Philip Barry
Encyclopedia
Philip James Quinn Barry (June 18, 1896 – December 3, 1949) was an American
playwright born in Rochester, New York
.
, New York
to James Corbett Barry and Mary Agnes Quinn Barry. James would die from appendicitis
a year after Philip's birth, and his father's marble and tile business faltered from then on. His oldest brother, Edmund, who was 16 at the time, left school to take over the business and become something of a father for Philip.
His play The Youngest follows a true story that actually happened to Barry. In 1910, he discovered that New York State laws that he was entitled to the entire family estate when his mother had to sell off some property. He claimed later that he never intended to keep the money. After clerical service in London during World War I
and having earned his B.A.
from Yale University
, it was 1919 when he took advantage of the anomaly. Before signing over the estate, his mother and two elder brothers wanted him to stay with the family in Rochester. He convinced his family to let him take George Pierce Baker
's renowned Workshop 47 at Harvard University
.
.
But in 1919, when he returned from London, the Yale Dramatic Club put on his one-act play, Autonomy. By the time he had enrolled in Baker's class by the end of the year, he was spending all of his time writing plays. His first play for Baker was A Punch for Judy in Cambridge
, Massachusetts
in the spring 1921. Even though it was not a professional production, it went up at the Morosco Theatre
for two productions (which would later be the site for the posthumously premiere of Second Threshold in 1951). Then the Harvard workshop took it on tour to Worcester
, Utica
, Buffalo
, Cleveland, and Columbus
, but it failed to grab the attention and backing of a New York producer. Robert E. Sherwood
met him and thought he was a "exasperating young twirp". Both Sherwood and Robert Benchley
would become personal friends and professional colleagues, especially Sherwood who would later finish writing Second Threshold.
While back in Cambridge, he got engaged to Ellen Semple but was determined to make it as a playwright before he settled down. She remained in New York and he in Cambridge, and he wrote The Jilts which reflected his own life's problems about how marital obligations might thwart an artistic career. It was originally titled The Thing He Wanted to Do and in 1922 it won Herndon Prize as the best play written in Baker's workshop. Then on July 15, he and Semple got married. The play would later be renamed You and I, and would open on Broadway in 1923 and would later be included (along with 8 future plays) in Burns Mantle
's Best Plays series. It ran at the Belmont Theatre in New York for 170 performances followed by a successful tour and many productions in college and regional theaters. 1923 also marked the birth of his first son Philip Semple Barry. The Youngest would follow the next year with a 104 performance run.
Joseph Patrick Roppolo noted that his next play, In a Garden, served as a prototype of the Barry play in which a gracious tone seems at odds with the often disturbing implications. The play has similar elements to Luigi Pirandello
works. The final scene also resembles A Doll's House
scene with Nora Helmer leaving Torvald. The show contains references to Sigmund Freud
's theories on the unconscious mind
and phallic symbolism. Both W. David Sievers and David C. Gild thought the show was an "innovative 'psychodrama' that enacts therapeutic Freudian techniques in a theatrical context", a method they also find in such later plays as Hotel Universe and Here Come the Clowns.
Even though he knew it "would probably ruin the man who produced it" because of its calculated departures from Broadway formulas, White Wings went up in 1926 and failed. The show was seen as a precursor to Thornton Wilder
's The Skin of Our Teeth
. The show follows a group of proud street cleaners at the turn of the twentieth century and the theme in the play is one of the greats in modern drama: the increasing mechanization of life. Archie Inch, the story's protagonist, is caught between the "White Wings" or the men who clean up after horse-drawn carriages and his sweetheart Mary Todd, who loves her father and the vehicles he has designed in the emergence of the automobile. There is a lot of symbolism used in this play, with the horses representing tradition and motorcars representing progress. The shows ending is a happy one, and unlike Eugene O'Neill
's The Hairy Ape
and Dynamo
, Elmer Rice
's The Adding Machine
, Ernst Toller
and Georg Kaiser
works, this one was weak in comparison due to its comedic resolution. The show was having a successful run after three weeks, but the Booth Theatre
had another show that was opening, so Barry and producer Winthrop Ames
had to absorb the loss from the limited 27 performance run. Also in 1926, he had his second son, Jonathan Peter.
