Lead Supporting Featured Walk-on A newspaper columnist reported in December 1918 that Henry Miller, just coming off of a flop, was looking for a new play to produce, adding that "Blanche Bates and Holbrook Blinn are in the same boat".
[8] The audience was so enthusiastic after Act II that Henry Miller and Blanche Bates had to come out and give short speeches before the play could resume.
[9] A local critic thought it good that Moeller was willing to take a chance on a more serious work, though the first act was "sketchy", a mere prelude to the slender plot.
[9] Originally intended for Henry Miller's Theater,[fn 5] Molière instead had its Broadway premiere on March 17, 1919, at Klaw and Erlanger's Liberty Theatre.
Heywood Broun reported the climatic moment of Molière's death scene was marred by the sound of auto horns coming from the streets outside.
[2] A growing problem in the theater district, Broun suggested legal curtailment of the horns even if at the expense of a few pedestrians: "After all, there are so many people and so few good plays".
[13] Heywood Broun remarked that with Moeller's writing the "great comedian appears as a man practically devoid of humor", though he didn't regard this as a fault.
[10] Corbin also thought the play too "literesque" but "intelligently so", and was enthused about the scenery, costumes, Alice Gale, and the lead actors.
[19] The tour swung through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska before returning east to play Boston, finishing at the Standard Theatre in Brooklyn on November 8, 1919.