The Drunkard

[1][2] A drama in five acts, it was perhaps the most popular play produced in the United States until the dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin [3] premiered in 1853.

By 1933 the play's theme and theatrics had become antiquated, lending the show to parody: the florid dialogue would be delivered as written, but exaggerated deliberately for comic effect.

[3] The primary writer of the play was William Henry Smith (1806–1872), who also directed and starred in the original production in Boston in the 1844–45 season.

Pierpont's motive to remain anonymous may have been rooted in the desire to avoid affiliation with the theatre, which was considered a taboo subject in the Christian community.

Bell presented The Drunkard as an audience-participation show, with the audience supplied with free sandwiches and beer -- themselves an attraction during the Depression -- and urged to hiss the villain and cheer the hero.

[6] Mildred Ilse of the production team (who later took over from Galt Bell as producer) noted that the audience was reluctant to go home after the curtain rang down, so musical and vaudeville acts were added as an olio to conclude each evening.

"Jan Duggan's song 'Gathering Up the Shells from the Seashore' is still one of the highlights of the olio which follows the performance of The Drunkard," reported the Los Angeles Times.

Lyle Talbot, W. C. Fields, John Barrymore, Mae West, Lewis Stone, and Gloria Swanson are proud owners of the stars," reported Picture Play.

[8] Jan Duggan said in the same report, "If our audience doesn't hiss and shout and pound tables with its beer mugs, our performance inevitably begins to sag.

He arranged for Paramount Pictures to hire members of the Los Angeles stage company: Jan Duggan, Ruth Marion, Samuel Ethridge, Larry Grenier, and William Blatchford.

[11] In 1935, James Murray and Clara Kimball Young starred in a low-budget feature, The Drunkard; the play is presented as part of the film's plot, in which two theatrical producers cast their needy relatives in the show.

[12] Murray's casting in The Drunkard was ironic, because his promising screen career as a leading man had plummeted with his own addiction to alcohol.

[17] The new musical treatment was a refreshing change: "It is an innovation that will catch on with the tourist trade," wrote syndicated columnist Hubbard Keavy.

True to Keavy's prediction, The Drunkard was indeed listed as a popular tourist attraction among other California landmarks like Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm.

Brad Williams of the Los Angeles Times was there: "The announcement that the end was in sight was first greeted with stunned silence, some of the most avid fans began to weep.

"[23] Ilse explained to Times reporter Bud Lembke: "When the fire department decreed that we'd have to reduce our seating from 340 to 260, it just wasn't worthwhile to continue.

"[24] On October 17, 1959, after 9,477 performances -- with Jan Duggan in most of them and comedian Neely Edwards in almost all of them since 1933 -- The Drunkard rang down its final curtain with a champagne toast and a cheering audience, concluding an outstanding run.

[25] Another version of the play, adapted by Richard Mansfield Dickinson, has been performed every Saturday night since November 14, 1953, at the Spotlight Theatre in Tulsa, Oklahoma;[26] the company touts this as the longest-running stage production in America.

[29] A musical adaptation of the play by the British writer Brian J. Burton, The Drunkard or Down With the Demon Drink, was published in 1968 and has been performed several times since.

[30][31] The Drunkard returned to Broadway in July 1959 -- while the show was still running in Los Angeles -- with new songs by on-stage pianist Robert Proctor and lyricist Caroline Kellogg.

It was recorded under this title by Rudy Vallee; his first attempt failed when one of the band members made a rude "raspberry" noise.

Edward (Ted) Wallerstein, president of Okeh Records, sent Vallee a test pressing of the "laughing" take, accompanied by a note: "What do you say we let the public have this one?

Variety commented that "the publishing trade, stirred to action by the revival of an old tune over the air, flocks to run it off the press without first finding out if the song is protected by copyright."

They are terrified of losing the cottage because they are unable to make regular payments and they are speaking to Lawyer Cribbs who insists they will because the new landlord, Edward Middleton, is not as generous as his father was.

Cribbs is lying to them because he is managing the estate of Edward's late father and has an opportunity to sell the cottage and land for quite a healthy sum.

Cribbs wants the fallen Edward to forge the name of one Arden Rencelaw, a wealthy philanthropist, in exchange for money to fuel his drinking habits.