Saturday, April 4, 2009

Climbing Up on Murray Hill


Recently, Bill R. of The Kind of Face You Hate did a piece on actors who were/are also writers. I don't remember if he was mentioned but Leslie Howard is a prime example. He wrote plays for Broadway in the twenties and thirties including Murray Hill in 1927 which, as the poster describes, is a Society Farce-Comedy. And I do so love the addition of the word "comedy" after "farce" so the reader of the poster doesn't confuse it with a Society Farce-Drama ("Yes it was profoundly moving social commentary, when I wasn't splitting my sides from the farcical hijinks!").

It was put up as a part of the WPA's Federal Theatre Project in 1940. In the year prior Howard had played the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind, which incidentally turns 70 this year. And on it's 75th anniversary in 2014 it will officially be longer since the movie was made than the end of the Civil War was from the time the movie was released (74 years). Leslie Howard died in 1943 after the plane he was travelling in was shot down by a German bomber over the Bay of Biscay. It's still disputed what happened that night so for a more thorough account of the theories go to the Wikipedia entry on Howard's death here.