The Millionairess & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play E-Book

Bernard Shaw

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 173

Beschreibung

The selected correspondence of Bernard Shaw relating to the play The Millionairess contains 37 letters, written between 1934 and 1949. The book represents a significant addition to present-day understanding of the play The Millionairess. It reveals views of Shaw on a wide variety of issues and his relationships with contemporaries. The play The Millionairess was written in 1935. The first English edition was published on 24 March 1936 by Constable and Company Ltd, London (The Simpleton, The Six, And The Millionairess: Being Three More Plays). This publication is a handmade reproduction from this edition, and remains as true to the original work as possible. The original edition was processed manually by means of a classic editing which ensures the quality of publications. Here are some inspirational book quotes from Bernard Shaw: "The Millionairess is a play with a very strong part for a female star, and, if you can get the right woman, it will be a moneymaker and cover [your wife] Tina with diamonds. It is, however, a star play in respect of its dependence on a single actress with a very heavy part and a termagant personality. If they have found the right woman for Epifania, and she sticks faithfully to her part as I have written it, it will be a success; and you will make some money. Unless it is pure Shaw, it is doomed. If they alter a single word or incident in The Millionairess they shall never have another play of mine to murder. I have not written a potboiler since The Apple Cart; and I must make some money out of The Millionairess or drop the theatre. The successes in Vienna, Prague, and now in Milan and Rome are hopeful; and I ought to strike while the iron is lukewarm. I have a young and beautiful Epifania raging to play the part: Her name is Leonora Corbett. I have not had a potboiler since The Apple Cart; and as all my debentures and mortgages were paid off during the slump and my investments in crematoria have not yet fructified I am banking a little on The Millionairess to make me a millionaire. Eppy speech should be peculiar to herself; but she must not be a stage foreigner, as that lingo is always grossly incorrect. She is exotic and essentially tragic all through. In the original version I made the woman a boxer; but, on the stage, that was unconvincing and unladylike. So I have made her a Judo expert. The part requires just such a personality as Miss Hepburn." The book also includes an editor's note to German readers.

Leseprobe

Bernard Shaw

The Millionairess & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

Edited by Vitaly Baziyan

Copyright © 2021 Vitaly Baziyan

All rights reserved

A Jonsonian comedy in four acts The Millionairesswas written in 1935 and first published in a translation by Bernard Shaw’s first German translator and literary agent Siegfried Trebitsch on the 19th December 1935 by S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin. The first English edition was published on the 24th March 1936 by Constable and Company Ltd, London (The Simpleton, The Six, And The Millionairess: Being Three More Plays). This publication is a handmade reproduction from this edition, and remains as true to the original work as possible. The original edition was processed manually by means of a classic editing which ensures the quality of publications and the unrestricted enjoyment of reading.

The selected correspondence of Bernard Shaw relating to the play The Millionairess contains 37letters written between 1934 and 1949. Sources of this collection are prior publications Collected Lettersof Bernard Shaw published by Max Reinhardt; edition of letters published by University of Toronto Press; Bernard Shaw’s Letters to Siegfried Trebitsch published byStanford University Press; The Diary of Beatrice Webb, Vol. IV: 1924-1943 “The Wheel of Life” published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press and Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography, in Two Volumes, Band 1 published by Oxford University Press.

The book represents a significant addition to present-day understanding of Shaw’s play The Millionairess. It reveals his thoughts on a wide variety of issues and relationships with contemporaries.

George Bernard Shaw won The Nobel Prize in Literature for 1925 “for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty.”

George Bernard Shaw won the Oscar in 1939 for Best Screenplay and Dialogue for his role in adapting his play Pygmalion for the screen.

Bernard Shaw’s punctuation and spelling were mostly kept by the editor. Italics were used for plays titles, books, newspapers and unfamiliar foreign words or phrases. Christian names, surnames, positions and ranks were added in square brackets when they were omitted but are necessary for a better understanding. Cuts of a few words are indicated by three dots and longer omissions by four dots.

eBook-Cover was created by the editor using the picture of Sir John Everett Millais.

