrich Family 10/17 on NBC with Ezra Stone as Henry Aldrich (to 1953).
British National Film Co. is founded at Ellstree by English flour miller's son J. Arthur Rank, 46, who by 1941 will control the Odeon Circuit with its 142 sumptuous theaters plus the Gaumont theater chain founded in the 1890s. Rank has been making religious films for use in Methodist Sunday School classes, his company will produce its first commercial film next year, he will set up a company in partnership with Charles M. Woolf to distribute Universal Pictures product in Britain, and British National Film will grow to have studios at Denham, Pinewood Studios, and Shepherd's (see 1946).
Bombay Talkies is founded by Indian film actress Devika Rani, 26, and her filmmaker husband Himanshu Rai. A grandniece of the Nobel poet-novelist Rabindranath Tagore and the daughter of an eminent surgeon, Rani met her husband while studying architecture, design, and textiles at London. He hired her as a costume and set consultant, they were married in 1929, and she made her film debut 4 years ago playing opposite Rai in Karma, the first Indian film released in English and the first to have a kissing scene. She will continue to head the studio after Rai's death in 1940 but will retire to Bangalore in 1945 after marrying artist Svetoslav Roerich.
The 12-year-old Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (MPPDA), establishes a production code in response to demands by Roman Catholic bishops that it clean up its films by self-regulation or face a boycott. Denis Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia has said, "Nothing is left for us except the boycott." Box office revenues have plummeted, partly because some 11 million Roman Catholics have taken a pledge not to see movies (but also because the Depression has left so many people unable to afford even modest ticket prices). Administered by former newspaperman Joseph I. Breen (whose views are tainted by anti-Semitism), the Hays Office will enforce prohibitions—no exposure of female breasts, no suggestion of cohabitation or seduction, no unconventional kissing, no use of drugs, and the like, insisting that scripts and even posters be submitted for its inspection—but audiences will boo when they see the MPPDA seal of approval on the screen. Nation magazine will state: "The censors have spent all their time protecting children against adult movies. They might better protect adults against childish movies," and the British trade paper Film Weekly will call Breen "the Hitler of Hollywood."
Shirley Temple makes her first full-length film at age 6 and follows Hamilton McFadden's Stand Up and Cheer (in which she steals the show by singing "Baby Take a Bow") with Alexander Hall's Little Miss Marker and David Butler's Bright Eyes (in which she sings "The Good Ship Lollypop"). Born at Santa Monica and now all dimples and curly hair, Temple will go on to star in half a dozen other Hollywood films in the next 4 years.
Other films: Jean Vigo's L'Atalante with Jean Dasté; Frank Capra's It Happened One Night with Clark Gable, now 33, Claudette Colbert (who has found little work on Depression-struck Broadway and been discovered by producer Benjamin P. Schulberg); Norman Z. McLeod's It's a Gift with W. C. Fields; John Ford's The Lost Patrol with Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff; Robert Flaherty's documentary Man of Aran; W. S. Van Dyke's The Thin Man with William Powell, Myrna Loy; Howard Hawks's Twentieth Century with John Barrymore, Carole Lombard. Also: George Nicholls Jr.'s Anne of Green Gables with New York-born actress Anne Shirley (originally Dawn Evelyeen Paris), 16, as Anne Shirley; Gus Meins and Charles R. Rogers's Babes in Toyland with Laurel and Hardy; Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat with Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi; Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra with Claudette Colbert, Warren William; Rowland V. Lee's The Count of Monte Cristo with Robert Donat, 29, Austrian-born actress Elissa Landi (Elisabeth-Marie-Christine Kühner), 29; Mitchell Leisen's Death Takes a Holiday with Fredric March; John Ford's Judge Priest with Will Rogers; Frank Borzage's Little Man, What Now? with Norfolk, Va.-born actress Margaret Sullavan (originally Margaret Brooke), 23, Douglass Montgomery; Richard Wallace's The Little Minister with Katharine Hepburn; Maurice Elvey's Love, Life, and Laughter with Gracie Fields; William A. Seiter's The Richest Girl in the World with Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, and Fay Wray in a story based on the early life of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton (who is not, in fact, nearly so rich as tobacco heiress Doris Duke but is far more extravagant); Cedric Gibbons and Jack Conway's Tarzan and His Mate with Johnny Weissmuller, Irish-born actress Maureen O'Sullivan, 23; Victor Fleming's Treasure Island with Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper; Jack Conway's Viva Villa! with Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo; Gregory LaCava's What Every Woman Knows with Helen Hayes, English-born actor Brian (DeLacy) Aherne, 32.
Actor-director Lowell Sherman dies of pneumonia at Hollywood December 28 at age 59.
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