Famous American plays of the 1920s [antikvár]

Introduction This book might have been called The American Drama Comes of Age. Perhaps these plays aren't as famous as they once were. I would be the last to say that they're the best of their decade. But they are—to borrow an apt adjective from other anthologies—representative. They carry something of the flavor and the promise of our burgeoning theater of the twenties. And they record the birth of a new sort of American playwright The ten years from the end of World War I to the fatal fall of 1929 seemed to us who watched the stage in New York, the Big Decade. Broadway boomed, along with Wall Street. Why not? The country was turning out new novelists and poets, new painters and composers. New publishers and new art galleries appeared. Why not new playwrights and new theaters? Mr. and Mrs. Joe Doakes were getting a kick out of culture, and were ready to pay for it. In the twenties the playhouses along Broadway almost doubled, and also the plays to fill them. The silent movies had taken over some of the theaters on what was still the Great White Way, but many new ones shot up. In 1928 there were almost 60 legitimate Broadway playhouses against 35 in 1920. The number of productions—including new plays, revivals, and musicals—waxed from 196 in 1920-1921 to 270 in the peak season of 1927-1928. Even in 1920 there were often as many first nights in ten weeks as in any full year of the fifties; two or three productions would open on the same Monday or Tuesday. On Nov. 1,