In 1927, Barry returned to France and began work on two new plays. Paris Bound
had an outstanding 234 performance run and it became his first hit. His other play, John, did not bode so well. It lasted under two weeks. The writing was cited as being to grandiose and mundane, and the casting was another thought as to why it did not succeed. It had Yiddish actor Jacob Ben-Ami as John and British actress Constance Collier
as Herodias. He then strove to write a crowd pleaser, Cock Robin , with Rice, whom he had met enroute to Cannes
aboard the RMS Tuscania. The show would run for 100 performances.
His next show, originally titled The Dollar, was dropped in favor of Holiday
, and it ran for 230 performances.
Hotel Universe only lasted for 81 performances and added to the financial woes of the Theatre Guild. The show is set in a villa in southern France, and it contains six unhappy characters in search of meaning if not an author, though in effect they find one in Stephen Field, the aging invalid whose lonely daughter, Ann, they have all come to cheer up. When Stephen is shown in the play in the later half, it is discovered that the others are suffering from suicidal disillusionment and unresolved pasts. Each visitor begins to act out roles based on past traumas, similar to those developed for clinical use in the 1920s by Jacob L. Moreno
. After Eleanor Flexner
saw it, she said its philosophizing was "little more than a jaunt to a Never-Never land."
Tomorrow and Tomorrow came out in 1931, and it was compared favorably to Eugene O'Neill
's Strange Interlude
. The story was based on Kings II 4:8-37
, where a childless Shunammite woman is rewarded with a son after feeding the prophet Elisha. The woman in Barry's play, Eve Redman, is the young wife of a businessman whose grandfather founded the college in the Indiana town where they live. The prophet is Dr. Nicholas Hay, a young psychologist who is visiting. He gives lectures at the college, and advocates education there be open to women, an opportunity Eve seizes. He teaches her the "science of the emotions", and she changes her outlook. They fall in love and eventually produce the child that Eve has always longed for, the one that her husband Gail, apparently cannot give her. Gail believes the child is his though.
Though remembered for his comedies
about manners
, he also wrote serious drama
s, often on religious
themes
. His 1927 play John is about the Baptist
, and Barry himself described his 1938 allegory Here Come the Clowns as a study of "the battle with evil," in which his hero, Clancy, "at last finds God
in the will of man." Many of Barry's plays were adapted for television
in the 1950s.
His best known work is The Philadelphia Story (1939), which was made into a popular 1940 film starring Katharine Hepburn
, Cary Grant
, and James Stewart
. Hepburn, a close friend of Barry, had appeared in the play on Broadway
, and bought the movie rights
(with the help of her ex-boyfriend Howard Hughes
), and successfully restarted her previously flagging Hollywood career with the film version. The movie was also remade as High Society
, starring Sinatra, Crosby, Kelly and Armstrong.
Barry's play Holiday was filmed twice, the best known being George Cukor
's 1938 version
starring Grant and Hepburn.
Philip Barry died in New York City
in 1949, aged 53, of a heart attack.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
playwright born in Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
.
Early life
Philip Barry was born on June 18, 1896 in RochesterRochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to James Corbett Barry and Mary Agnes Quinn Barry. James would die from appendicitis
Appendicitis
Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is classified as a medical emergency and many cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of the risk of rupture leading to...
a year after Philip's birth, and his father's marble and tile business faltered from then on. His oldest brother, Edmund, who was 16 at the time, left school to take over the business and become something of a father for Philip.
