Producer Oliver Morosco got rich quick with the play, The Bird of Paradise, in 1911. This play was written by Richard Walton Tully, and Morosco first produced it with Bessie Barriscale in the lead role in Los Angeles. The next step was New York, where Laurette Taylor played the lead--her biggest success until Peg O' My Heart (another Morosco production) the following year.
Morosco sent a company--sometimes two companies--of The Bird of Paradise on tour every year from 1912 through 1922,
The Bird of Paradise was the subject of the longest legal battle in the history of the American theatre when Mrs. Grace A. Fendler sued Morosco and Tully for alleged plagiarism shortly after the play was produced on Broadway. The suit was eventually decided in favor of the latter when the mother of William Randolph Hearst declared that Tully had written the first draft of the play in her California hacienda. The suit, however, was financially draining.
"And a typical Morosco cast" was the line that many advertisements for Morosco produced plays and shows bore in the 1910s and '20s. In 1917, the Shuberts named their newly built theatre on West 45th Street the "Morosco," who had helped them break the virtual monopoly of the Theatrical Syndicate. The opening show was Morosco's musical, Canary Cottage. (The theatre was torn down in 1982.)
He was one of the most consistently successful producers in the history of the American stage, equally at home with plays and musicals. Lombardi Ltd., Help Wanted, and One of Us, were among his many straight plays, while his musicals included Pretty Mrs. Smith, So Long Letty, Linger Longer Letty, and Love Dreams.
Morosco's fall began when he became involved with real estate deals like "Morosco Town," for which he purchased land in California. The idea was to produce plays and motion pictures on the land for about half the usual cost. Morosco wound up declaring personal bankruptcy in 1926, with liabilities of $1,033,000 and assets of $200.
Some of Morosco's other troubles centered around women; he was married four times and became a helpless alcoholic years before his death in 1945.
Morosco's story may be the greatest rise-and-fall story in the history of the American theatre.
Dillingham
Charles B. Dillingham is not a name most people--even theatre goers--know today. He was, however, one of Broadway's top producers in the 1920s.
He was an excellent producer, having been associated with Charles Frohman. (Frohman, a legendary producer and director, went down on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by the Germans in 1917, bringing the U.S. into the war in Europe.) Dillingham produced hit after hit on Broadway--The Little Princess, Miss Dolly Dollars, Miss 1917, A Bill of Divorcement, Good Times, Marilyn Miller in Sunny, Fred Stone in Criss Cross, and many others.
Dillingham, like many others, fell from grace. In 1927, he produced a show titled Lucky, starring Mary Eaton (best known today for her role as "Polly Potter" in the Paramount film version of The Cocoanuts, starring the Four Marx Brothers). Dillingham reportedly invested $250,000 of his own money in that show--a great amount of money to invest in any one show at that time . Lucky was a bomb. Dillingham went on; New Faces of 1934, the first of Leonard Sillman's series of New Faces, was co-produced by Dillingham. It was not commercially successful, and Dillingham died shortly after the show opened.
In his day, Charles B. Dillingham was a king, a charming man who cut a wide and most respectable swath in the Broadway theatre of his time.. Now he is forgotten, Alas, such is the case with almost everybody in that most ephemeral of glamour spots, the stage.
Here's to you, Mr. Dillingham.
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