The play was first presented by the Burgtheater at the Akademie Theater (in German) in Vienna on the 4th January 1936.

Characters in order of appearance:

The Solicitor Julius Sagamore – Paul Pranger

Epifania Fitzfassenden (née Ognisanti di Parega) – Maria Eis

Alastair Fitzfassenden – Franz Hoebling

Patricia Smith – Julia Janssen

Adrain Blenderbland – Ulrich Bettae

Egyptian Doctor – Hans Wengraf

The Man (Joe) – Ferdinand Maierhofer

The Woman (his wife) – Lilli Karoly

The Manager – Helmuth Krauss

Producer – Herbert Waniek

The play was first presented in England by the Matthew Forsyth Repertory Company at the De La Warre Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, on the 17th November 1936.

Characters in order of appearance:

The Solicitor Julius Sagamore – Guy Verney

Epifania Fitzfassenden (née Ognisanti di Parega) – Jane Bacon

Alastair Fitzfassenden – William Roderick

Patricia Smith – Fiona Cunninghame

Adrain Blenderbland – Reginald Smith

Egyptian Doctor – Basil Dignam

The Man (Joe) – Ivan Vander

The Woman (his wife) – Marjorie Manning

The Manager – Stephen Dolman

Producer – Matthew Forsyth

The Millionairess was televised by BBC in 1972. It was BBC Play of the Month.

Characters in order of appearance:

The Solicitor Julius Sagamore – Peter Barkworth

Epifania Fitzfassenden (née Ognisanti di Parega) – Maggie Smith

Alastair Fitzfassenden – James Villiers

Patricia Smith – Priscilla Morgan

Adrain Blenderbland – Charles Gray

Egyptian Doctor – Tom Baker

The Man (Joe) – John Garrie

The Woman (his wife) – Avril Angers

The Manager – Donald Pickering

Producer – Cedric Messina

Director – William Slater

Selected Correspondence Relating to the PlayThe Millionairess

1/ To a novelist, playwright, Shaw’s first German translator and literary agent Siegfried Trebitsch (1868–1956)

4th August 1934

My dear Trebitsch

The enclosed cheque ought to realise the requisite number of schillings and a little over.

I enclose also a form of receipt. It is not only a receipt for the money but an assignment of your film rights to me. You must translate it into your best German and have it stamped and witnessed (or whatever legal ceremonies are necessary to make it legal in Germany—if any) as I must have a document to convince [Paul] Koretz and secure my 10%.

I shall have to make a rough scenario for him, including some new scenes: the play cannot be filmed as it stands.

I enclose The Six of Calais. The other plays (both full length) are The Simpleton of The UnexpectedIsles and The Millionairess. The latter is not completed: I have altered its plan since I drafted it on the ship.

ever

G. Bernard Shaw

2/ To an English stage actress Mrs Patrick Campbell née Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner known informally as “Mrs Pat”

17th March 1935

Stella, Stella

How often must I tell you to take on as many enemies in front as you please, but never to leave one behind!

As it turns out you are lucky to have missed the part of Prola [a character of The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles: A Vision of Judgement]—not, O most Just God, Pralo—for the critics have fallen on it with such fury that it has flopped completely and is now playing to the [Theatre] Guild subscribers only, which means $8000 a week for a few weeks and then, extinction. The politest notice describes me as a dignified monkey shying cocoanuts at the public. However, that does not account for the failure; for the critics went just as savagely for Margaret Kennedy’s play [Escape Me Never] with Elisabeth Bergner, and it has had an overwhelming success. I have just had the flashlights of the production, which was lavish and earnest, but all wrong. [Alla] Nazimova, in your part, appears as a slinking sinuous odalisque. She should have been straight as a ramrod: an Egyptian goddess. My four wonderful young Indian deities, clothed to the wrists and ankles in silks and bangles, and full of mystery and enchantment, came out simply as a naked cabaret troup in the latest Parisian undress. And so on and so forth. When I am not on the spot the harder they try and the wronger they go.