His play The Youngest follows a true story that actually happened to Barry. In 1910, he discovered that New York State laws that he was entitled to the entire family estate when his mother had to sell off some property. He claimed later that he never intended to keep the money. After clerical service in London during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and having earned his B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, it was 1919 when he took advantage of the anomaly. Before signing over the estate, his mother and two elder brothers wanted him to stay with the family in Rochester. He convinced his family to let him take George Pierce Baker
George Pierce Baker
George Pierce Baker was an American educator in the field of drama.Baker graduated in the Harvard University class of 1887, and taught in the English Department at Harvard from 1888 until 1924. He started his "47 workshop" class in playwrighting in 1905. He was instrumental in creating the Harvard...
's renowned Workshop 47 at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Writing career
It started at the age of 9 when he had a story called Tab the Cat published by a Rochester newspaper. Only four years later he wrote a three-act drama called No Thoroughfare, which was also his first mature attempt in 1918, but both went unproduced. When he was at Yale, he focused on poetry and short fiction while he worked for the Yale Literary MagazineYale Literary Magazine
The Yale Literary Magazine, founded in 1836, is the oldest literary magazine in the United States and publishes poetry and fiction by Yale undergraduates twice per academic year.The magazine is published biannually...
.
But in 1919, when he returned from London, the Yale Dramatic Club put on his one-act play, Autonomy. By the time he had enrolled in Baker's class by the end of the year, he was spending all of his time writing plays. His first play for Baker was A Punch for Judy in Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
in the spring 1921. Even though it was not a professional production, it went up at the Morosco Theatre
Morosco Theatre
The Morosco Theatre was a legitimate theatre located at 217 West 45th Street in the heart of the theater district in midtown-Manhattan, New York, United States....
for two productions (which would later be the site for the posthumously premiere of Second Threshold in 1951). Then the Harvard workshop took it on tour to Worcester
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....
, Utica
Utica, New York
Utica is a city in and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 62,235 at the 2010 census, an increase of 2.6% from the 2000 census....
, Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, Cleveland, and Columbus
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
, but it failed to grab the attention and backing of a New York producer. Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
met him and thought he was a "exasperating young twirp". Both Sherwood and Robert Benchley
Robert Benchley
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor...
would become personal friends and professional colleagues, especially Sherwood who would later finish writing Second Threshold.
While back in Cambridge, he got engaged to Ellen Semple but was determined to make it as a playwright before he settled down. She remained in New York and he in Cambridge, and he wrote The Jilts which reflected his own life's problems about how marital obligations might thwart an artistic career. It was originally titled The Thing He Wanted to Do and in 1922 it won Herndon Prize as the best play written in Baker's workshop. Then on July 15, he and Semple got married. The play would later be renamed You and I, and would open on Broadway in 1923 and would later be included (along with 8 future plays) in Burns Mantle
Burns Mantle
Robert Burns Mantle was a well-known American drama critic. He founded the Best Plays annual publication in 1920.. , The New York Times...
's Best Plays series. It ran at the Belmont Theatre in New York for 170 performances followed by a successful tour and many productions in college and regional theaters. 1923 also marked the birth of his first son Philip Semple Barry. The Youngest would follow the next year with a 104 performance run.
Joseph Patrick Roppolo noted that his next play, In a Garden, served as a prototype of the Barry play in which a gracious tone seems at odds with the often disturbing implications. The play has similar elements to Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
works. The final scene also resembles A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....
scene with Nora Helmer leaving Torvald. The show contains references to Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
's theories on the unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
and phallic symbolism. Both W. David Sievers and David C. Gild thought the show was an "innovative 'psychodrama' that enacts therapeutic Freudian techniques in a theatrical context", a method they also find in such later plays as Hotel Universe and Here Come the Clowns.
Even though he knew it "would probably ruin the man who produced it" because of its calculated departures from Broadway formulas, White Wings went up in 1926 and failed. The show was seen as a precursor to Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
's The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth is a play by Thornton Wilder which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It opened on October 15, 1942 at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway on November 18, 1942...
