Don Hiram Mullally (27 April 1886, St. Louis , Missouri – April 1, 1933, Duarte, California ) was an American playwright , screenwriter , theatre director, and actor. He penned several plays which were staged on Broadway , beginning with Conscience in 1924. His play The Desert Flower (1924) was adapted into a film in 1925. He also directed many of his own plays on Broadway as well as works by other writers. He wrote the screenplays to three Hollywood films released in 1933, the year that he died. One of these films, Mystery of the Wax Museum , was an important early horror film.
16-550: Laff That Off is a play in three acts by Don Mullally . It premiered on Broadway at Wallack's Theatre on November 2, 1925. It moved to the 39th Street Theatre midway through its Broadway run in December 1925. It closed in June 1926 after 263 performances. Produced by Earl Carroll and directed by Roy Walling , the play starred Thomas W. Ross as Robt. Elton Morse, a.k.a. "Remorse" and Pauline Drake as Emmy, a.k.a. "Mopupus". Others in
32-819: A paycheck". Women of that time were often subjected to sexual harassment , and had to endure indignities in a highly competitive job market. The film received a negative review in The New York Times when it was released. Sol Glass ( Ferdinand Gottschalk ) owns a clothing manufacturing company struggling to survive in the midst of the Great Depression. Like his competitors, Glass employs "customer girls" to entertain out-of-town buyers. However, his clients have become tired of his hard-bitten "gold diggers" and have started taking their business elsewhere. Tommy Nelson ( Regis Toomey ), one of his salesmen, suggests that they use their stenographers instead. Glass decides to give it
48-400: A try. When buyer Luther Haines ( Hugh Herbert ) sees Tommy's secretary and fiancee, Florence "Flo" Denny (Loretta Young), he wants to take her out. However, Tommy manages to steer him to the curvaceous Birdie (Suzanne Kilborn) instead. Later, with Birdie sick, Tommy reluctantly lets Flo go on a date with another buyer, Daniel "Danny" Drew ( Lyle Talbot ). They have a nice time together, but she
64-400: Is a 1933 American pre-Code film directed by George Amy and Busby Berkeley . It was Berkley's directorial debut. Loretta Young stars as a secretary who receives unwanted sexual advances when she is sent out on dates with her employer's clients. The film was promoted with the teaser "We apologize to the men for the many frank revelations made by this picture, but we just had to show it as it
80-414: Is not as innocent as he believed, so he drives her out into the country to the mansion of his friends. Nobody is home, but he coaxes her inside and tries to force himself on her. Flo tries to get away, but finally stops resisting. However, when she asks him if that is all she means to him, Danny stops before anything happens. She leaves, only to run into Tommy, who had followed the couple. He also believes she
96-423: Is selling herself. Danny, overhearing their conversation, realizes that Flo is innocent, and forces Tommy to apologize. Danny begs her to marry him. After she whispers in his ear, he picks her up and carries her back into the mansion. Writing for The New York Times , Frank S. Nugent gave the film a mostly negative review, primarily due to the constant suspicions the two male leads have about Young's character when
112-612: Is shocked when she finds out Danny expects sex. A contrite Danny apologizes and tells her that he has fallen in love with her. He has to go on a business trip, but telephones and writes to her regularly. Meanwhile, Flo's friend, fellow employee and roommate, Maizee ( Winnie Lightner ), shows her that Tommy is cheating on her with Birdie. She ends their engagement. To keep her self-respect, Flo tells Glass that she will not go out with any more buyers. When he threatens to fire her, she quits. Danny returns and takes Flo to dinner. Then, spotting Haines at another table, he asks her to help convince
128-475: The Cherry Lane Theatre , but a chance meeting between Roy Walling and Broadway producer A. H. Woods led to the latter attending rehearsals and deciding to produce the play on Broadway instead. The play was a tremendous success for the dramatic actress Lillian Foster (died 1949), and the role launched her career. Mullally's The Desert Flower was also staged on Broadway in 1924, and it was adapted into
144-470: The legitimate stage prior to his career as a playwright and director in New York City. In 1921 he formed a stage partnership with the actor Roy Walling. The pair attempted to stage works written by Mullally but without much success. Mullally's breakthrough came in 1924 when his play Conscience was staged at Broadway 's Belmont Theatre . The work was initially scheduled to premiere Off-Broadway at
160-456: The 1920s and early 1930s. In July 1932, Mullally left New York City for California to pursue a career as a contracted scriptwriter for Warner Brothers . With the screenwriter Carl Erickson , he co-authored the screenplay to Girl Missing (1933, originally titled The Blue Moon Murder Mystery ), and the 1933 pre-Code mystery - horror film Mystery of the Wax Museum . The latter film
176-518: The 1925 film The Desert Flower . His other Broadway plays include Laff That Off (1925), Wanted (1928), The Camels Are Coming (1931), and Coastwise (1931). He also penned several plays which never made it to Broadway, including Maggie which premiered in Baltimore in 1924. The Federal Theatre Project staged a revival of his play Laff That Off in 1936. In addition to writing his plays, Mullally often directed them as well. He directed
SECTION 10
#1733092621219192-507: The Broadway productions of Wanted , The Camels Are Coming and Coastwise . He also directed works by other writers on Broadway, including Michael Grismaijer's The Noble Experiment (1930), Preston Sturges 's Recapture (1930), and Fanny Hatton and Frederic Hatton 's Love, Honor and Betray (1930). He also founded and ran an experimental theatre in Woodstock, New York which was active in
208-537: The cast included Wyrley Birch as Mike Connelly, Shirley Booth as Peggy Bryant, Alan Bunce as Leo Mitchell, Hattie Foley as Mrs. Connelly, and Norval Keedwell as Arthur Lindau. This article on a play from the 1920s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Don Mullally Don Mullally was born in Saint Louis , Missouri into a family of actors. He started writing plays in 1918 in his native city. He worked as performer in vaudeville and on
224-494: The last holdout to a merger to sign an important contract, the biggest deal of his life. She is disappointed by his request, but agrees to do it. She goes to dinner with Haines, but cleverly arranges with Maizee to have Haines' wife ( Helen Ware ) and daughter show up. Haines has to go along with the pretense that he is conducting business, and signs the contract. When Haines later complains about Flo's methods, and claims that she and Tommy are living together, Daniel suspects that she
240-445: Was an important early film in the horror genre and has been re-adapted several times. He also co-authored the screenplay to another 1933 film, She Had To Say Yes , this time with writer Rian James . In January 1933 Mullally entered a tuberculosis sanatorium in Duarte, California . He died there at the age of 46 on April 1, 1933. She Had To Say Yes She Had To Say Yes
256-519: Was filmed. The true story of the working girl." According to pre-Code scholar Thomas Doherty, it was part of a series of movies that drew inspiration from the "real-life compromises working girls made to get and retain employment" during the Great Depression . A repeated theme in women's pictures in the Depression was the "threat of sexual violation" and the "hard necessity of risking virtue to keep
#218781