However, that is not what I have to scold you for. You should not have snubbed The Guild even if they were in the wrong. You are not their governess; and it is very important for you that they should be very sorry they missed you, and very eager to get you another time. You should have touched your hat and trusted for a renewal of their esteemed orders. But they were not in the wrong. If you want New York engagements it is your business to live within half an hour of Broadway exactly as it is the business of a London stockbroker to live within half an hour of Capel Court. And it is because you want engagements as a film actress that you live within half an hour of Hollywood. This almost forces you to choose between the two branches of the profession unless you are prepared to pay travelling expenses; for you cannot expect New York to pay travelling expenses from California just as you could not expect London to pay travelling expenses from the Hebrides. You must either live on the spot or get to it at your own expense. That is hard lines; but it is business; and you must not insult The Guild for being businesslike.

To offer you a part without sending you the book would, I grant you, have been a little disrespectful if the play had been by some nobody; but damn it, Stella, a play by me—by ME—by ME!!!!! What were you dreaming of?

All this is to guide you in your ways in future; for it always makes me uneasy when I think how very likely you are to mourir sur la paille if you persist in governessing people and quarrelling with them. Quarrelling DATES: it drags one back to Whistler. Governessing is pure Croydon.

In short you shouldnt have left that poor young lady at The Guild offices with a sore derriere by dealing a quite useless parting kick instead of sending her a bouquet and saying how flattered you were by being honored by an invitation to act for the leading highbrow theatre in the U.S. if not in the world.

How do you like being tutored? Well, that’s how other people feel when you lecture them.

As you apparently do not keep a press agent one never knows what you are doing or where you are. As for me I am repulsively old, as I fancy you realized suddenly when last we met...We start next Thursday (21st March) for a voyage round Africa, and shall not be back in England until the middle of June.

And that’s all my news, except that I shall spend the voyage finishing a play I began a year ago called TheMillionairess.

The machine having suddenly gone out of order I must stop just when I am beginning.

GBS

3/ To a theatrical society founded in New York City the Theatre Guild

7th April 1935

Dear Theatre Guild

I am sorry The Simpleton [of the Unexpected Isles] has flopped so completely. The returns I saw before leaving seemed to indicate that no soul in New York outside your subscription list crossed the threshold of the theatre.

The flashlights shewed me that you had done your very best for the play; but you did it all wrong. I should have made you send [Lee] Simonson to Bombay for a month, not only to see the Elephanta caves, but to feel the sex appeal of the women, especially the Parsee ladies, and the enchantment of the temple gods, especially the Jain no-gods.

In India nudity, which we ridiculous westerns still think the climax of S.A. (in spite of our everyday experience of sunbathing) means simply poverty. The Indian enchantress is dressed in wonderful silks right up to the wrists and ankles, finishing off with circlets of gold. The Simpleton depends on the reproduction of this Indian magic on the stage. Simonson, being an American savage, saw nothing in it but a chance for a Hollywood cabaret quartet, utterly prosaic, utterly Broadway in its scanty dress, and as nearly as possible utterly nude. No magic, and no sex appeal except that flaunted in every restaurant.

Nazimova saw herself as a Javanese dancer, sinuous, slinking, the perfect odalisque. Prola should be as rigid as an Egyptian queen: all steel and straight lines. Now Prola is the leading part in the play: no Prola, no play. [Alla] Nazimova tried to substitute something else; and it was something she could not supply; for she is not a Javanese dancer; and no actress can act one.

It is a pity your attempt to capture Mrs P.C. [Patrick Campbell] for the part failed. I have told her that you were not to blame: if people want New York engagements they must live within half an hour of Broadway, and she shouldnt have snubbed your very polite lady correspondent; but she would have given the part the peculiar distinction it needs: a quasi intellectual distinction, not an exotic one.