. The show follows a group of proud street cleaners at the turn of the twentieth century and the theme in the play is one of the greats in modern drama: the increasing mechanization of life. Archie Inch, the story's protagonist, is caught between the "White Wings" or the men who clean up after horse-drawn carriages and his sweetheart Mary Todd, who loves her father and the vehicles he has designed in the emergence of the automobile. There is a lot of symbolism used in this play, with the horses representing tradition and motorcars representing progress. The shows ending is a happy one, and unlike Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
's The Hairy Ape
The Hairy Ape
-Plot :The play tells the story of a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich...
and Dynamo
Dynamo (play)
Dynamo is a play in three acts written by Eugene O'Neill in 1929, each act is composed of three scenes.-Production history:The play, starring Glenn Anders and Claudette Colbert, opened on Broadway on February 11, 1929 and closed in March, after 50 performances...
, Elmer Rice
Elmer Rice
Elmer Rice was an American playwright. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1929 play, Street Scene.-Early years:...
's The Adding Machine
The Adding Machine
The Adding Machine is a 1923 play by Elmer Rice; it has been called "... a landmark of American Expressionism, reflecting the growing interest in this highly subjective and nonrealistic form of modern drama." The story focuses on Mr. Zero, an accountant at a large, faceless company. After 25 years...
, Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...
and Georg Kaiser
Georg Kaiser
Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, was a German dramatist.-Biography:Kaiser was born at Magdeburg....
works, this one was weak in comparison due to its comedic resolution. The show was having a successful run after three weeks, but the Booth Theatre
Booth Theatre
The Booth Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 222 West 45th Street in midtown-Manhattan, New York City.Architect Henry B. Herts designed the Booth and its companion Shubert Theatre as a back-to-back pair sharing a Venetian Renaissance-style façade...
had another show that was opening, so Barry and producer Winthrop Ames
Winthrop Ames
Winthrop Ames was an American theatre director and producer, playwright and screenwriter.For three decades at the beginning of the 20th century, Ames was an important force on Broadway, whose repertoire included directing and producing Shakespeare and classic plays, new plays, and revivals of...
had to absorb the loss from the limited 27 performance run. Also in 1926, he had his second son, Jonathan Peter.
In 1927, Barry returned to France and began work on two new plays. Paris Bound
Paris Bound
Paris Bound is a 1927 play by Philip Barry. It was made into a movie in 1929, directed by Edward H. Griffith and starring Ann Harding and Fredric March.- Plot :...
had an outstanding 234 performance run and it became his first hit. His other play, John, did not bode so well. It lasted under two weeks. The writing was cited as being to grandiose and mundane, and the casting was another thought as to why it did not succeed. It had Yiddish actor Jacob Ben-Ami as John and British actress Constance Collier
Constance Collier
Constance Collier was an English film actress and acting coach.-Life and career:Born Laura Constance Hardie, in Windsor, Berkshire, Collier made her stage debut at the age of 3, when she played Fairy Peasblossom in A Midsummer's Night Dream...
as Herodias. He then strove to write a crowd pleaser, Cock Robin , with Rice, whom he had met enroute to Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
aboard the RMS Tuscania. The show would run for 100 performances.
His next show, originally titled The Dollar, was dropped in favor of Holiday
Holiday (play)
Holiday is a 1928 play by Philip Barry. It was adapted for film twice. First in 1930, directed by Edward H. Griffith with Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Robert Ames and Hedda Hopper...
, and it ran for 230 performances.
Hotel Universe only lasted for 81 performances and added to the financial woes of the Theatre Guild. The show is set in a villa in southern France, and it contains six unhappy characters in search of meaning if not an author, though in effect they find one in Stephen Field, the aging invalid whose lonely daughter, Ann, they have all come to cheer up. When Stephen is shown in the play in the later half, it is discovered that the others are suffering from suicidal disillusionment and unresolved pasts. Each visitor begins to act out roles based on past traumas, similar to those developed for clinical use in the 1920s by Jacob L. Moreno
Jacob L. Moreno
Jacob Levy Moreno was a Jewish Romanian-born Austrian-American leading psychiatrist and psychosociologist, thinker and educator, the founder of psychodrama, and the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy...
