REFLECTED GLORY
1942
Reflected Glory is a comedy in three acts by George Kelly. It was originally produced by Lee Shubert in association with Homer Curran and Joseph M. Gaites. Mr. Kelly directed. It originally starred Tallulah Bankhead as Muriel Flood.
The play takes place in Muriel’s suite in the Lorraine Hotel in Rochester, and in the dressing room of a New York theatre.
Muriel Flood is an actress bothered with the problem of what she should do with her heart and her career. She thinks she should get married and settle down, but the young man in question doesn't understand the stage, and Muriel's manager gets her back to the New York stage before she has gone too far. She manages to convince herself that she is in love with a young Chicagoan, but again her manager steps in. Her lover comes to see her and Muriel realizes that there is nothing for her but the stage.
Although first produced in 1936, Kelly first wrote the play in 1929. Kelly was a prolific playwright who was also Grace Kelly’s uncle. Kelly was the author of The Show Off, The Torchbearers, and Craig’s Wife, among others.
The play finally came to Broadway after an out-of-town tryout at the Shubert in New Haven CT.
Reflected Glory opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre on September 21, 1936. The venue was razed in 1982 (along with four other theatres) to build the Marriott Marquis hotel and theatre.
The critics gave the play mixed notices.
“’Reflected Glory’ exhibits temperamental actress Tallulah Bankhead cast as a temperamental actress, stalking about on her heels, slapping the furniture to accentuate her outbursts, lowering her voice to a sepulchral baritone, leaning backward at an angle of 30° while combing her hair, ordering a midnight supper of two pork chops, Julienne potatoes, buttermilk, salted peanuts.” ~ TIME MAGAZINE
The gastronomic feast ordered by Bankhead caused the audience to groan with hunger. One story says that George Cukor turned to his playgoing companion Ethel Barrymore and whispered “Ah! Pot luck at Theda Barra’s!” Silent screen star Barra was famous for her gourmet dinner parties and her fluctuating weight.
"The modest success of ‘Reflected Glory’ tricked me into believing I had been de-haunted. But I was living in an opium world." ~ TALLULAH BANKHEAD
The play ran 127 performances at the Morosco, closing in January 1937 . That same year the play was sold to Columbia Pictures, but a film adaptation was never made; only television.
Bankhead then toured the play, including to Chicago.
After near-retirement from movies, Gloria Swanson appeared in many plays beginning in the 1940s. Actor and playwright Harold J. Kennedy suggested Swanson do a road tour of Reflected Glory. It would be her legitimate stage debut. The tour premiered in Scarsdale NY in June 1942 with an official opening in Poughkeepsie NY on June 30, 1942. First nighters included Eleanor Roosevelt and Elinor Morgenthau. Swanson later recalled her opening night:
~ “Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star” by Stephen Michael Shearer
On July 12, 1942 Swanson’s tour arrived in Atlantic City at the Garden Pier Theatre. This was known as a ‘barn tour’ or ‘straw hat tour’, not a first class tour. Swanson joined Equity for the tour and was paid $700 a week. Houses were sold out.
Harold Kennedy remembers “housewives sitting in the aisles, on the stairways, and standing five deep in the back. Not a man in the house.” Kennedy convinced Kelly to write Swanson’s pug dog Miranda into the script.
By 1942, live theatre in Atlantic City was a rarity. Most theatre venues had become cinemas in the 1930s. The Garden Pier Theatre was the last legit venue to try to continue the tradition.
Swanson stayed in the Garden State for an engagement in Maplewood NJ. Seats were available at Bamberger’s and Hockenjos.
On January 18, 1954, Clare Luce played Muriel Flood on “Broadway Television Theatre”. Two years later, Ethel Merman played the role on “General Electric Theatre” produced by Desilu. Merman’s co-star was Walter Matthau.
In 1979 the play was produced off-off-Broadway at the No Smoking Playhouse starring Shelley Rogers as Muriel.
