In my previous post
surveying World War One plays on Broadway during the first six months of 1917,
I mention James M. Barrie’s (1860-1937) contribution of three one-act
plays. The New Word and The Old Lady Shows her Medals both dealt
with situations relating to the war while the third play did not. I remembered I had read “The Old Lady”
sometime during my undergraduate education.
So I decided to read it again. What a delightful, heart-warming piece it
is. No wonder it became such a great success
in Britain as well as North America playing in cities across the breadth of the
North American continent. It also opened
October 1927 at the Comédie Française in Paris with the French title Vieille Madam.
It was my intention to
write a plot synopsis for “Old Lady” at this point, but I quickly realized that
my description of the storyline felt flat, remote and lackluster. I realized the
story needs to be experienced in order to capture its charm and warmth. You can read the play or listen to a 1946
radio version of the play available on YouTube.
It stars Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore and Douglas Fairbanks
Jr. It was produced by Screen Guild
Theatre Radio and it is about fifteen minutes of listening time.
In 1930 the script was adapted
for film. Seven Days’ Leave was the
North American title, but Medals
was its title in Great Britain. The film
stars Gary Cooper with an all British cast. The British newspaper advertisements
claimed it “has been called the most human story ever written. It is a story of War Time, but it is not a
war story.”
The play became popular as
a television drama over the decades. It was filmed for British television in
1937 starring Jack Lambert, who was a Scottish character actor. The script received six different productions
on American television from 1952 to 1963.
The first production was created by the Theatre Guild for United States
Steel and shown on CBS. The play continued to garner attention in the
newspapers as advertisements and reviews for films, stage presentations and
television productions from 1917 till 1982. Davis Rogers adapted the play into
a one act musical in 1960. I was surprised that this play had such staying
power.
I haven’t forgotten The New Word. It was considered a curtain raiser when it
was initially produced. The term “curtain-raiser”
is rarely used today, but it is the opening act for the main attraction that
follows it. The New Word is a human interest piece that is set on the eve of
the son’s departure for the army. He
dresses in his uniform for the first time and the family is moved by
conflicting emotions, but the centerpiece of this short drama is the
conversation between the father and son whose relationship previously had been
devoid of shared emotional moments. You may be wondering what the new word
is. The father claims it is the rank of
“2nd Lieutenant”. For Roger, the son, it
is placing “dear” before uttering “father”.
It is a domestic comedy that provides insight into a family’s reaction
when the only son is leaving home to enter the war during its first months of
engagement.
James M. Barrie was born
in Scotland and he was educated at Dumfries Academy and the University of
Edinburgh. After graduating from the
University, he worked as a journalist in Nottingham and later moved to
London. He wrote novels prior to turning
his talents to playwriting which he started early in the 1890’s. His first successful plays were staged
between 1892 and 1895. By 1902, he wrote
one play a year until 1920 and many of them were staged successfully on both
sides of the Atlantic. He is best
remembered for Peter Pan written in
1904. I have always enjoyed his one-act
comedy titled The Twelve Pound Look
(1910). His playlist is long and his
plays provided a vitality that enriched British and American theatre during the
first two decades of the twentieth century.
Source for script I read:
Barrie, J. M. The Plays of J. M. Barrie. The
Old Lady Shows Her Medals and Other Plays. London: Hodder and Stoughton
Limited, 1923.
