| Name: |
Marc(us) (Cook) Connelly |
| Variant Name: |
|
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Gender: |
|
Marc Connelly is a central but not pivotal figure of twentieth-century American theatre: a man of enormous popularity but little lasting influence, of considerable instinctive talent but scant genius, of grand ideas but slight thought. Like Oscar Wilde, his unquestioned gifts are those associated with fine companionship: charm, gentility, a wealth of insightful stories, and abundant wit. Yet these qualities are unable by themselves to make his plays come alive for audiences today. If his plays (skits, screenplays, stories, and sketches) spoke with immediacy to audiences of the 1920s and 1930s, their voice is either lost within that time or obscured by that of his great collaborator, George S. Kaufman. Still, if Connelly's texts seem vapid or saccharine to the taste of the later twentieth century, they should be considered in terms of the innovations they represent. For Connelly's most enduring contribution may be that in plays like Beggar on Horseback, The Wisdom Tooth, and particularly The Green Pastures he merged the techniques of realism and expressionism for the Broadway stage into a form that was both palatable and intelligible to the Broadway theatregoer.
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 4,325 words (approx. 14 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Marc(us) (Cook) Connelly Access Pass.
