Smut in the World!

Guest Blogger Dept.: It was quite the scandal in 1925 – at least as far as New York’s theatergoing public was concerned. One “dirty” show after another was opening on Broadway (“Desire under the Elms” and Mae West’s “Sex” not the least of them) and they were being castigated from the pulpits and threatened with closure by District Attorney Joab Hamilton Banton. One show in particular caught not only scorn but also the eye of Herman J. Mankiewicz, whose New Yorker essay on the topic is reproduced below. The show was titled “The Good Bad Woman,” written by William J. McNally, and it opened on 9 February 1925 and ran for 16 performances, during which time it was never out of the news as producer William A. Brady repeatedly offered to shutter it if the other controversial shows also closed their doors. The attention it received through articles in the NY Times and NY World contributed to what longevity it had. Even after it was revised and re-opened later that year, it ran for only 64 more performances.

Herman J. Mankiewicz

Could its plot have had something to do with that? Here’s the summary from Thomas S. Hischak’s exhaustive Broadway Plays and Musicals: Descriptions and Essential Facts of More Than 14,000 Shows through 2007: “Ex-streetwalker Eileen Donovan (Helen MacKellar) gets a job working in the home of the Capper family and cannot resist seducing the son Archie (Donald Cameron). She gets pregnant but the baby dies. Eileen feels she ought to make it up to Archie so she goads her father (Walter Laws) into killing the cruel Dr. Carlyle Lawler (Robert Strange), knowing that Archie loves the doctor's wife June (Edith King). With Archie and June united, Eileen sets off to do other good deeds.”

Here’s Mankiewicz’s take on the subject. (The word in question probably was "goddamn.")

                                                                            

AS THESE LINES ARE WRITTEN, District Attorney Banton is involved in the study of thirteen plays that have been pointed out to him by police officials as dirty and calculated to ruin the morals of the community. The glass is low and there are all the signs of an approaching censorship. And so, before it is too late, it would be well to hang the grand cord of the order of Sucker Grandissimus about the neck of the World, which will be entitled forevermore to point to the Democratic Convention of 1924 and to the Censorship Agitation of 1925 as its two great contributions to the civic life of New York during the second decade of the Twentieth Century.
   
About two weeks ago, a dirty little play called “A Good Bad Woman” was produced by William A. Brady at the Comedy Theatre. Its opening night audience in part laughed and in part slept at its laborious obscenities. The play was well on its way to an early grave. Whereupon the next day Miss Helen MacKellar, star of the play, let it be known that she intended to give up her role because of its impure nature.

Helen MacKellar

But too many people remembered in time that she must have found out something of its nature during the period of rehearsals for her protest to be quite effective in a publicity way. (The final perfect comment on Miss MacKellar's statement is to be found in a news story in the Times, which reads: “Miss MacKellar ... played the role again last night to a crowded house, but with lines slightly modified. She particularly objected to using one word, which occurred seven times in her part. On her threat to withdraw, the management compromised, it is said. The word was struck out of four lines and allowed to stand in three.”)

And so, the day after the MacKellar statement, the World brightened up its first page with a story about the dirty play and a picture of its producer, who was allowed to say that he had made the production “for a purpose.” (The picture of Mr. Brady, by the way, was one of him in what might have been his confirmation suit, and the caption for it read “For Clean Plays.”)

The Brady statement had been received by other newspaper offices—at the office of the Times, for example, it was reduced to five or six lines, with the added comment that Broadway did not take his agitation seriously and believed that his play would continue to run as long as newspapers gave space to his denunciation of its dirty nature.

William A. Brady, as drawn by
Miguel Covarrubias

The World, however, swallowed the Brady bait. And from its vigorous news treatment of the story, plus its editorial denunciations, has come the agitation that has forced the District Attorney to move to action. The World, apparently just the least bit conscious, but too late, of what it has done, is beginning to demand a censorship by way of the Citizens’ Jury, with which the actors are to co-operate. It holds the weird point of view that a jury made up of Mrs. Jays and other great public-spirited people is superior to the average jury drawn by the court and armed with legal powers.

The business of a manager appealing to the newspapers for stories about the dirtiness of his productions is not new. Earl Carroll, last Fall, did it and met with moderate success. However, he has a just grievance when he thinks of the small amount of space he received in comparison with the front page headlines and picture the World rushed to give Brady.—H.J.M.

– Herman J. Mankiewicz, The New Yorker, 28 February 1925