. After Eleanor Flexner
Eleanor Flexner
Eleanor Flexner was a distinguished independent scholar and pioneer in what was to become the field of women’s studies...
saw it, she said its philosophizing was "little more than a jaunt to a Never-Never land."
Tomorrow and Tomorrow came out in 1931, and it was compared favorably to Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
's Strange Interlude
Strange Interlude
Strange Interlude is an experimental play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill finished the play in 1923, but it was not produced on Broadway until 1928, when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway...
. The story was based on Kings II 4:8-37
Books of Kings
The Book of Kings presents a narrative history of ancient Israel and Judah from the death of David to the release of his successor Jehoiachin from imprisonment in Babylon, a period of some 400 years...
, where a childless Shunammite woman is rewarded with a son after feeding the prophet Elisha. The woman in Barry's play, Eve Redman, is the young wife of a businessman whose grandfather founded the college in the Indiana town where they live. The prophet is Dr. Nicholas Hay, a young psychologist who is visiting. He gives lectures at the college, and advocates education there be open to women, an opportunity Eve seizes. He teaches her the "science of the emotions", and she changes her outlook. They fall in love and eventually produce the child that Eve has always longed for, the one that her husband Gail, apparently cannot give her. Gail believes the child is his though.
Though remembered for his comedies
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
about manners
Manners
In sociology, manners are the unenforced standards of conduct which demonstrate that a person is proper, polite, and refined. They are like laws in that they codify or set a standard for human behavior, but they are unlike laws in that there is no formal system for punishing transgressions, the...
, he also wrote serious drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
s, often on religious
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
themes
Theme (literature)
A theme is a broad, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character,...
. His 1927 play John is about the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
, and Barry himself described his 1938 allegory Here Come the Clowns as a study of "the battle with evil," in which his hero, Clancy, "at last finds God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
in the will of man." Many of Barry's plays were adapted for television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
in the 1950s.
His best known work is The Philadelphia Story (1939), which was made into a popular 1940 film starring Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
, Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
, and James Stewart
James Stewart (actor)
James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
. Hepburn, a close friend of Barry, had appeared in the play on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, and bought the movie rights
Film rights
Film rights are the rights under copyright law to make a derivative work—in this case, a film—derived from an item of intellectual property. Under U.S...
(with the help of her ex-boyfriend Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
), and successfully restarted her previously flagging Hollywood career with the film version. The movie was also remade as High Society
High Society
High Society is a musical film starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in VistaVision and Technicolor with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The movie was directed by Charles Walters and produced by Sol C. Siegel from a screenplay by John Patrick, based...
, starring Sinatra, Crosby, Kelly and Armstrong.
Barry's play Holiday was filmed twice, the best known being George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
's 1938 version
Holiday (1938 film)
Holiday is a 1938 is a film directed by George Cukor, a remake of the 1930 film of the same name. The film is a romantic comedy which tells the story of a man who has risen from humble beginnings only to be torn between his free-thinking lifestyle and the tradition of his wealthy fiancée's family...
starring Grant and Hepburn.
Philip Barry died in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1949, aged 53, of a heart attack.
Plays
- Autonomy, 1919
- A Punch for Judy, 1921
- You and I, 1923, filmed in 1931 as The BargainThe BargainThe Bargain is a 1914 Western film starring William S. Hart. It was the first Western starring Hart, who would go on to become the most popular Western actor of the silent film era. In 2010, it was added to the United States National Film Registry, where it joined another Hart Western, 1916's...
- The Youngest, 1924
- In a Garden, 1925
- White Wings, 1926
- Paris BoundParis BoundParis Bound is a 1927 play by Philip Barry. It was made into a movie in 1929, directed by Edward H. Griffith and starring Ann Harding and Fredric March.- Plot :...
, 1927, filmed in 1929 by Edward H. GriffithEdward H. GriffithEdward H. Griffith was an American motion picture director, screenwriter and producer. He directed 61 films from 1917 to 1946. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia and began his career in motion pictures as a screenwriter in 1916, and advanced to the position of a director of two-reelers... - John, 1927
- HolidayHoliday (play)Holiday is a 1928 play by Philip Barry. It was adapted for film twice. First in 1930, directed by Edward H. Griffith with Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Robert Ames and Hedda Hopper...
