The Demi-Virgin

The Demi-Virgin is a play written by Avery Hopwood. Producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where it was a hit during the 1921-22 season. The play is a sex farce and was considered very risqué at the time. Reviewers generally panned it, and local authorities attempted to censor it. The Broadway production resulted in obscenity charges being brought against Woods, although a grand jury declined to indict him.

Plot

The story centers on the character Gloria Graham, a silent film actress. Prior to the start of the story, Graham was married to fellow actor Wally Deane, but left him on their wedding night. The brevity of the union leads gossip columnists to speculate about whether the marriage was consummated. They label Graham the "demi-virgin".^[1] Forced to reunite to complete a movie, the pair bicker and each claim to have new lovers. Graham decides to seduce Deane to prove to his new fiancee that he is unfaithful. In the play's most famous scene, a group of Graham's actress friends interrupt her attempted reunion with Deane by coming to her room to play a game of strip poker, which results in them wearing very little clothing onstage.^[2] They leave when they realize Deane is there, allowing the couple to continue their tryst. In a twist, the rendezvous between Graham and Deane turns out not to be adulterous, because their divorce is not valid.^[3]

History

Background

Avery Hopwood wrote the play in 1921.

Woods and Hopwood had collaborated on a number of previous plays, including other sex comedies, such as The Girl in the Limousine and Getting Gertie's Garter. Such material had been very successful for Woods, who commissioned originals and also adapted foreign farces, and for Hopwood, who was one of the most prolific authors in the genre.^[4][5] Their collaboration on The Demi-Virgin coincided with a scandal involving Hollywood actor Fatty Arbuckle, who was accused of manslaughter after he supposedly raped a young actress who later died. (He was eventually acquitted.) Although the play was largely written before the scandal broke, Hopwood incorporated references to Arbuckle in the first produced version of the script. These references were toned down after preview audiences reacted poorly.^[6]

Legal problems

On November 3, 1921, Woods and Hopwood were called to the chambers of William McAdoo, the Chief Magistrate of the New York City's magistrates' court, to respond to complaints about the play. Woods would not make any changes to address the complaints, so a formal hearing began on November 7.^[7] Woods retained famed attorney Max Steuer as his counsel.^[8] John S. Sumner, executive secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, testified against the show.^[7][9] On November 14, McAdoo ruled that the play was obscene, describing it as "coarsely indecent, flagrantly and suggestively immoral, impure in word and action."^[7][10] Woods was placed on bail, and the case was sent to the grand jury for an indictment on a misdemeanor charge of staging an obscene exhibition. The grand jury heard the case on December 23, 1921, but dismissed it that same day, even though they had heard only witnesses favoring the prosecution.^[7][11][12]

As the obscenity case proceeded, the city's Commissioner of Licenses, John Gilchrist, informed Woods that he found the play "indecent and subversive of public morals" and would revoke the theater's operating license if the production continued.^[13] Gilchrist's effort failed when a New York state appeals court ruled in February 1922 that he did not have the legal authority to revoke a theater license once it had been granted.^[12][14][15]

Productions

Prior to the Broadway debut, preview performances occurred in several cities. The first was in Pittsburgh, where the play began a scheduled one-week run on September 26, 1921. It was closed early on the last day by the local Director of Public Safety, who objected to some of the dialog.^[7][16] The tryouts then moved to Stamford, Connecticut and Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they proceeded without incident.^[5]

The play's Broadway opening was at the Times Square Theatre on October 18, 1921. It ran there for a few weeks until Woods transferred it to the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre on November 7, where it ran until it closed in June 3, 1922.^[17] After the Broadway production ended, Woods launched four road companies to present the play in other cities.^[12]

The characters and cast from the Broadway production are given below:

Hazel Dawn starred in the Broadway production.

Advertising

Ads for a touring production traded on the play's notoriety.

