The Royal Family

Royal Family, The (1927), a comedy by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. [Selwyn Theatre, 343 perf.] The Cavendishes are the greatest acting family in America, presided over by the aging Fanny Cavendish (Haidee Wright). Her daughter, Julie (Ann Andrews), is the leading contemporary actress, while Julie's daughter, Gwen (Sylvia Field), is a promising ingenue. Both Julie and Gwen are toying with marriage and with abandoning the theatre. Fanny's dashingly handsome son, Tony (Otto Kruger), could have been the greatest performer of all, but he prefers the celebrity that comes with being a film star and wild affairs with women, so his escapades keep him perpetually on the run. Fanny's brother Herbert Dean (Orlando Daly) is a fine farceur and former matinee idol who is fighting the ravages of age and of a faltering career. Hovering over the family is the great producer Oscar Wolfe (Jefferson De Angelis). For all their complaints about their lives, the call of the theatre is irresistible, so Julie leaves her own problems to rush off to meet a curtain and Fanny quietly dies while planning yet another tour. Jed Harris produced this uproarious send‐up of the Barrymore and the Drew families that infuriated Ethel Barrymore, butBrooks Atkinson of the Times felt the authors had “toyed entertainingly and absorbingly with the madness of show folk and the fatal glamour of the footlights.” The play has enjoyed numerous revivals, most memorably a 1975 production directed by Ellis Rabb that featured Rosemary Harris, Eva Le Gallienne, George Grizzard, and Sam Levene.