The Demi-Virgin

The Demi-Virgin
Broadway program
Written by	Avery Hopwood
Date premiered	October 18, 1921 (1921-10-18)
Place premiered	Times Square Theatre
Original language	English
Genre	Farce

The Demi-Virgin is a play written by Avery Hopwood. Producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where it was a hit during the 1921–22 season. The play is a bedroom farce about a former couple, both movie actors, whose marriage was so brief that the press speculated about whether the bride was still a virgin. Because it contained suggestive dialog and the female cast wore revealing clothes, the production was considered very risqué at the time. Reviewers generally panned it, and local authorities attempted to censor it. The Broadway production resulted in obscenity charges being brought against Woods. A magistrate ruled the play was obscene, but a grand jury declined to indict Woods. Woods actively promoted the controversy to increase box office, and the play was one of the most successful of the season.

Plot

Avery Hopwood wrote the play in 1921.

The story centers on the character Gloria Graham, a silent film actress. Prior to the start of the story, Graham was married to fellow actor Wally Deane. On their wedding night, he answered a late-night call from a former girlfriend, which caused Graham to storm out and go to Reno for a divorce. The brevity of the union leads gossip columnists to speculate about whether the marriage was consummated. They label Graham the "demi-virgin".^[1] Forced to reunite to complete a movie, the pair bicker and each claim to have new lovers. The first act culminates with the couple being required to film a love scene together.

In the second act, the movie cast are attending a decadent Hollywood party. Graham decides to seduce Deane to prove to his new fiancee that he is unfaithful, but leave him unfulfilled. However, Deane is prepared for her plan, and the act ends with him telling her to prepare to fulfill her "marriage debt" to him.^[2]

The third act continues in Graham's bedroom. In the play's most famous scene, a group of Graham's actress friends interrupt her attempted reunion with Deane by coming to her room to play "Stripping Cupid", a card-based strip game that results in them removing pieces of clothing onstage.^[3][4] Graham's friends leave when they realize Deane is there, allowing the couple to continue their tryst. In a final plot twist, Deane produces a telegram from his lawyer revealing that the Reno divorce is not valid, so the rendezvous between Graham and Deane is not adulterous.^[5][6]

History

Background and writing

Prior to writing The Demi-Virgin, Hopwood was well established as an author of bedroom comedies. His past efforts in the genre included Fair and Warmer, produced by Edgar Selwyn in 1915, and The Gold Diggers, produced by David Belasco in 1919. Producer Albert H. Woods had an even longer track record in the genre, starting with The Girl from Rector's in 1909. Such material had been very successful for Woods, who commissioned originals and also adapted foreign farces, and for Hopwood, who was one of the most prolific authors in the genre.^[7][8] Their first work together was The Girl in the Limousine in 1919, which Hopwood revised from an earlier script by Wilson Collison. Hopwood subsequently helped revise Ladies' Night in 1920 and Getting Gertie's Garter in 1921. The Demi-Virgin was Hopwood's first play written for Woods without a collaborator. Hopwood was inspired by an earlier theatrical adaptation of the novel Les Demi-vierges by Marcel Prévost, but used little from it beyond the title.^[2]

Hopwood's completion of The Demi-Virgin coincided with a scandal involving Hollywood actor Fatty Arbuckle, who was accused of manslaughter after he supposedly raped a young actress who later died. (He was eventually acquitted.) Although the play was largely written before the scandal broke, Hopwood incorporated references to Arbuckle in the first produced version of the script. These references were toned down after preview audiences reacted poorly.^[9]

Broadway production and legal problems

Magistrate William McAdoo ruled the play was obscene.

