George M Cohan

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One of the most thrilling plays ever, this is a medley of mystery, farce and intrigue an especially fine example of the American mystery play and one of the outstanding dramatic successes of modern times. A writer goes to a mountain inn to plot. He gets more than he bargained for.

In the words of the November 1913 reviewer in Theater Magazine, This play is a novelty in many ways. And Channing Pollock comments in The Green Book in December 1913, It is a play within a play within a play, with the characters in each separate play laughing at those in all the other plays. The amazingly ingenious scheme of the piece suggests those wooden eggs, contained by one inside another, that used to be imported from China. Seven Keys to Baldpate is a play and a burlesque of that play synchronized. Its authors deride the trashy melodrama, in melodrama, and then justify melodrama by showing real life to be full of melodrama. Finally, they justify themselves and defy criticism in a brilliant bit of effrontery. Based on the novel of Earl Derr Biggers by the same title, Seven Keys to Baldpate opened on September 22, 1913 at The Astor Theater, in NYC, and has been revived and filmed many times ever since.

Mystery Comedy George M. Cohan Characters: 10 male, 4 female Interior Set One of the most famous of Cohan's plays happens in a lonely tavern on a wild stormy night where a mysterious vagabond, a woman and the State Governor and his family who have been held up a short distance away gather. Several persons are suspected of the crime and the mysterious vagabond takes infinite delight in observing developments as they take place about him. When suspense reaches an almost unbearable climax, the vagabond is at last located by the keepers of a nearby Sanitorium and it is learned that he, a madman, has been responsible for the vastly amusing and complicated series of misunderstandings.