The play I am at present at work on, The Millionairess, is a star play for a very vigorous actress, very much as On the Rocks was a star play for the leading actor (or The Apple Cart); but the play in itself is no more likely to please the popular taste than The Simpleton; and I shall not press it on your attention until you are prepared to announce a season of my failures to give New York an opportunity of apologizing.

I expect to arrive in England on the 15th June. Until then I shall be a wanderer on the face of the earth.

faithfully

G. Bernard Shaw

4/ To an American-born British politician and close friend Nancy Astor

8th April 1935

My dear Nancy

Charlotte is flourishing extremely in this hellish heat. I am a mere spectre of myself. My clothes are dropping of my attenuated body. The frightful cold I caught in the freezing Mediterranean has been nearly baked out of me at last: but I am the wretchedest of men, working furiously to distract my attention from myself.

I am finishing—practically rewriting—my play called The Millionairess. People will say you are the millionaires. An awful, impossible woman.

Meanwhile Russia is going from success to success and justifying our trips to the tip top. The Foreign Office is licking Stalin’s boots; and Communist China, which we have been desperately trying to ignore, is sweeping away the wretched Kuomintang and bringing up a solid bit of the real China against Japan. You can say ‘I told you so’ twice a week to our own Kuomintang.

I can no more. They are making up the mail for Aden, which we expect to reach tomorrow morning. Not the dim and distant Aidenn where a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—no such luck, but at least a place where one can post a letter to you.

G.B.S.

5/ To British politicians, socialists, founders of the London School of Economics, lifelong friends and fellows Fabian Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb née Potter

20th April 1935

My dear Webbs

The more I read of the book the more I am inclined to believe in a Providential element in nature. I have sometimes wondered in the past whether your stupendous labors on local government after the History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Democracy were worth while—whether the Manor and the Borough and all the rest of it was not running you into antiquarianism. But it is now plain that Providence was equipping you for this colossal work on Russia [Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?]. Nobody else could possibly have done it; and you could not have done it but for your clinical practice on live social organizations and your dissecting work on the corpses of leets and courts baron.

They have just had a congress of Governors at Entebbe: a novelty. I told them that it was the beginning of the Russian system: a Politbureau. They (the Governors) are very curious about Russia, and quite aware that they know nothing about it: they seem keen about the book when I supplied them with a verbal blurb—prospectus of it.

I am not quite sure yet that the heat has not killed me; but it certainly has not killed Charlotte. We are just getting out of the worst of it now. We have been royally entertained. At Mombasa I found a Bernard [Vidal] Shaw, a magistrate, married to a Cambridge woman. They put us up in luxury for three days and drove us all over the place. The government of Zanzibar (Rankin) overwhelmed us with amiable attentions and telegraphed to the Governor at Dar es Salaam, who played up nobly. Their cars and launches and aides saved us all trouble; and they persuaded us with perfect tact that they were delighted to see us.

I finished the Millionairess play in Mombasa and (having now three plays unpublished) am starting to work at prefaces. Beatrice will have to revise the Millionairess, as she has a scene in a sweater’s den!

I have read Chapter III, Man as Producer. There is nothing that needs revision except literals and blanks to be filled up. Clark’s reader has probably spotted them. Here is a list anyhow.

Miss [Blanche] Patch wrote that Beatrice had sent a letter to Mombasa; but it has not yet overtaken us. We are now so far south of the line that the heat is almost bearable, being down to 80° in our cabins; but except when I am working (I am quite up to the mark then) I am a wretched old wreck. A week at Passfield would save my life.

According to our news bulletins our silly old governesses at Geneva, Stresa [Final Declaration of the Stresa Conference] &c, though they know that they will not fight Hitler for the Versailles Treaty, will not stop nagging about it; and Hitler has rightly said ‘If you mention that again, Germany cuts the League dead.’ It is also reported that [Maxim] Litvinoff sided with the naggers and accused Hitler of being out for a war of revenge and conquest; but this must be a misunderstanding, as such an attitude would be very Carsonian and un-Russian, and the accompanying announcement of a simple military alliance of France and Russia against Germany and Poland is hardly credible. And that, I think, is all.

