Actor / The Playhouse / New York City
September 3 - November 30, 1940 / 107 performances
One of the highlights of the
1935 theater season was Gladys George's bravura performance as Mary
Herries in the first Broadway production of "Kind Lady" by Edward
Chodorov. Sadly, the play was forced to close at the height of its
popularity when Ms. George suffered a severe nervous breakdown and
decided to announce her premature retirement. But a few years later both her career and
sanity were saved by this return engagement produced by her husband,
William A. Brady.
Mary Herries is a dignified and kindly spinster,
living aristocratically and quietly in her London home on Montague
Square, where the entire play takes place. A sinister visitor enters her
life one Christmas eve and gradually surrounds her with his band of
diabolically clever crooks who ingeniously alienate her from her family
and friends, nearly convincing them that she is hopelessly insane. Only
a supreme act of courage on Mary's part convinces the outside world of
her sanity and returns her life to it's previous state. Described as an intensely exciting thriller, the play was
immensely popular and was followed by a motion picture starring Ethyl
Barrymore as Mary.
The play was clearly a vehicle for
its lustrous star, but she had a wonderful supporting cast that included
the esteemed actor and director Clarence Derwent and featured ingénue
Dorothy McGuire as her niece Ada. In his first major role in a Broadway
drama, Mel Ferrer was the first actor onstage, playing
Peter Santard, a part he'd previously enacted during his Spring season
at
the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, MA. Of some significance, this was the
play where Mel met Dorothy McGuire and the two thespians became
life-long friends, eventually joining up with Gregory Peck to form the
esteemed La Jolla Playhouse.
This early program
biography of Mel reads as follows:
MELCHOR FERRER (Peter Sanford)
made his first Broadway appearance in the musical "You Never Know." He
also played in "Everywhere I Roam." He appeared in the Spring Season of
the 1939 Ann Arbor Drama Festival, and has spent the past two summers
at the Cape Playhouse, Dennis, where he played a wide range of parts, in
such plays as "Our Town," "Kind Lady," "Our Betters'" and "Elmer the
Great."
