November 20, 1934: "The Children's Hour" Premieres

Playbill from the original production

November 20, 1934: The Children's Hour premieres at at Maxine Elliott's Theatre. The play by Lillian Hellman is one of the first mainstream depictions of a gay scandal in popular culture, and runs for nearly 2 years.

It is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright (played by Katherine Emery) and Martha Dobie (Anne Revere). An angry student, Mary Tilford (Florence McGee), runs away from the school and, to avoid being sent back, tells her grandmother that the two headmistresses are having a lesbian affair. The accusation proceeds to destroy the women's careers, relationships, and lives.

It was adapted into a film in 1936, but the Hays Code forced a change to a heterosexual love triangle, and a change of title to These Three. It was adapted again in 1961, with Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner, directed by William Wyler. With the Hays Code still in effect, the relationship between Audrey's Katherine and Shirley's Martha is called "unnatural," leaving the slightest amount of ambiguity. One notable change: In the original version, Martha commits suicide by shooting herself; in this version, she kills herself by the less violent (but no less effective) method of hanging.

Maxine Elliott's Theatre was at 109 West 39th Street in Midtown Manhattan. Built in 1908, it later served as a radio studio for the Mutual Broadcasting Network, and a radio and TV studio for CBS. It was demolished in 1960, and the Spring Mills Building went up on the site.

*

November 20, 1934 was a Tuesday. This was also the date of, for all intents and purposes, the conclusion of a real-life gay scandal: The premiere of The Marines Are Coming, the last film of William Haines. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't yet been founded. There were 3 games in the NHL:

* The New York Americans lost to the Montreal Maroons, 3-0 at the old (but then fairly new) Madison Square Garden.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 1-0 at the Boston Garden.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the St. Louis Eagles, 5-2 at the St. Louis Arena.

* And the New York Rangers and the Montreal Maroons were not scheduled.