(Judge Foster throws his daughter out because she married ...)
Judge Foster throws his daughter out because she married a circus man. She leaves her baby girl with Prof. McGargle before she dies. Years later Sally is a dancer with whom Peyton, a son of Judge Foster's friend, falls in love. When Sally is arrested McGargle proves her real parentage.
https://www.amazon.com/Sally-Sawdust-Carol-Dempster/dp/B073SHYJ6S?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B073SHYJ6S
(The story revolves around a husband-and-wife acting team....)
The story revolves around a husband-and-wife acting team. Simply because he is insecure, the husband suspects his wife could be capable of infidelity. The husband disguises himself as a guardsman with a thick accent, woos his wife under his false identity, and ends up seducing her. The couple stays together, and at the end the wife tells the husband that she knew it was him, but played along with the deception.
https://www.amazon.com/Guardsman-VHS-Alfred-Lunt/dp/6302593263?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=6302593263
(Book by Lunt, Alfred)
Book by Lunt, Alfred
https://www.amazon.com/Testers-Alfred-Lunts-Cookbook-Never-Before-Published/dp/1578644178?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1578644178
Alfred Davis Lunt, Jr. was born on August 12, 1892, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, the son of Alfred David Lunt, a lumberman and land agent, and Harriet Washburn Briggs. The senior Lunt died in 1894 and in 1899 his mother married Carl Sederholm, a Swedish-born doctor. As a child, Lunt produced his own plays in a toy theater.
Lunt attended public school in Milwaukee through the second grade and then entered the private Milwaukee Academy. In 1906 he entered Carroll College Academy, affiliated with Carroll College, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He enrolled at Carroll College in 1910. Lunt was active in school theatricals produced by the Carroll Players, a group run by a progressive teacher named May Rankin. Tall (six feet, three inches) and handsome, he played many leads and was appreciated throughout Wisconsin and even beyond the state's borders because of bus tours he made with Carroll College's glee club, on whose programs he gave recitations. One of his unconventional devices--playing with his back to the audience-- began to emerge during his Carroll days. Lunt was also an able painter but decided against becoming a set designer or architect in favor of acting. In 1912, Lunt transferred to Emerson College of Oratory in Boston.
About 1912 Lunt got a job with the Castle Square Theater, a noted stock company, and made his professional debut in The Aviator. He remained until 1915, performing mainly in potboilers and playing mostly men much older than himself. After becoming the beneficiary of a trust fund, he bought real estate in the Wisconsin village of Genesee Depot in 1914. Over the years, he developed the property into a beautiful estate that provided an outlet for his love of farming and gardening and became his refuge from the rigors of his profession.
In 1916 and 1917, Lunt was primarily the leading man to a series of touring female stars. Most influential on his development was Margaret Anglin, an artist of the highest standards, with whom he toured in several unimportant plays. He also acted in outdoor stagings of three Greek tragedies and As You Like It. Lunt made his Broadway debut in Romance and Arabella (1917), a flop in which he managed to gain considerable attention. It led to a job in a touring production of The Country Cousin, by Booth Tarkington and Julian Street. Its producer, George C. Tyler, hired Lunt for his summer-stock company in Washington, D. C. , in 1919.
In 1922 Lunt married an actress Lynn Fontanne. As the Lunts, they became a practically inseparable acting team, recognized by many as America's finest. They acted together for the first time in the company's production of Made of Money. While Fontanne toured in Made of Money, Lunt found his breakthrough role on Broadway as the title character in Booth Tarkington's Clarence (1919). It was typical of his dedication that, to guarantee an authentic effect when Clarence played the piano and saxophone, he learned to play the instruments well enough so that offstage musicians were not needed. After its run in New York, Lunt toured nationally with the play. In later years he continued to tour with his productions, playing in even the most out-of-the-way venues. He kept the idea of the "road" alive when most other stars had abandoned it.
Following his 1921 appearance in another Tarkington play, The Intimate Strangers, Lunt displayed his versatility by shifting from the light comic roles he had been playing to that of a rakish gambler in Alfred Savoir's Banco (1922). He also appeared in several mediocre silent films. Back on Broadway in 1923, he appeared with Fontanne in Sweet Nell of Old Drury and without her in John Drinkwater's Robert E. Lee and Sutton Vane's Outward Bound. Lunt and Fontanne were not considered an acting team until they costarred in the Theatre Guild's extremely popular production of Ferenc Moln r's romantic comedy The Guardsman (1924). The Guild, devoted to producing artistically respectable plays of doubtful commercial value (although hits were welcome), had a no-star policy, which was fine with the Lunts, who accepted lesser billing because they believed that the play came first. The Lunts also earned far less than they could have under commercial managements because they respected the plays the Guild produced. They often quarreled with the Guild's management but kept returning to it, even after they and two other partners had formed Transatlantic Productions in 1934.
