Her Cardboard Lover 1928-29

The following link is to an article I wrote for the June 2020 edition of Wooster Sauce - The Journal of the P.G.Wodehouse Society on the 1928-29 production of the Wodehouse play Her Cardboard Lover.

Link to article - Her Cardboard Lover

The following notes indicate the main sources I used for this article. The list is not exhaustive, please contact me if you want further details or with any comments/corrections.

The main reference for basic data about London stage productions in the era is “The London stage 1920-1929: a calendar of productions, performers, and personnel” by J.P.Wearing (Published 2014)

Tony Ring’s excellent “Second Row, grand circle: a reference guide to the contribution of P.G.Wodehouse to the legitimate theatre” contains in addition to the above, summaries of the plots of the plays, quotations from them, a non-London performance history, cross-referenced material from other Wodehouse sources, and other interesting notes. From this book I took the quote from Wodehouse on the box-office takings, information from the Theatre World review of the play which I was not able to check independently, and the plot outline.

The best starting point for information on Jeanne Eagels is the IMDb biography Information on her sanction by Equity was from contemporary newspaper reports. The anecdote about her refusing to leave the stage during the curtain call (which wasn’t the first time she had done that) was from “Wodehouse, Bolton and Kern” by Lee Davis.

There is a wealth of information available on the outrageous Tallulah Bankhead. Many of the anecdotes about her sound apocryphal - for example that she would attend parties completly naked with her pubic hair powdered with gold - but they are true. An excellent biography to start with is “Tallulah !: The Life and Times of a Leading Lady” by Joel Lobenthal.

This book mentions a letter from Tallulah in which she said she was looking forward to the post-London tour of the play to Scotland. I had not seen this mentioned in any other source – only a limited English tour. I started to put together the touring schedule from contemporary newspaper records. This is not straightforward for plays only staying a few days at each venue as reviews of the play may not mention the performance date, and theatre advertising may also be vague specifying only “next week” or similar. The Stage newspaper also published touring company schedules on a weekly basis, usually with dates, but there are gaps. It became clear that the situation was complex – theatre advertising from two different cities would claim the play would be running there on exactly the same dates. Eventually I realised that there must have been two entirely separate companies touring the play at the same time – the main company with Tallulah stopping at the larger venues and another company with Athalie Davies at smaller venues. Both were directed by Leslie Howard (who did not appear in either). I do not know if this double tour was common practice for West End hits. Following is my best estimate at the list of venues for each tour.

In Autumn 1929 the play toured again with some of the same cast from the secondary tour. This tour is harder to research, partly because the 1928 silent film was playing at the same time in theatres around the country and it is sometimes hard to separate mentions of the two. Here is an approximate list of venues for this tour, which ended in a second London run for the play at the Regent in November.