 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Langdon Elwyn Mitchell" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(September 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Langdon Elwyn Mitchell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1862-02-17)February 17, 1862 Philadelphia, [Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | October 21, 1935(1935-10-21) (aged 73) Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Columbia Law School |
| Parent(s) | S. Weir Mitchell Mary Middleton Elwyn |
| Relatives | John Kearsley Mitchell (grandfather) |
Langdon Elwyn Mitchell (February 17, 1862 – October 21, 1935) was an American playwright who was popular on Broadway during the early twentieth century.
Mitchell was born inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 17, 1862. He was the son of a noted writer andneurologist,S. Weir Mitchell, and his first wife, Mary Middleton Elwyn. His elder brother was John Kearsley Mitchell, a neurologist.[1][2] After his mother died in 1862, his father married MaryCadwalader. His paternal grandfather was writer and physicianJohn Kearsley Mitchell.
Mitchell studied inDresden, Germany, andParis, France. He attended theHarvard University and thenColumbia Law School, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1886.
A member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, he wrote plays under his own name and poetry under the pen name "John Philip Varley." Along withClyde Fitch,William Vaughn Moody,Percy MacKaye,Ned Sheldon andRachel Crothers, Langdon Mitchell was regarded as one of the more serious American dramatists in an era (c. 1900-1910) not notable for weighty plays. He was considered a solid craftsman whose plays provided good parts for talented actors and actresses.
Mitchell enjoyed an especially productive relationship with one of the most prominent actresses of his time, Mrs.Minnie Maddern Fiske, who was one of the first actresses to play Nora in Ibsen'sA Doll's House on the New York stage and was renowned for her Hedda Gabler. Mrs. Fiske acted one of her most lauded roles, the conniving Becky Sharp, in 1899 in Mitchell's dramatization of Thackeray'sVanity Fair, and she starred seven years later in his most famous work,The New York Idea, a play which had been written for her. (The New York Idea is the only play by Mitchell to have survived his era and is occasionally performed in regional theaters. It was revivedoff-Broadway in New York in 1977, in a production starringBlythe Danner, and again in 2011, in an adaptation by David Auburn, the author ofProof.)
Theater critic and historian Brooks Atkinson wrote in 1970 ofThe New York Idea, a tart comedy about divorce, that "the dialogue is still lively and the idiocies of the character are still pertinent," securely placing it in the long tradition of drawing-room comedy.[3] Some reviewers at the time sanctimoniously took issue with the idea of a comedy about a socially questionable topic such as divorce, but others praised Mitchell for writing in the spirit of British playwrightsArthur Wing Pinero andHenry Arthur Jones.[4]
Mitchell taught playwriting at theUniversity of Pennsylvania from 1928 to 1930.[5]
In 1891, Mitchell married Marion Lea (1861–1944), an actress who was on the London stage at the time of their marriage. She was a daughter of Joseph Lea and Susanna (née Massey) Lea.[6] Together, they were the parents of:
After suffering fromnephritis, Mitchell died at theHospital of the University of Pennsylvania on October 21, 1935.[10] His widow died atDoctors Hospital in New York in June 1944.[6]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Langdon Elwyn Mitchell".New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
