Eva LaGallienne (L) – J.M. Barrie (R) – Legend of The Theatre – Creator of The Lost Boys
J.M. Barrie – The Twelve Pound Look – NBC Radio New Theatre – September 23, 1951
Another of our periodic excursions to the Theatre for historic performances. This weekend it’s a play written by J.M. Barrie and performed by the legendary Eva LaGallienne – The Twelve Pound Look, written by Barrie in 1912, following the success of Peter Pan in 1904.
Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991) was a British-American stage actress, producer, director, translator, and author. A Broadway star by age 21, in 1926 she left Broadway behind to found the Civic Repertory Theatre, where she served as director, producer, and lead actress. Noted for her boldness and idealism, she was a pioneering figure in the American theater, setting the stage for the Off-Broadway and regional theater movements that swept the country later in the 20th century. She had significant success with her stage adaptation of Alice in Wonderland which was staged multiple times on Broadway.
Le Gallienne devoted herself to the art of the theater as opposed to the show business of Broadway. She felt strongly that high-quality plays should be affordable and accessible to all people who wanted to see them. She ran the Civic Repertory Theatre for seven years (1926–1934), producing 37 plays during that time with a company whose actors included Burgess Meredith, John Garfield, Norman Lloyd, J. Edward Bromberg, Paul Leyssac, Florida Friebus, David Manners, Josephine Hutchinson, Alla Nazimova, Joseph Schildkraut, and Leona Roberts.
J.M. Barrie: Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (/ˈbæri/; 9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several successful novels and plays. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired him to write about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (first included in Barrie’s 1902 adult novel The Little White Bird), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, a 1904 West End “fairy play” about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland.
Although he continued to write successfully, Peter Pan overshadowed his other work, and is credited with popularizing the name Wendy. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Barrie was made a baronet by George V on 14 June 1913, and a member of the Order of Merit in the 1922 New Year Honours.[3] Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which continues to benefit from them.
This play was part of a series produced by NBC in the early 1950s and this production of The Twelve Pound Look was the last of the series, which ended on September 23, 1951.
