SEVEN DAYS LEAVE—A HUGE SUCCESS!

During a time of war audiences often desire to see a play that gives them hope, romance, humor and spectacle to boost their morale. Seven Days Leave by Walter Howard (1866-1922) met every one of those requirements.   Howard claimed, during an interview in 1918 with ‘The Era’ weekly, to have written this play “to please his brave young soldier son.”  Seven Days Leave opened on February 14, 1917 in London at the Lyceum Theatre and played for 711 performances.  This outstanding number of consecutive performances made it one of the most popular London plays in the years of 1875 through 1919.

The Lyceum Theatre was known during the years of 1909 through 1938 as the West End London theatre that presented pantomimes and melodramas. The Lyceum’s producers during this period were two brothers, Walter (1975-1937) and Frederick (1879-1938) Melville.  They built a reputation for staging sensational scenes. Seven Days Leave is a full blown melodrama with a third act that must have been spectacular.  Just the perfect play for the Lyceum Theatre.

Walter Howard was a highly recognized playwright of melodramas when he wrote Seven Days Leave.  He was a well-known actor and playwright in Great Britain and also Australia, where he had lived as a young man for several years. He had developed an international reputation as a playwright by 1917 with at least twenty plays to his credit. 

Seven Days Leave is set in a quiet East Coast village of England, where Captain Terence Fielding, a British officer, is spending his seven days leave. The villagers are being very charitable to two Belgian refugees.  A lovely young woman, Lady Mary Heather, to whom Captain Fielding is engaged, is leading the village’s efforts to assist the refugees. Captain Fielding had been previously imprisoned in Germany and he recognizes the two refugees. They are treacherous German spies. He does not share his information, but watches their activities. He discovers they are trying to steal a new invention that relates to “salting the tail of a U-boat.” Since U-boats were nearly impossible to detect, it was thought that if a device could be attached to its fin to serve as a detector, it would allow a torpedo to be launched that would entirely destroy this underwater menace.

The engagement of Captain Fielding and Lady Mary is dissolved due to his attention to a female refugee. His flirtation is part of Fielding’s plan to foil the plot being hatched by the spies. The amazing third act is staged in the waters where the U-boat is surrounded by British destroyers. Lady Mary, the heroine, swims out to the U-boat and helps to save the new invention from the German spies. There is a very dramatic ending with fire, smoke, ship guns blazing and the racket they cause. The brave hero and heroine live to rekindle their romance, the U-boat is destroyed and the British navy has a new secret U-boat detector.

During the run of Seven Days Leave at the Lyceum, this play was also toured to cities throughout Great Britain. The tour commenced in 1917 and it was still in progress in November, 1920. Newspaper advertisements showed that the play sometimes returned to a city where it had played previously. The reviews were excellent. An example is from the Sheffield Independent dated August 25, 1917: “Never before have we had such a War Play, with such daring deeds, so brave a hero and so fair a heroine.”  The reviews were filled with accolades: “It is a great military play with an intensely interesting story.”  “Howard’s masterpiece.” “The piece teems with comic lines, while the love interest is, of course, particularly strong.”  

During the fall of 1917, Seven Days Leave was playing in both Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. It would take until January 17, 1918 before Seven Days Leave opened at Broadway’s Park Theatre where it played until June, 1918 for a total of 156 performances. It then toured several major American cities. The January 18, 1918 review of  Seven Days Leave in the New York Times mentions that “The American element has been hypodermically injected by Max Marcin.” Apparently Captain Fielding became Captain William J. Kelly an American officer. The other Americanization is that the U-boat is not surrounded by British destroyers, but it is guarded by a lone American destroyer. These major changes were cited in the review, but undoubtedly there were other minor ones also made by Max Marcin (1879-1948) playwright, screen writer and film director.

There are two American films titled Seven Days Leave, however; neither one relates to this play. The 1930 film is a renamed film version of James M. Barrie’s play The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, starring Gary Cooper. (Please see Post dated April 20, 2015 titled “Two Sir James M. Barrie Theatrical Successes” for more information.)  The 1942 film titled the same as this play stars Lucille Ball and Victor Mature and is a totally different story-line.

NOTE: I understand that the script for Seven Days Leave was never published.  The plot description in this Post is gleaned from bits and pieces that appeared in various reviews I have read. Also I have not found a script for any of the plays written by Walter Howard even though his plays were highly successful on stage.  Please COMMENT if you know any publications of Walter Howard’s work.

