(Mr. Moto, a sophisticated Japanese agent, saves Tom Nelso...)
Mr. Moto, a sophisticated Japanese agent, saves Tom Nelson, an American expatriate, and Eleanor Joyce, when they are caught up in the intrigue between China and Japan
John Lionel Golden was an American actor, songwriter, author and theatrical producer.
Background
Golden was born on June 27, 1874, in New York City, the son of Joel and Amelia Tyreler Golden. He grew up in Wauseon, Ohio, where his father taught school and played the clarinet in a local band. His mother, a "wonderful singer, " encouraged his love of music and drama by taking him to the theater when touring companies visited the town.
Education
Golden had no musical training, he mastered the rudiments of composition by studying for a time under Walter Damrosch. He also gained his first managerial experience by staging a student production at the New York University School of Law, in which he was briefly enrolled in 1891. In 1937, he received an honorary degree in Doctor of Public Service from Oglethorpe University.
Career
Golden returned to New York in 1888 with vague hopes of breaking into show business. He first found a job as office boy with Horgan and Slattery, a firm of builders and contractors. He stayed with them about eight months and helped to lay bricks for Edward Harrigan's new theater (later the Garrick Theatre) before quitting to become an extra in a Broadway production. The play was Nero, a "Roman spectacle" staged at Niblo's Garden, in which he carried a spear. For the next seven years he struggled to establish himself as an actor, doing everything from Shakespearean and repertory roles to song-and-dance routines and female impersonations. To survive recurrent spells of unemployment, Golden began writing comic verses, which he sold for two or three dollars to newspapers and humor magazines, including Puck and Judge. When he learned that the market value of his rhymes would be greatly increased if they were set to music and sold to theatrical performers, he turned songwriter as well. Despite his enthusiasm and restless energy Golden failed to conquer Broadway in these early years. At twenty-one he shelved his theatrical ambitions temporarily and went to work for the Oakes Manufacturing Company as a salesman of chemical products. Two years later he was named vice-president and general manager of the concern; by 1902 his annual salary was $45, 000. In his spare moments he continued to write vaudeville sketches and one-act plays, seven of which were successfully produced before he retired from the Oakes Company in 1908, at the age of thirty-four. The following year he committed himself anew to a full-time career in the theater. Until 1916 Golden was known primarily as a writer of popular songs who collaborated with such talented composers and lyricists as Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, Victor Herbert, Henry M. Blossom, and Jerome Kern. He also wrote librettos and music for a dozen Broadway shows, four of which - Hip Hip Hooray (1915), The Big Show (1916), Cheer Up (1917), and Everything (1918) - were extravaganzas staged at the Hippodrome Theatre. His greatest song hits were "Poor Butterfly" and "Goodbye, Girls, I'm Through. " The substantial royalties earned by the latter song enabled him to invest in his first Broadway production, a comedy called Turn to the Right (1916), which had been written by his friend and co-producer Winchell Smith from an idea suggested by actor John E. Hazzard. The play was an immediate success and launched Golden on his career as a theatrical producer. Within a decade he was hailed as one of America's greatest managers, a rival of David Belasco and George M. Cohan. Unlike them, however, he built his reputation upon a steady adherence to a single type of theatrical offering: the wholesome family play. Golden continued to champion middle-class propriety throughout his long career as an impresario, which ended only in 1953, with his revival of James Thurber's comedy The Male Animal. All of his most successful productions - from Lightnin' (1918) and The First Year (1920) to Seventh Heaven (1922) and Claudia (1941) - reaffirmed traditional values and celebrated the basic goodness of the average man. In a period of radical experimentation and innovation in American drama, Golden remained resolutely on the sidelines, protecting his audiences from the contamination of new ideas and making good his early pledge to present only plays "to which I would not be ashamed to take my mother. " Golden's refusal to break faith with his public did not imply any active hostility to changing theatrical conditions. Childless himself, he gave generously of his time and money to aid aspiring young actors and playwrights, especially in his later years. In 1943 he inaugurated the annual John Golden auditions for the discovery of new talent; the following year he established a fund of $100, 000 to encourage experimental drama and to provide scholarships and prizes for the advancement of the legitimate theater; and in 1952 he organized the New Dramatists Loan Fund. Golden died in Bayside, New York, on June 17, 1955.