Good Gracious Annabelle

Good Gracious Annabelle (1916), a play by Clare Kummer. [Republic Theatre, 111 perf.] The group of young women who have gathered at the posh St. Swithen Hotel are nice, but they are all broke. So when one of them, a pert lady named Annabelle Leigh (Lola Fisher), suggests they sign on as servants at the Wimbledon mansion on Long Island, they agree. Annabelle was married to a strange mining man when she was sixteen, but she ran away. He has continued to support her, although she regularly lives beyond her means. The new servants find the mansion has been rented in Wimbledon's absence by a handsome, rich miner, John Rawson (Walter Hampden). When Wimbledon returns unexpectedly, he and Rawson prove to be rivals, at first only in business but soon for Annabelle. Rawson wins, turning out to be not merely a decent man but Annabelle's old husband as well. Kummer had originally approached producer Arthur Hopkins, hoping to have her script turned into a musical, but he liked the piece as written. Alexander Woollcott described the farce as belonging to “the leisure class,” adding, “It is idle with a lorgnette and orange pekoe idleness. At times it is a little vague within, but it is always vogue without.” The play might have run longer but for the depression that hit Broadway immediately before the country's entry into World War I. Ironically, when the show was finally turned into a musical, called Annie Dear (1924) with Florenz Ziegfeld as producer, it failed.