PAWNS OF WAR by BOSWORTH CROCKER

Bosworth Crocker (1861-1946) is the pseudonym of Mary Arnold Crocker Childs Lewisohn.  Childs was the family name of her first husband and Lewisohn was her second husband’s.*  Bosworth was her father’s middle name.  She was born in England, but her family moved to the United States when she was a child. 

Bosworth Crocker began her playwriting career during the first decade of the twentieth century. By the time she wrote Pawns of War, a three-act play, several of her one-act plays were staged and/or published. Pawns of War is a tribute to the nation of Belgium and its suffering under the boots of Germany during the first days of the 1914 invasion. Although it may have been written during the early years of the war, the play was not published until January, 1918.  The publisher was Little, Brown and Company, Boston.  John Galsworthy (1867-1933) the noted British playwright and novelist wrote the Forward for the book. (Galsworthy’s World War One play titled The Foundations is discussed in my post dated June 18, 2015.)

Galsworthy considered “Pawns” to be “very gripping”.  He also proclaimed it to be “so lifelike and so forceful.”  It is a realistic play that has the ability to grab ones emotions particularly as its moves toward the conclusion. The German General in this play is written in a manner that allows a reader to have a degree of pity for him. Through him one can understand that individuals on both sides of a war may be pawns in a piteous situation. 

A review of the play that appeared in The Dial, Volume 64, April 25, 1918 states: “Mr. Crocker, almost completely avoids the polemical emphasis.  The dramatist does not flinch from portraying the full horror of the whole brutal business, as that nationwide horror is reflected in the lives of one small household.”  This reviewer also mentioned that the final scene was “an eloquently restrained and pathetic climax.”

A review by Walter Prichard Eaton in the November, 1918 issue of The Bookman takes an opposite position.  He considered Pawns of War to be “a bald narrative, in dramatic form, with the subject-matter so horrible that your response is a shudder of nausea.”  He believed an audience in the theatre would not be able to stand this play since “it is too stark and murderous.”

Pawns of War has many plot similarities to other invasion of Belgium plays. Act One is set in the entry room of Doctor Albert Esterlinck’s home.  He is a surgeon and the burgomaster of the village of Aerschel, Belgium.  He is a fourth generation surgeon in his family and his father also had been burgomaster of this village. Esterlinck’s family consists of his wife, their adolescent daughter, and an adult son who has been ill. A young teenage son, who never appears on stage, was killed by the Germans as he attempted to get word about the invasion of his village to the Belgium government. This act begins to set-up the specific situation for the drama when the German General, Ludwig von Wahlhayn, commandeers the Doctor’s home for his headquarters. The family learns there is to be a proclamation written that states if any member of a household fires at a German soldier, the entire household will be put to death.

The second act is set the same as the previous one; however, it is later in the same day and the German General and his staff are in the dining room having supper. The proclamation has been written and it is to be posted immediately. The General and the Doctor leave the house. The only remaining soldier on the premises is the General’s Chief of Staff, named Falkenhorst. He has consumed too much wine.  He is attracted to the Doctor’s daughter and makes unwanted advances. She is frightened and her brother shoots him dead.

Act Three is also set in the same location.  It is this act I found the most original and moving. I have set the scene and established the conflict, but I do not want to reveal the conclusion of the play.  It is a fast read and the play is available in a digitized version on-line.

The publication of Pawns of War occurred during a productive time in Bosworth Crothers playwriting career. Her one-act play The Last Straw, written in 1916, was produced in August, 1917 by the Washington Square Players. Another one-act play The Baby Carriage was produced in 1919 by the Provincetown Players.  Five of her early one-act plays were published in 1923 under the title Humble Folk that includes The Baby Carriage. Most of these plays relate to issues encountered by impoverished immigrants living in the United States.  Crothers remained active as a playwright, drama critic and poet until the late 1930s.

·                * In 1906, Crothers married Ludwig Lewisohn (1882-1955).  He is remembered as a prolific novelist, scholar and critic. His autobiographical novel The Case of Mr. Crump (1922), considered by many critics as a major literary work, was not published in the United States until 1947.  Bosworth Crocker entered a libel suit, in the early 1920’s, to keep the book from being released in the United States.  She was angry about the fictionalized version of herself as depicted in this novel.