During the rest of the 1920's, the Guild presented Lunt in New York and on tour in one new play or revival after the other. Lunt appeared alone in four plays, including Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions (1928). The Lunts appeared together in eight plays, including three by George Bernard Shaw and two by S. N. Behrman. Lunt's parts represented an exhausting list of strikingly varied characterizations. In the 1930's the Lunts appeared in seven important plays and one failure. Memorable were Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen (1930), Robert E. Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna (1931) and Idiot's Delight (1936), Noël Coward's Design for Living (1933), Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1935; revived 1940), Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38 (1937), and Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (1938). They also made their only significant sound film, The Guardsman (1931), based on their 1924 hit. Lack of creative control made movie acting unattractive to them.
During the 1940's the Lunts were first seen in Robert Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night (1940), highly controversial because of its antipacifism, and S. N. Behrman's The Pirate (1942), developed as a play with which to tour army camps (the tour had to be canceled owing to Fontanne's ill health). In 1943 the Lunts moved to London, where they remained throughout the war, often performing during rocket raids. Their production of Terence Rattigan's Love in Idleness (1944), which they took to soldiers in Europe, came to America as O Mistress Mine (1946). It and their next three plays (by S. N. Behrman, Noël Coward, and Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse) were commercial fluff redeemed only by the Lunts' matchless artistry. Finding the right plays to suit each of them proved increasingly difficult, and their choices made them seem old-fashioned.
The Lunts regained critical respect with their seventeenth team effort, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's black comedy The Visit (1958) (unsuccessfully premiered in England as Time and Again), directed by Peter Brook. It opened the Lunt-Fontanne, a Broadway theater renamed in their honor. Age and illness took their toll (Lunt went blind), and following The Visit, Lunt did not act again on stage. Although they ignored Hollywood's blandishments, the Lunts occasionally did radio plays and, late in life, acted in several television productions, including their final shared performance, The Magnificent Yankee (1965).
In the mid-1930's Lunt began to direct most of his productions, even when another was credited; he displayed outstanding directorial ability. Later, he freelanced as a director, staging plays and operas for other performers. The Lunts, who undertook to develop many young actors, created a Lunt-Fontanne repertory company when they toured in the late 1930's. High costs prevented them from establishing the troupe in New York.
The Lunts preferred to preserve their energy by living quietly. They became wealthy and often contributed to favorite charities. Although generally apolitical, during World War II they were active in causes to raise funds for the Allies.
Lunt was one of 20th century Broadway's leading male star who was best remembered for his acting in a high comedy. Together with his wife, they appeared on many Guild theatre shows, radio programs, and a few television productions. Their biggest commercial hit (452 performances) was his play "O Mistress Mine" (1946). As a director, he was notable for Jean Giraudoux's Ondine (1954), with Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer, for which he won a directing Tony Award. His many awards included an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for 1931's The Guardsman, an acting Tony Award for Quadrille (1954), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), and an Emmy Award for his role in TV's "Hallmark Hall of Fame" productions of "The Magnificent Yankee" (1965).
(Judge Foster throws his daughter out because she married ...)
(The story revolves around a husband-and-wife acting team....)
(Book by Lunt, Alfred)
Lunt was a master technician who brought deep emotional reserves to any role he played, seeking only to find the truth in it. Both comedy and drama were grist for his eclectic mill. He worked from the outside in, seeking some physical attribute or prop (his "green umbrella") to help him get a handle on a character. Lunt was a perfectionist who rarely grew bored with a part, even in a long run, and would be experimenting even at the last performance. For all his brilliant talent, he remained shy and modest, and experienced doubts about his work throughout his career. Although hard put to articulate his acting methods, he insisted that there were no inviolable rules. He was an unselfish actor who thought it his responsibility to serve the playwright, not himself.
About 1920, Lunt met and fell in love with English-born actress Lynn Fontanne, five years his senior; they were married on May 26, 1922. They had no children. The couple had long-life professional stage partnership, which was exceptionally close, and the two never ceased to amaze by the diligence with which they prepared. They possessed a thorough understanding of every element of their roles and were renowned for their unusual professional commitment and symbiotic acting style. They developed a unique method of overlapping each other's lines in such a way that both could be heard. Although he possessed a temper, Lunt was normally in control emotionally. Still, he needed Fontanne (who died in 1983) to calm him when he was under stress. They were completely devoted to one another and no hint of scandal marred their lives.
