Walter Hackett
Walter Laurence Hackett was an American playwright and theater manager. A native of Oakland, California, Hackett attended grammar school in that city before continuing his education at a boarding school in Canada, the country of his father's birth. He ran away from that institution to become a sailor, and subsequently worked in a variety of professions including horse trainer and school teacher. By 1901, he was working as a journalist for the Chicago American, and that same year his first plays were staged with casts led by the actress Lillian Burkhart. His first significant play as a solo playwright was The Prince of Dreams, staged in Chicago in 1902.
Hackett was primarily active as a journalist and a writer of short stories until he had three successful plays in succession, written with other writers: The Invader ; The Regeneration ; and The White Sister. The latter two plays were his first works staged on Broadway. His next two plays to reach Broadway, Our World and Don't Weaken were flops, but he rebounded with the hit play It Pays to Advertise. In 1911, he married the actress Marion Lorne. Many of his plays were written with Lorne in mind, and she was often the star of his works. In 1914, the couple moved to London, England where they remained for more than 25 years. From this point on, most of his plays were staged in London's West End, and he earned the nickname Walter "Long Run" Hackett for his many plays that had lengthy runs in London. In Britain some of his most successful plays included Ambrose Applejohn's Adventure, The Fugitives, and London After Dark. Not long after the outbreak of World War II, Hackett and his wife returned to the United States and settled in New York City. He died in Manhattan in 1944.
Early life
Walter Laurence Hackett was born in Oakland, California, on November10, 1876. He was the son of Captain Edward Hackett, who lived in Oakland at a home at 1303 Jackson Street. Walter was listed as living at that address with his father and his mother, Mary Ann Hackett, and as an attendee of public schools in Oakland, in the 1880 United States census. Walter later attended boarding school in Canada, the nation of his father's birth. He ran away from that institution to obtain work as a sailor. He later attended the University of California, Berkeley.In his young adulthood, Hackett worked in a variety of professions, including careers as a horse trainer, school teacher, journalist, and writer of short stories. By 1895 he was working in Oakland as a horse trainer. He was head of the planning committee for the horse races held at the 1895 Mayday fete of the Fabiola Hospital Association which took place at Oakland Trotting Park as a fund raiser for the hospital. This also included organizing a burro race for which he acquired ten donkeys. He also served as one of the judges for the horse races, and was praised for his work on the front page of The Oakland Times on May13, 1895. The following year he was appointed to the executive committee of the fete. His 1896 voter registration record indicates he was living in the Hackett family home on Jackson Street.
In 1899, he performed in a show called Chirps put on by Oakland's Athenian Club of which he was a member. He had his first professional experiences in theatre working as a "corner-man" in a minstrel show operated by J. H. Haverly.
Early writing career in the United States
Short story writer and journalist
Hackett began his writing career as a writer of short stories. His short story "In the Service of the Czar" was published by the Short Story Publishing Company in 1899 under his full name, Walter Laurence Hackett. It was later republished in The Kansas Review on July29, 1904, and was subsequently picked up by other American newspapers.Hackett also worked as a journalist and by 1901 was in Chicago working as the city editor for the Chicago American. He later became a dramatic editor at the paper, and succeeded A. P. Dunlap as lead drama critic and editor in 1903. He was present at the First inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14, 1901, in Buffalo, New York, and his reporting on that event appeared as a special dispatch in newspapers nationally. In 1903, he was listed as a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Auxiliary Committee.
Hackett's short ghost story "Bill Bowden, A.B. Sees Things" was published in American and Canadian newspapers in February 1906. This was followed by the short story "Bill Bowden on Hoodoos" the following month. On July29, 1906, several larger papers published his short story "In the Valley of the Shadow", including The Washington Star and the New-York Tribune. These papers also published his short stories "The Governors Decision", "His Father's Son", "The Cardinal's Decision", "The Derelict", "Winchester and Company", "The Oasis in the Desert", "The District Attorney", "A Life for a Life", "Sonia", and "Pardners". He also contributed work as a journalist to The Washington Star and New-York Tribune.
Hackett's short story "The Society Dinner" was published in Broadway Magazine in June 1907. Other short stories written by Hackett that were published in periodicals included "Captain Arthur's Bride" "Pie", "The Electric Light Bill", "Rodman's Ambition", "The Name She Whispered", "In Deep Waters", "Mr Garfield's Matrimonial Experiment", "Miss Lowell's Lover", "The Theft of the Dudley Diamonds", "The Wheel of Fortune", "The Gazebrook Necklace", and "Otto Schmalz, Hypnotist".
In addition to working as a writer, Hackett also worked on the business staff of producers Klaw and Erlanger in the first decade of the 20th century.
Playwright
Early plays
Hackett's first stage work, the musical "playlet" Jessie's Jack and Jerry was given its premiere at Keith's Theatre in Philadelphia on March11, 1901. He co-wrote this work with playwright Francis Livingston, and the production starred Camille D'Arville and Lillian Burkhart. The production toured in 1901–1902, including performances at Chicago's Olympic Theater and Shea's Garden Theatre in Buffalo, New York.Hackett collaborated with Livingston again on a second play, the one-act farce The Way to Win a Husband, which they wrote specifically for Burkhart. Burkhart toured in this play in 1901-1902, including performances in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. In 1902, the actor Emmett Corrigan acquired the rights to Hackett's first full length play, the three act comedy The Prince of Dreams. It premiered at the Grand Opera House in Freeport, Illinois, on November17, 1902, in a performance by the Player's Stock Company of Chicago. It then transferred to the Bush Temple of Music in Chicago.
