The Captive (play)

The three-act melodrama was among the first Broadway plays to deal with lesbians and caused a scandal in New York City.

[4] Producer and director Gilbert Miller, working with the Charles Frohman Company, announced his intentions to bring La Prisonnière to Broadway.

[7] Led by John S. Sumner, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice campaigned alongside the Catholic Church and other religious organizations to close The Captive and other plays on obscenity charges.

[5] On 9 February, while Rathbone and Menken were in middle of the second act of The Captive, police marched onto the stage and arrested the pair.

[5] Rathbone described the events on the night of the raid in his autobiography: "As we walked out onto the stage to await our first entrances we were stopped by a plainclothes policeman who showed his badge and said, 'Please don't let it disturb your performance tonight but consider yourself under arrest!'

... At the close of the play the cast were all ordered to dress and stand by to be escorted in police cars to a night court.

[citation needed] Production director Gilbert Miller asked the Famous Players–Lasky Motion Picture Company to support a legal challenge to the closure, but they wouldn't for fear of negative publicity.

Though Liveright gave up after months of negotiations with the authorities, Acting Mayor McKee retaliated by re-opening a two-year-old indictment.

[2][13] In New York, a censorship campaign against the plays The Captive, The Virgin Man, The Drag (another Mae West production marketed as "A Male Captive"[14]), and SEX prompted the Wales Padlock Act, a state law that had the effect of banning depictions of homosexuality in theatres.

[15] Sponsored by New York State Senator B. Roger Wales, the bill allowed for the arrest and prosecution of any actors or producers involved in an "immoral drama."

[14] Lesbian audience members for La Prisonnière in Paris pinned violets to their lapels and belts to show solidarity with the characters and subject.