Glory, Glory ... It's Your Own Thursday Headlines!

 

Courtesy IMDB.

This week's Notable Opening Night is Sept. 3, 1924, when What Price Glory opened at what is now the Gerald Schoenfeld.

If at first you don't succeed ... a year after failing on Broadway with the play White Desert*, Maxwell Anderson was on the map with What Price Glory, which he co-wrote with Laurence Stallings. The play concerned the personal, professional, and romantic rivalry between a Marine Captain (Louis Wolheim, concluding his Broadway career) and a First Sergeant (William Boyd, who kept going until 1928). The men's object of affection, played by newcomer Leyla Georgie was named ... oh dear ... "Charmaine De La Cognac."

*White Desert was a four-act drama set amid a North Dakota winter. And to think it wasn't a hit.

What Price Glory was adapted into a hit 1926 picture for Fox, the company's first sound film. Variety: "(It) has everything except an out-and-out love story of the calibre of the one in The Big Parade. But where it lacks in that it certainly makes up in sex stuff and comedy. ... As for the Charmaine of Dolores Del Rio, she registers like a house afire. It is no wonder that she had the whole army after her."

Lasting one year on Broadway, and yet to be revived there as of 2026, What Price Glory received three movie sequels from 1929-33. The original movies all starred Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe, each time opposite a female star. First it was Dolores del Rio, then Lili Damita, then Greta Nissen, and finally Lupe Vélez. After that, Glory received one last film adaptation to date, in 1952 with James Cagney, Dan Dailey, and Corrine Calvet.

Other notable Sept. 3 openings include ...

The International Cup, the Ballet of Niagra, and the Earthquake, which opened at the now-demolished Hippodrome in 1910. This was a revue from the team of composer Manuel Klein and bookwriter-director R.H. Burnside.

Get Together, which opened at the Hippodrome in 1921. Another revue, this time with Burnside alongside musical director A.J. Garing. Klein had left the Hippodrome after feuding with Jacob Shubert and ended up dying from complications sustained during a World War I attack on London's now-demolished Gaiety Theatre.

Poppy, which opened at the now-demolished Apollo in 1923. This was a musical credited to Stephen Jones, Arthur Samuels, and Dorothy Donnelly. W.C. Fields starred as a grifter who passes off his adopted daughter (Madge Kennedy) as an heiress. Guess what? She really is.

Next week, another girl who captured Broadway's attention.