, 1928, filmed in 1930Holiday (1930 film)Holiday is a 1930 romantic comedy film which tells the story of a young man who is torn between his free-thinking lifestyle and the tradition of his wealthy fiancée's family. It stars Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Robert Ames and Hedda Hopper...
by Edward H. GriffithEdward H. GriffithEdward H. Griffith was an American motion picture director, screenwriter and producer. He directed 61 films from 1917 to 1946. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia and began his career in motion pictures as a screenwriter in 1916, and advanced to the position of a director of two-reelers...
, and in 1938Holiday (1938 film)Holiday is a 1938 is a film directed by George Cukor, a remake of the 1930 film of the same name. The film is a romantic comedy which tells the story of a man who has risen from humble beginnings only to be torn between his free-thinking lifestyle and the tradition of his wealthy fiancée's family...
by George CukorGeorge CukorGeorge Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and... - Cock Robin (play) (with Elmer RiceElmer RiceElmer Rice was an American playwright. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1929 play, Street Scene.-Early years:...
), 1928, filmed as Who Killed Cock Roobin? in 1938 - Hotel Universe, 1930
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 1931, filmed in 1932 by Richard WallaceRichard WallaceRichard Wallace may refer to:*Richard Alfred Wallace , Canadian politician and Northwest Territories MLA*Richard L. Wallace, American educator and chancellor of the University of Missouri...
- The Animal Kingdom, 1932, filmed in 1932 by Edward H. GriffithEdward H. GriffithEdward H. Griffith was an American motion picture director, screenwriter and producer. He directed 61 films from 1917 to 1946. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia and began his career in motion pictures as a screenwriter in 1916, and advanced to the position of a director of two-reelers...
, and as One More Tomorrow in 1946 by Peter GodfreyPeter GodfreyPeter Ronald Godfrey is an English former professional association football player. He played for Charlton Athletic, Exeter City and Gillingham between 1955 and 1967.-References:... - The Joyous Season, 1934
- Bright Star, 1935
- Spring Dance, 1936, filmed as Spring Madness in 1946 by S. Sylvan SimonS. Sylvan SimonS. Sylvan Simon was an American stage/film director and producer. He began his film career at Warner Bros. in 1935, directing screen tests. In 1937, he moved to MGM, where he worked on the Marx Brothers' The Big Store, supervising many of the slapstick sequences...
- Here Come the Clowns, 1938
- The Philadelphia StoryThe Philadelphia Story (play)The Philadelphia Story is a 1939 American comic play by Philip Barry. It tells the story of a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and an attractive journalist.-Production:...
, 1939, filmed in 1940 by George CukorGeorge CukorGeorge Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
, and in 1959 for TV - Liberty Jones, 1941
- Without LoveWithout LoveWithout Love is a 1942 play by Philip Barry, later made into a 1945 romantic comedy film starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. The film was directed by Harold S...
, 1942, filmed in 1945 by Harold S. BucquetHarold S. BucquetHarold S. Bucquet was an English film director. He directed 26 films between 1936 and 1945. His 1937 film Torture Money won an Academy Award for the Best Short Subject .... - Foolish Notion, 1945
- My Name is Aquilon, 1949, adapted from Jean-Pierre AumontJean-Pierre Aumont-Early life:Aumont was born Jean-Pierre Philippe Salomons in Paris, the son of Suzanne and Alexandre Salomons, owner of La Maison du Blanc . His mother's uncle was well-known stage actor Georges Berr. His father was from a Dutch Jewish family and his mother's family were French Jews...
's play - Second Threshold, 1951, completed by Robert SherwoodRobert SherwoodRobert Sherwood may refer to:*Robert Emmet Sherwood , American playwright, editor, and screenwriter*Robert Edmund Sherwood , American clown and author*Bobby Sherwood , American bandleader...