Prior to the Broadway debut, preview performances occurred in several cities. The first was in Pittsburgh, where the play began a scheduled one-week run on September 26, 1921. It was closed early on the last day by the local Director of Public Safety, who objected to some of the dialog.^[10][11] The tryouts then moved to Stamford, Connecticut and Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they proceeded without incident.^[8]

The play's Broadway opening was at the Times Square Theatre on October 18, 1921. It ran there for a few weeks until Woods transferred it to his own Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre on November 7.^[12]

On November 3, 1921, Woods and Hopwood were called to the chambers of William McAdoo, the Chief Magistrate of the New York City's magistrates' court, to respond to complaints about the play. Woods would not make any changes to address the complaints, so a formal hearing began on November 7.^[10] Woods retained famed attorney Max Steuer as his counsel.^[13] John S. Sumner, executive secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, testified against the show.^[10][14] On November 14, McAdoo ruled that the play was obscene, describing it as "coarsely indecent, flagrantly and suggestively immoral, impure in word and action."^[10][15] Woods was placed on bail, and the case was sent to the grand jury for an indictment on a misdemeanor charge of staging an obscene exhibition. The grand jury heard the case on December 23, 1921, but dismissed it that same day, even though they had heard only witnesses favoring the prosecution.^[10][16][17]

As the obscenity case proceeded, the city's Commissioner of Licenses, John Gilchrist, informed Woods that he found the play "indecent and subversive of public morals" and would revoke the theater's operating license if the production continued.^[18] Gilchrist's effort failed when a New York state appeals court ruled in February 1922 that he did not have the legal authority to revoke a theater license once it had been granted.^[17][19][20]

After the Broadway production ended on June 3, 1922, Woods launched four road companies to present the play in other cities.^[17]

Cast and characters

For the role of Gloria Graham, Woods cast Hazel Dawn, who was then starring in his production of Getting Gertie's Garter. She had previously starred in another Woods-produced bedroom farce, Up in Mabel's Room.^[21]

The characters and cast from the Broadway production are given below:

Hazel Dawn starred in the Broadway production.

Reception

Reviews

The play ran for just under seven months at the Eltinge Theatre.

Contemporary reviews were generally negative. Many reviewers condemned the play as immoral due to its sexual situations and suggestive dialog. The costumes of its female cast members, who mostly wore revealing gowns or scanty bedroom attire, also attracted attention. Although a few reviewers complimented the cast for being attractive and fashionable, others considered them inappropriately risqué, especially in the "Stripping Cupid" scene.^[8] The Pittsburgh Post described the preview production as "reeking with indecencies".^[11] The reviewer for the New York Evening Post gave the Broadway production only three sentences, claiming that there was no need for "wasting space" on the repulsive "concoction" created by Hopwood and Woods.^[12] Drama critic George Jean Nathan called the play "trash".^[23] Dorothy Parker cracked that Dawn had "gone from bed to worse" by being in the production.^[24] The reviewer for Brooklyn Life said it was "genuinely vulgar", shocking the audience from beginning to end with more frequency than a burlesque show.^[25] In The Evening World, Charles Darnton also compared the show to "cheap burlesque", saying it was filled with "old jokes" but few laughs.^[26]

Some critics said the play's reputation for immorality was overstated, contending it was harmless or even boring. The Sun, for example, said it was "not as shocking as Manager Woods would like theatre goers to believe".^[12] The New York Clipper said the plot was more pure than the realities of Hollywood and relied on "sweet little risque 'bits' and a super-abundance of suggestive lines" to keep audience interest.^[27] In The Washington Post, Percy Hammond described it as entertaining and "as roguish as a nude cadaver", saying Hopwood had "never been wittier".^[28] Burns Mantle said Hopwood and Woods had substituted uninteresting stripping and "salacious repartee" for better plotting and humor.^[29]

Box office

Ads for a touring production traded on the play's notoriety.

