.png)
Rida Johnson Young: Mother of “Mother Machree”
Today appears to be an old time Broadway double-header (we just posted about actress Christie MacDonald). RidaJohnson Young (Rida Louise Johnson, 1876-1926) was a major playwright, librettist and lyrist of the first quarter of the 20th century.
As a young woman Young had acted with the stock companies of E.H. Sothern and Viola Allen. In 1900 her first play Lord Byron was produced by actor-manager James Young, to whom she was married from 1904-1910 and whose surname she kept. (This is the same man who was married to actress Clara Kimball Young.) We have had cause to mention many of Rida Johnson Young’s work here in many contexts, some because of her musical collaborators like Victor Herbert or Ernest R. Ball, some because of the stars, and some, because they were adapted into films.
Young’s best known show is Naughty Marietta, which premiered in 1910, was revived in 1929 and 1931, and made into a 1935 movie starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. (Those who don’t know the show surely know its most famous song “Oh! Sweet Mystery of Life”). Her musical Barry of Ballymore (1911) may be forgotten, but not its hit song “Mother Machree”, cowritten with Chauncey Olcott, and the basis of a 1927 film directed by John Ford.
Her other works include:
Brown of Harvard (1906), made into a 1911 film
The Boys of Company “B” (1907), featuring Florence Nash and a young Mack Sennett
The Lancers (1907) with Cissie Loftus
The Glorious Betsy (1908), made into a 1928 film with Dolores Costello, and remade in 1936 as Hearts Divided with Marion Davies
The Lottery Man (1910), made into a 1919 film with Wallace Reid,Harrison Ford, and a young Oliver Hardy
Captain Kidd Jr (1916), made into a 1919 film starring Mary Pickford
Maytime (1917), made into a film in 1923 by Louis Gasnier, and remade in 1937 with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald
The Little Boss (1919), original screenplay story for a Bessie Love picture
Little Old New York (1920), made into a 1923 film with Marion Davies, remade in 1940 with Alice Faye
And numerous others. Her 1925 novel Out of the Night was adapted into the 1930 film Hell Harbor with Lupe Velez and Jean Hersholt.
For more on show business history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,and for more on early film history read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.
Comments