LOSING ELOISE / THE NAUGHTY WIFE
Losing Eloise is a three-act farce by Fred Jackson. It is the story of a wife who announces she is going off with an admirer. Her husband decides to pretend to help her and prepares for her planned elopement.
The original production featured Charles Cherry as the husband, and Violet Heming as Eloise, the wife. The play also featured Lucile Watson, Francis Byrne, Charles Mather, Harry Irvine, Charles Harbury, Ethel Dane, and Ethel Intrupidi.
It would be a brief out-of-town period for Eloise, starting with a stint in Wilmington, Delaware, on October 29, followed immediately by a quick trip across the Delaware Bay for an equally short stay in Atlantic City.
Produced by the Selwyn Co., the play began performances at Nixon’s Apollo Theatre on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City on November 1, 1917. Their tag line was “Laugh and Be Fat and See Losing Eloise”!
“Virtue is a state of mind. Don’t lose your mind!”
The show opened on Broadway at the Harris Theatre (named for William B. Harris) on November 17, 1917. It ran 72 performances, closing in January 1918. Built in 1904, the Harris Theatre went through many names before becoming a cinema in 1930. It was gutted for retail in 1988 and was demolished in 1997 as part of the 42nd Street Revitalization Project.
As for Eloise, she had the misfortune of opening at the same time as another farce, The King at Cohan’s Theatre, which stole a lot of her thunder and her audiences.
To lure ticket-buyers, the Selwyns leaked that their production featured an elevator. One paper tartly commented that the H.C.L. (High Cost of Living) was now affecting bungalows. The allure of spectacle (however domestic) cannot be ignored.
A few weeks of mediocre business caused the Selwyns to try a risky tactic and re-name the play. Since the word “Naughty” seemed to be both tantalizing and lucky for other plays (Naughty Marietta, for example), Eloise turned into The Naughty Wife. Later, both Naughty Cinderella (1925) and Naughty Riquette (1926) would play the same word games. Naughty producers!
“Solomon had many wives, but none compared with...THE NAUGHTY WIFE (or LOSING ELOISE).”
The above newspaper ad seems designed to use up column space, but it is eye-catching in a sea of crowded text.
The play had yet a third title when it was filmed by Paramount Pictures in 1919: Let’s Elope. Actually, it would technically be the fourth title, since the film’s working title was Three’s A Crowd. Whatever its name, it starred Marguerite Clark as ‘naughty’ Eloise.
In April 1919, Let’s Elope was briefly seen at Atlantic City’s City Square Theatre, across from City Hall on Atlantic Avenue. This theater was called the the Embassy Theatre when it opened in 1911. It then became the City Square Theatre, The Shore Theatre, and finally the Beach Theatre from 1952 until its closing. Although the building is still standing, it has been converted to retail.