The Famous Mrs. Fair

Famous Mrs. Fair, The (1919), a play by James Forbes. [ Henry Miller Theatre, 343 perf.] Nancy Fair (Blanche Bates), having served as an ambulance driver in World War I and earned a Croix de Guerre for her bravery, returns after the armistice to find a lucrative contract for a lecture series awaiting her. Being an ardent feminist, Nancy would accept the offer, but she gradually realizes that in her absence her family has drifted away from her. Her husband (Henry Miller) has been paying too much attention to a neighboring widow; her daughter, Sylvia (Margalo Gillmore), has become rebellious and has taken up with an ambitious, loose‐moraled young man; and her son, Alan (Jack Devereaux), seems all at sea and loves a stenographer. Matters come to a head when Sylvia tries to elope, and Mrs. Fair is brought to her senses. She decides to devote her time to her family and forget her feminist inclinations. Hailed by Burns Mantle as “the most timely of the post‐bellum dramas and easily the most entertaining,” the A. L. Erlanger production opened to largely ecstatic notices. Although now something of a period piece, it remains interesting for its rueful observations on feminism, the incipient flapper rage, and upper‐middle‐class social mores of its day.