What Price Glory?

What Price Glory? (1924), a play by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings. [ Plymouth Theatre, 435 perf.] Captain Flagg (Louis Wolheim) and First Sergeant Quirt (William Boyd) are career soldiers and longtime friendly enemies. Quirt is put in charge of Flagg's company while the Captain is given a leave in Paris. In Flagg's absence, Quirt has a fling with Charmaine (Leyla Georgie), the local village girl whom Flagg considers his own. When, on Flagg's return, Charmaine's father announces that his daughter has been ruined, Flagg demands Quirt marry the girl. The plans are set aside on orders for the company to return to the front. Quirt is wounded and, while convalescing, briefly resumes his affair. But a second call comes to head for the front. Flagg leaves, yelling to Charmaine to put her money in real estate, while Quirt, equally unconcerned about the girl, follows, shouting, “Hey, Flagg, wait for baby!” In its day the Arthur Hopkins offering was judged a breakaway landmark in the stage's battle for honesty and genuinely reflected speech. Alexander Woollcott noted in the Sun, “No war play written in the English language . . . has been so true, so alive, so salty and so richly satisfying,” while Heywood Broun of the World called it “far and away the most credible of all war plays.” It has remained the finest American drama about World War I, although its outspokenness now seems tame and its realism streaked with a touch of romance.

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