Woods exploited the controversy over the play's content in his advertisements for it. When Woods was taken to court, The New York Times decided he could no longer use the name of the play in any ads placed with the paper. Woods worked around the problem by promoting the large number of people who had seen an unnamed production at his theater, with daily updates to the totals. In ads where he could mention the name, he traded on its reputation with suggestive taglines, such as one inviting inviting audiences to "complete your education" by seeing the play. Some ads suggested the reader should see the play to be informed for the widespread discussion of it. In others, it was declared "the most famous play in America".^[7][19]

Reception

Contemporary reviewers were generally negative. Many condemned the play as immoral due to its sexual situations and suggestive dialog. The costumes of its female cast members, who mostly wore revealing gowns or scanty bedroom attire, also attracted attention. Although a few reviewers complimented the cast for being attractive and fashionable, others considered them inappropriately risqué, especially in the strip poker scene.^[5] The Pittsburgh Post described the preview production as "reeking with indecencies".^[16] The reviewer for the New York Evening Post gave the Broadway production only three sentences, claiming that there was no need for "wasting space" on the repulsive "concoction" created by Hopwood and Woods.^[17] Drama critic George Jean Nathan called the play "trash".^[20] Dorothy Parker cracked that Dawn had "gone from bed to worse" by being in the production.^[21] The reviewer for Brooklyn Life said it was "genuinely vulgar", shocking the audience from beginning to end with more frequency than a burlesque show.^[22] In The Evening World, Charles Darnton also compared the show to "cheap burlesque", saying it was filled with "old jokes" but few laughs.^[23]

Some critics said the play's reputation for immorality was overstated, contending it was harmless or even boring. The Sun, for example, said it was "not as shocking as Manager Woods would like theatre goers to believe".^[17] The New York Clipper said the plot was more pure than the realities of Hollywood and relied on "sweet little risque 'bits' and a super-abundance of suggestive lines" to keep audience interest.^[24] In The Washington Post, Percy Hammond described it as entertaining and "as roguish as a nude cadaver", saying Hopwood had "never been wittier".^[25]

The concerns of critics did not stop the play from being a box office success. Several reviewers anticipated that focusing on the play's salacious content would increase patronage.^[17] News coverage of legal actions also provided considerable free publicity. Variety reported that lines for the Broadway production stretched around the corner after it was condemned in the magistrates' court.^[26] By the time the production closed, it was one of the most successful of that season, having sold over 200,000 tickets across almost 300 performances.^[12][27]

References

Works cited

• Bordman, Gerald (1995). American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1914-1930. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509078-0. OCLC 30356203. 
• Darnton, Charles (October 19, 1921). "The New Plays: The Demi-Virgin Like Cheap Burlesque". The Evening World 62 (21,874). p. 28 – via Newspapers.com. 
• Fitzpatrick, Kevin C. (2013). A Journey Into Dorothy Parker's New York (2nd ed.). Berkeley, California: Roaring Forties Press. ISBN 978-1-938901-07-2. OCLC 812068248. 
• Friedman, Andrea (2000). Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New York City, 1909-1945. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11067-7. OCLC 43095889. 
• Hammond, Percy (October 30, 1921). "The New York Theater". The Washington Post (16,573). p. 60 – via Newspapers.com. 
• Houchin, John H. (2003). Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81819-2. OCLC 57309034. 
• Kaufman, Julian M. (2003). "A. H. Woods, Producer: A Thrill a Minute, A Laugh a Second!". In Gewirtz, Arthur & Kolb, James J. (eds.). Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. ISBN 0-313-32467-0. OCLC 834126701. 
• Nathan, George Jean (June 1922). "Chronique Scandaleuse". The Smart Set 68 (2): 131–137. 
• Wainscott, Ronald Harold (1997). The Emergence of the Modern American Theater, 1914-1929. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06776-3. OCLC 35128122. 

Further reading

• Sharrar, Jack F. (1998) Avery Hopwood: His Life and Plays. UMI Press. pp. 142-148.

External links

• The Demi-Virgin at the Internet Broadway Database