Seven Keys to Baldpate

Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913), a comedy by George M. Cohan. [Astor Theatre, 320 perf.] Baldpate is a summer hotel, normally closed in the winter. But when writer William Hallowell Magee (Wallace Eddinger) bets the owner that he can write a work in twenty‐four hours if left alone there, the owner agrees to open the closed hotel for him. As he starts to write, Magee finds he is not alone. Come to the hotel are a gun‐toting man, a pretty young newspaper reporter with whom Magee falls in love at first sight, an adventuress, and some politicians and a railroad magnate looking to make a secret deal. Shots and screams galore seem to interrupt Magee's work. But when the twenty‐four hours are up, Magee has finished his piece. Were the interruptions a joke staged by the owner of the hotel, or were they simply the story that Magee was writing? Based on the novel by Earl Derr Biggers, the play remained a favorite with summer stock and other similar groups for decades.