Volume 1 — “SEVEN CHANCES.”
Reading edition
“Odds life, sir! if you have the estate, you must take it with the live stock on it, as it stands!” exclaims Sir Anthony Absolute, in “The Rivals,” to his son, when mentioning that his proffer of “a noble independence” is “saddled with a wife.” Such arbitrary bestowal of wealth contingent on matrimony—frequent in actual experience—is one of the best established and most respected expedients of comical stage dilemmas, and it recurs, at intervals, in one form or another, with much the inevitability of death and taxes. It is the basis of another entertaining farce, called “Seven Chances,” which Belasco produced at the George M. Cohan Theatre, New York, August 8, 1916, and which also enjoyed a long and prosperous career. That farce was built on a “suggestion” derived from a short story by Mr. Gouverneur Morris, entitled “The Cradle Snatcher,” and, originally, it was called “Shannon’s Millions.” It was several times rebuilt, under Belasco’s supervision,—Mr. Roi Cooper Megrue being the last of his coadjutory playwrights. It was produced, April 17, 1916, at the Apollo Theatre, Atlantic City, New Jersey, under the name of “The Lucky Fellow.” Its comical incidents revolve around Jimmy Shannon, an amiable young bachelor with a vigorous antipathy to matrimony, whose sardonic grandsire, dying, leaves to him by will a fortune of twelve million dollars, conditional upon his being married by the time that he is thirty years old. Shannon is informed of that contingent bequest on the eve of his attainment of the specified age. He is at a Country Club where, also, there are seven young women. “The affair cries haste and speed must answer it.” The impecunious Shannon will propose marriage to each one of those females, if necessary: thus he has “seven chances” of obtaining the impendent fortune,—which, at last, he gets, along with a bride so young and beauteous as to reconcile him to the imposed change in his state. The opportunities for fun in all this are obvious; critically to dilate upon them would be much like breaking a butterfly on the wheel. They were utilized to the full under Belasco’s direction by a good company,—the parts being cast as follows:
Jimmie ShannonFrank Craven.
Billy MeekinJohn Butler.
Earl GoddardHayward Ginn.
Ralph DenbyCharles Brokate.
Joe SpenceFrank Morgan.
Henry GarrisonHarry Leighton.
GeorgeFreeman Wood.
Anne WindsorCarroll McComas.
Mrs. GarrisonMarion Abbott.
Lilly TrevorAnne Meredith.
Peggy WoodEmily Callaway.
Irene TrevorBeverly West.
Georgiana GarrisonGladys Knorr.
Florence JonesFlorence Deshon.
Betty BrownAlice Carroll.