*PRESTON STURGES RARE 1930 STRICTLY DISHONORABLE BROADWAY PROGRAM*

Description

He was Hollywood's greatest writer and director of screwball comedies. A rare original March 1930 program for Preston Sturges's hit Broadway show, Strictly Dishonorable. Forty pages. Dimensions seven and three quarters by five and a quarter inches. Light wear otherwise fine.
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From Wikipedia:
Strictly Dishonorable
is a
romantic comedy
play
written by
Preston Sturges
and first produced on
Broadway
in 1929.
[1]
It was adapted for the screen twice,
first in 1931
, then
again in 1951
. The play was Sturges' second Broadway production, and the first of his plays to be made into a film.
[2]
The Attic Theater Company revived the show at The Flea Theater in the summer of 2014.
Sturges wrote the play shortly after being fired as the assistant stage manager for a road production of play called
Frankie and Johnny
. At liberty in Chicago, he started by writing two lines of dialogue: "What are your intentions?" "Strictly dishonorable." He wrote the play quickly, in about six days of work, and called it originally "Come, Come, Isabelle," giving the ingenue his grandmother's maiden name, Isabelle Perry.
[3]
Sturges submitted the play to producer
Brock Pemberton
, whom he had worked for as a stage manager, and Pemberton accepted it. Rehearsals took three weeks and there was an additional week out of town, during which Sturges made numerous changes at Pemberton's insistence. The opening night audience was not responsive and Sturges, waiting at the back of the house, was concerned that the comedy was not going over. He left before the curtain came down and went out to drink, deliberately not reading the reviews. It was not until he called Pemberton in the morning to ask for two tickets for a friend that he found out that the play was a smash hit, garnering rave reviews.
[3]
The play had opened on September 18, 1929 – although Sturges recalled it as opening on the 19th
[3]
– at the
Avon Theatre
and ran until January 1931, logging 557 performances. It was directed by Pemberton and
Antoinette Perry
, after whom the
Tony Awards
are named.
The success of
Strictly Dishonorable
, which earned him over 0,000,
[4]
changed Sturges' life immediately:
The aura of sudden celebrity bestowed on me by
Strictly Dishonorable
attracted photographers, reporters, gossip columnists, professional panhandlers, producers, job offers, and a written demand from my biological father, Mr. Biden, for immediate repayment of the sums he has dispensed on my behalf when I was about a year old.
[3]
Offers came from film world, so Sturges picked up some fast money by writing film scripts. Shortly after, a play from his trunk,
Recapture
, went into production and opened to receive "the most violently destructive notices I had seen in years."
[3]
Broadway cast
[
edit
]
The opening night cast of
Strictly Dishonorable
was:
John Altieri as Giovanni
Carl Anthony as Judge Dempsey
Tullio Carminati
as Count Di Ruvo
Louis Jean Heydt
as Henry Greene
Muriel Kirkland as Isabelle Parry
Edward J. McNamara as Patrolman Mulligan
William Ricciardi
as Tomaso Antiovi
Marius Rogati as Mario
Cast notes:
William Ricciardi was the only actor from the Broadway cast to play his role in the 1931 film adaptation.
Preston Sturges
(born
Edmund Preston Biden
; August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. In 1941, he won the
Oscar
for
Best Original Screenplay
for the film
The Great McGinty
, his first of three nominations in the category.
Sturges took the
screwball comedy
format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. It is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene.
Prior to Sturges, other figures in Hollywood (such as
Charlie Chaplin
,
D. W. Griffith
, and
Frank Capra
) had directed films from their own scripts, however Sturges is often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his own scripts, at a time when those roles were separate. Sturges famously sold the story for
The Great McGinty
to
Paramount Pictures
for , in return for being allowed to direct the film.