(Jim Hutton and Mary Archer are two liberals who are conte...)
Jim Hutton and Mary Archer are two liberals who are content to remain faithful to each other in spirit only. They are married with all the ritual of a church wedding, the bride believing that each should be allowed perfect freedom in personal contacts. Among the wedding guests is the young composer Richard Parrish, hardly disguising his admiration for the bride, and Noel Farley, whose passion is exceeded only by the pain of losing Jim to another woman. A child is born to them. When Jim goes off to Europe on a business trip, Mary declines to accompany him. Noel, who owns a villa at Antibes, lures Jim into a rendezvous. Meanwhile, Mary has an affair with Richard. Learning of Jim's rendezvous, she considers a Paris divorce so as to marry Richard.
(Tom Collier, a young, free-spirited publisher whose fathe...)
Tom Collier, a young, free-spirited publisher whose father is a rich, influential man has just decided to marry Cecilia when his ex-girlfriend Daisy, an artist with whom he had lived for some years, comes back.
(This Broadway hit starred Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord...)
This Broadway hit starred Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord of the Philadelphia Lords, an inhibited and spoiled daughter of the privileged. Divorced from C.J. Dexter Haven, she is engaged to a successful young snob. A gossip weekly sends a reporter and a camerawoman to report the wedding arrangements and they are injected into the house by Tracy's brother who hopes to divert their attention from father's romance with a Broadway dancer. Tracy finds herself growing interested in Connor, the fascinating reporter. At the end of a pre-wedding party, Tracy and Connor take a moonlight dip in the pool and meet her ex-husband and finance on their way back to the house. The following morning her intended agrees to forgive her, but his smug attitude enrages Tracy and she breaks off the engagement. Connor offers to marry her, but she turns him down and remarries Dexter, to the satisfaction of everyone.
Philip Barry was an American playwright and dramatist. He is particularly known for his plays Holiday (1928) and The Philadelphia Story (1939).
Background
Philip Jerome Quinn Barry was born on the 18th of June, 1896 in Rochester, New York, United States. He was the youngest of the four children of a successful Irish immigrant father, James Corbett Barry and an Irish-American mother from Philadelphia, Mary Agnes Quinn.
Education
Philip Barry attended Nazareth Hall Academy, a Roman Catholic private school and later Rochester’s East High School. Barry entered Yale University in 1913, despite relatively poor high school grades. In 1919, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. He also attended Harvard University from 1919 to 1922.
At the beginning of his career, Barry was sent overseas to work on codes in London at the American Embassy. In 1919, when he returned from London, his first play, Autonomy was produced in New Haven at the Yale Dramatic Club. After that, he joined Workshop 47, directed by George Pierce Baker at Harvard University in 1920. Although his literary career was just beginning, Barry left it to move to New York City and work in advertising. He was an advertising clerk there in 1921.
After briefly living in New York City, Philip found his way back to Harvard to pursue his dream of writing. His play A Punch for Judy was produced in 1921 and began a tour after a brief stint. The play, retitled You and I, was professionally produced in 1923 and was well received by critics and audiences who admired Barry’s comedic talents. Barry's second work for the stage, The Youngest, was produced the following year to considerably less acclaim. In 1925 appeared his third work called In a Garden. The next year White Wings, a complete failure, was produced. Holiday (1928) was far more popular with critics and audiences and ran for 230 performances.
Together with the comedies of manners for which he was most popularly received, Barry authored a number of serious dramas tending toward religious and existential themes, including Tomorrow and Tomorrow in 1931 and the more experimental Hotel Universe in 1930 and Here Come the Clowns in 1938. Barry's career as a playwright peaked in 1939 with the production of The Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn, which was adapted to the screen the following year in a film featuring Hepburn, James Stewart, and Cary Grant.
After he died of a heart attack in 1949, his final play, Second Threshold, was edited by Robert E. Sherwood.
Much of Barry's drama reflects anxiety about being outside accepted society. He believed wealth brings a kind of grace, as demonstrated in the great wit of his character's dialogue, but he also recognized that wealth brings its own set of problems. Though his more popular plays offer little that is very surprising in our view of the wealthy, some of his other plays explore far more mystical and spiritual issues.
Membership
Barry was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Philadelphia Art Alliance, and American Society of Dramatists.
Connections
Philip Barry was married to Ellen Semple. They had two sons, Philip Semple, Jonathan Peter and one daughter who died in infancy in 1933.