The play remained dormant until John Morfit agreed to mount a new production, staged by Lee Elmore, with a tryout in Queens during September 1930.
The playwright, director, stage manager, and principal cast members were found guilty at a trial, and given suspended sentences.
Lead Other principal roles Bit Players The play takes place at Danny's Alton House, a waterfront establishment offering dubious and dangerous pursuits, in St. Louis during 1849.
But Nellie Bly, another dance hall girl at Danny's, aims to lure Johnnie into her arms, both to get his bankroll and to spite Frankie.
The play never resolves Johnnie's character: whether he was a sophisticate aware of the danger in betraying Frankie, or just a simple frontiersman trying to please both girls.
He was a journalist working at the New York Daily News when he met and married chorus girl Nancy Carroll in 1924.
[1] He was still writing under his own byline for the Daily News in January 1926,[2] but by July he had been signed as a scenario writer for First National Pictures.
A compromise was reached allowing the matinee performance for June 12 to proceed, with Woods' representative Ralph Kettering dropping a stay order on the shutdown.
[20] Shortly after the closing, lead actress Grace Kern secretly married the company manager Charles Wendling, the brother of Claudette Colbert.
[23] Kirkland had booked the independently owned Brandt's Carlton-Jamaica Theatre in Queens for a week-long tryout, starting September 8, 1930.
[22] A local reviewer spent most of their column listing the notables at the opening, foremost of whom was Kirkland's wife Nancy Carroll.
Evans was thus one of three female cast members arrested, along with twelve men, when the police raided the evening show on September 10, 1930.
[27] This was the same night that Zoe Akins' The Greeks Had a Word for It premiered, a coincidence of subject noticed by the Daily News under the joint heading "Two New Dramas about Prostitutes".
[28] The reviewer for the Daily News said the play may have been "toned-down" since its encounter with the Queens police, and what remained was "determined melodrama" propelled by Anne Forrest's performance.
[29] The New York Times critic said the play was confused in genre, presenting aspects of melodrama, farce, and burlesque, while the character of Johnnie was also a puzzle when compared to the song.