The concerns of critics did not stop the play from being a box office success. Several reviewers anticipated that focusing on the play's salacious content would increase patronage.^[12] Woods exploited the controversy over the play's content in his advertisements for it. When Woods was taken to court, The New York Times decided he could no longer use the name of the play in any ads placed with the paper. Woods worked around the problem by promoting the large number of people who had seen an unnamed production at his theater, with daily updates to the totals. In ads where he could mention the name, he traded on its reputation with suggestive taglines, such as one inviting audiences to "complete your education" by seeing the play. Some ads suggested the reader should see the play to be informed for the widespread discussion of it. In others, it was declared "the most famous play in America".^[10][30] News coverage of legal actions also provided considerable free publicity. Variety reported that lines for the Broadway production stretched around the corner after it was condemned in the magistrates' court.^[31] By the time the production closed, it was one of the most successful of that season, having sold over 200,000 tickets across 268 performances.^[17][22][32]

Legacy

The Demi-Virgin, like most of Hopwood's farces, was commercially successful but had no lasting literary significance.^[33] Even as a popular entertainment, the play's appeal was limited by cultural context. Before World War I, in a time with more conservative sexual mores, the production would not have gone forward. A decade later, the sexual attitudes conveyed in the play would have been considered too unsophisticated for Broadway.^[34] As early as the end of 1921, Woods was suggesting a seven-year hiatus in the production of bedroom farces, saying the genre had become stale.^[35][36] In 1925, Hopwood confessed to the audience at another play that he thought The Demi-Virgin was boring and he was tired of writing faddish entertainment.^[37] The play's script was never published and no movie adaptation was made.^[1][38]

The legal battle over whether The Demi-Virgin was obscene gave new impetus to ongoing controversies about censorship. Conservatives called for new anti-obscenity legislation, while their opponents warned of the dangers of state censorship.^[36] Among producers, the legal victories achieved by Woods suggested new opportunities. In 1923, Broadway producer Earl Carroll began his Vanities revue, featuring dozens of women in costumes considered daring at the time. Later that same year, J. J. Shubert opened a revue called Artists and Models, which included an act with topless female models.^[39]

References

Works cited

• Bader, Arno L. (December 5, 1959). "Avery Hopwood, Dramatist". Quarterly Review: A Journal of University Perspectives. 66 (10): 60–68. 
• Bordman, Gerald (1995). American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1914–1930. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509078-0. OCLC 30356203. 
• Darnton, Charles (October 19, 1921). "The New Plays: The Demi-Virgin Like Cheap Burlesque". The Evening World. 62 (21,874). p. 28 – via Newspapers.com. 
• Fitzpatrick, Kevin C. (2013). A Journey Into Dorothy Parker's New York (2nd ed.). Berkeley, California: Roaring Forties Press. ISBN 978-1-938901-07-2. OCLC 812068248. 
• Friedman, Andrea (2000). Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New York City, 1909–1945. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11067-7. OCLC 43095889. 
• Hammond, Percy (October 30, 1921). "The New York Theater". The Washington Post (16,573). p. 60 – via Newspapers.com. 
• Houchin, John H. (2003). Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81819-2. OCLC 57309034. 
• Kaufman, Julian M. (2003). "A. H. Woods, Producer: A Thrill a Minute, A Laugh a Second!". In Gewirtz, Arthur & Kolb, James J. (eds.). Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. ISBN 0-313-32467-0. OCLC 834126701. 
• Mantle, Burns (October 30, 1921). "New York's New Plays Seem Exceedingly Dull". The Courier-Journal. 134 (19,296). Louisville, Kentucky. pp. 3.1, 3.3 – via Newspapers.com. 
• Nathan, George Jean (June 1922). "Chronique Scandaleuse". The Smart Set. 68 (2): 131–137. 
• Sharrar, Jack F. (1998) [1989]. Avery Hopwood: His Life and Plays. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10963-4. OCLC 924828273. 
• Shteir, Rachel (2004). Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512750-1. OCLC 57062132. 
• Wainscott, Ronald Harold (1997). The Emergence of the Modern American Theater, 1914–1929. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06776-3. OCLC 35128122. 

External links

• The Demi-Virgin at the Internet Broadway Database