Polly with a Past (play)

The play opened on Broadway in 1917 with a cast headed by Ina Claire as Polly, Herbert Yost as Rex, and Winifred Fraser, H. Reeves-Smith, Thomas Reynolds and Cyril Scott in other roles.

The piece was presented in London in 1921 starring Edna Best and Donald Calthrop, with a supporting cast including Noël Coward, Edith Evans, Henry Kendall, Claude Rains and C. Aubrey Smith, running for three months.

To earn a living, she takes a job as a housekeeper, working for Clay Collum and Harry Richardson, two young men who share an apartment.

When they find out that Polly's mother was French, and that she speaks the language quite well, the three young men offer to pay for her music lessons if she plays the role of the exotic enchantress.

Clay and Harry have done a good job to talk up her reputation as a femme fatale, and they hatch the idea that Rex should "rescue" her from drowning – a suitably romantic touch.

[5] In The Observer, St John Ervine termed the play "unpretentious and agreeable", slow at the beginning but gathering pace, and "constructed … with considerable ingenuity".

In the pre-Broadway tryout in Wilmington, Delaware, the role of Rex Van Zile was played by Archie Leach, who later became known as Cary Grant.