Hit plays of 1908: ''The Regeneration'' and ''The Invader''
Hackett spent the next several years focused on writing short stories, and his next play, My Mamie Rose, did not reach the stage until 1908. It was co-written with Owen Kildare and premiered at Poli's Theater in Waterbury, Connecticut, on January27, 1908, in a cast led by Arnold Daly, Chrystal Herne, Helen Ware, and Holbrook Blinn. The production toured the United States, including a stop at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago where it opened in March 1908. In Chicago the play was reworked and re-titled The Regeneration. Daly brought the play to Broadway later in the year but with some cast alterations. It opened at Wallack's Theatre on September1, 1908, to a glowing review in The New York Times which predicted a long run for the play.Hackett co-wrote his next play, The Invader, with Robert Hobart Davis. It was given its premiere in Milwaukee by the Pabst Theatre English Stock Company on May18, 1908, with a cast led by Christine Norman, Janet Beecher, Jack Standing, and Robert Conness. The play was based on the real life events of the Panic of 1907 and the role F. Augustus Heinze played in that financial crises. The play was then staged at McVicker's Theater in Chicago. The Chicago production was with a completely different cast which included the actors Florence Rockwell, Edmund Breese, Thomas A. Wise, Charles H. Riegel, and William B. Mack. Later that year the play was staged at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
''The White Sister''
Hackett co-wrote The White Sister with Francis Marion Crawford, a work which Crawford had previously written as first an unperformed play and then as a serialized novel in Munsey's Magazine. The idea for this collaborative project was birthed in 1907 when Hackett visited Crawford at his home in Sorrento, Italy. The play tells the tale of lovers Giovanna and Giovanni who separated by the events of a war. Giovanni is believed to have been killed and Giovanna becomes a nun only to be unexpectedly reunited with him years later while nursing him in a hospital. Crawford then collaborated with Hackett on a new stage adaptation which was the dramatic version that ultimately made it to the stage.The White Sister was given its premiere on February8, 1909, at the Stone Opera House in Binghamton, New York, and ran on Broadway later that year at Daly's Theatre with Viola Allen as Giovanna and William Farnum as Giovanni. A success, The New York Times later listed The White Sister along with It Pay's to Advertise and Captain Applejack as the works for which Hackett was "best known" when he died in 1944. The play was adapted into films in 1915, 1923, 1933, and 1960.
''C.O.D.'' and other plays of 1910–1912
On Valentine's Day1910, Hackett's play In the Mountains was performed for the first time at the Auditorium Theatre in Baltimore with a cast led by the actress Percy Haswell. The play told the tale of two feuding families, the Lees and the Claybournes, who live along the Kentucky and Tennessee border. After this he collaborated with dramatist Stanislaus Stange on the play Get Busy With Emily, an English-language adaptation of the 1906French farce Vous n'avez rien à déclarer? by Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Veber. Produced by A. H. Woods, it premiered at the Cort Theatre in Chicago on May8, 1910.He next collaborated with Ren Shields in writing the book for the musical The Simple Life which had a score by composer P. D. DeCoster. It premiered on August8, 1910, at the Savoy Theatre in Atlantic City with a cast of 50 led by Charles J. Ross.
Hackett sold the rights to a play he wrote entitled C.O.D. to playwright Eugene Walter. Walter altered the play and retitled it Homeward Bound for its premiere in December 1910 with Hackett credited as inspiring the theme of the play. Hackett disputed this credit, claiming he should be billed as a co-author of the work. Walter disputed Hackett's claim; stating that while Hackett had written the initial play, that after Walter purchased the rights to the work that he had almost completely remade the entire work. He stated that "less than 200 words" of Hackett's original text remained in the play. The play was later retitled Mrs. Maxwell's Mistake and was presented on Broadway at Maxine Elliott's Theatre in April 1911, and was retitled yet again as Fine Feathers for a production in Chicago. In 1912, Hackett sued Walter for failing to credit him as a co-author of the work. In December 1912, Justice Edward Everett McCall of the New York Supreme Court granted an injunction preventing Fine Feathers from being performed unless Walter was credited as a co-author while the court considered the case. Ultimately the court determined that Walter had sufficiently transformed the work, and could claim to be the sole author of the piece.
Hackett's play Our World was given its premiere at the Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on January27, 1911, with Amelia Gardner, Doris Keane, Campbell Gullan, Malcolm Duncan, and Vincent Serrano in the lead roles. It then toured to Broadway's Garrick Theatre where it opened on February6, 1911. The play investigated the theme of heredity with an examination of the daughter of a courtesan, and whether or not she was able to rise above the vices of her mother's tainted past.
After this, Hackett was one of many writers who worked on the book for the musical A Certain Party which toured prior to reaching Broadway's Wallack's Theatre on April23, 1911. He then created the play Honest Jim Blunt for the character actor Tim Murphy, but the play had only a short life on the New York stage in 1912.