G. Bernard Shaw

6/ To an English theatre director, entrepreneur, the founder of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the Malvern Festival, and close friend Barry Jackson

4th May 1935

My dear Barry

From Mombasa, which is within six days of London by Air Mail, I sent to Miss [Blanche] Patch on the 15th April, the full revision and extension of The Millionairess. It is quite unlike the Simpleton and very like Volpone and The Alchemist [both byBen Jonson], except, of course, that the characters are ultra-modern. It is, however, a star play in respect of its dependence on a single actress with a very heavy part and a termagant personality: either Edith Evans or the young woman in Love On the Dole [Wendy Hiller], whose name I forget.

If the fate of The Simpleton is too discouraging, a sensational change of plans is always a good advertisement; and it is all the same to me whether The Simpleton or The Millionairess goes up at Malvern, provided you can get your star. I have seen in the Jewish paper [Jewish Chronicle] some quotations from notices of The Simpleton in Germany which are comparatively favourable. I do not know what happened finally in New York: before I left I saw only the first fortnights returns, according to which absolutely nobody but the Guild Subscribers entered the theatre. I presume it has gone on the subscription for the few weeks and then been taken off. However, Miss Patch will tell you what has actually happened. She mentioned in her last letter something about using the New York flashlights for the Press preliminaries to Malvern....

Always,

G. Bernard Shaw

7/ To Barry Jackson

30th May 1935

Telegram

CONCENTRATE ON MILLIONAIRESS CUT OUT SIMPLETON COMBINATION. EXTRAVAGANT AND UNCASTABLE AT MALVERN.

G.B.S

8/ To Siegfried Trebitsch

22nd June 1935

My dear Trebitsch

...On my voyage I got through a lot of work. I have finished The Millionairess, which was only half completed. I have written two prefaces, one of which will get you into trouble if you translate it, as it contains an exposure of the silliness of Anti-Semitism. I have offered to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed, and then to prove exactly the same thing of the Germans or any other human group.

The Millionairess is a play with a very strong part for a female star, and, if you can get the right woman, it will be a moneymaker and cover [your wife] Tina with diamonds. I hope to get it printed and to send you a copy in the course of the next few weeks.

Hans Rothe has sent me photographs of the Leipzig production of The Simpleton, with which I am greatly pleased. If only the German producer had been in America the horrible failure in New York would have been impossible.

The Malvern Festival, of which I enclose a program, will not begin until the 29th July, and will last until the 24th of August. Is there any chance of seeing you there, or would you prefer to wait until later on, on the chance of seeing The Millionairess? It is only a chance so far, as I have made no arrangements for its production yet.

I did not get your last two letters until we landed on our return from South Africa.

What is the new book? A novel?

ever

G. Bernard Shaw

9/ Beatrice Webb’s diary entry for 1st July 1935

—...GBS and Charlotte down here for a long week-end, she exuberant with the enjoyment of the African trip and he somewhat seedy with another play finished: The Millionairess. He told us the gist of it. It is another bag of tricks—the conflict of unpleasant and caricatured personalities one with the other, representing his queer philosophy of life, an admiration for what is forceful, however ugly and silly may be the use of the power of the personality described. This strange admiration for the person who imposes his will on others, however ignorant and ugly and even cruel that will may be, is an obsession which has been growing on GBS for the last years of his life. And yet he himself is so kindly and tolerant towards others, so attractive and refined in his manner of life, in his relations towards other men and women, in his sensitiveness to music and other forms of beauty. From whence does it arise? As a young social reformer, he hated cruelty and oppression and pleaded for freedom. He idealized the rebel. Today he idealizes the dictator, whether he be a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin, or even a faked-up pretence of a dictator like [Oswald] Mosley. He refuses to discriminate between one dictator and another. Has the possession of wealth, of easily acquired and irresponsible wealth, had something to do with this queer transformation?..