7‐20‐8

7‐20‐8; or, Casting the Boomerang, (1907), a “comedy of to‐day” by Augustin Daly. [Daly's Theatre, 49 perf.] Portrait of a Lady, picture #728 at the annual Academy exhibition, so lovingly depicts a beautiful woman and her huge dog that both Courtney Corliss ( John Drew), a handsome young man‐about‐town, and the remote Lord Lawntennis decide to seek her out. The Englishman sends an effervescent Italian opera impresario, Signor Tamborini ( William Gilbert), to do his legwork. Corliss's and Tamborini's search brings them to the country estate of Launcelot Bargiss ( James Lewis), whose daughter Flos ( Ada Rehan) is indeed the lady of the picture. Flos, who fears she will “die of the blues” if she cannot escape her dreary isolation and live in New York City, is immediately taken by Courtney. He suggests she not be afraid of a little adventure, that the follies of youth are the happy memories of old age, and that we all cast little boomerangs that come home to haunt us and eventually amuse us. At the same time Mrs. Bargiss ( Mrs. G. H. Gilbert) has submitted to a shady publisher all the love poems her husband had sent her when they were courting, unaware that he lifted them from Shakespeare and other great poets. Courtney persuades the family to spend a season in New York, where Bargiss is eventually caught having a fling on the town and where he must buy up all copies of his supposed works to save his reputation. When it turns out that Lord Lawntennis is actually seeking to purchase the dog in the painting, Flos and Courtney are free to wed. Based loosely on Schoenthan's Die Schwabenstreich, the play was the first major success of Daly's second troupe and saved the company from probable bankruptcy. Although prior commitments shortened the original run, Daly revived and toured the work regularly. The title was derived from the small theatre at 728 Broadway (by then Harrigan and Hart's Theatre Comique), which Daly had used briefly after his Fifth Avenue Theatre had burned.