Déclassée

Déclassée (1919), a drama by Zoë Akins. [Empire Theatre, 257 perf.] When Sir Bruce Haden ( Harry Plimmer) catches one of his guests, Edward Thayer ( Vernon Steel), cheating at cards, Haden's wife, Lady Helen ( Ethel Barrymore), comes to the defense of Edward, her paramour. She is not one to avoid a fight since she is the last of the “Mad Varvicks,” who for five hundred years have been dying for causes in which they believe. Indeed, she has married a bit below her station, since Sir Bruce is a new knight, a butcher lately elevated by the king. But after Lady Helen catches Thayer cheating again, she threatens to expose him, although he counters by vowing to reveal letters she has written to him. Undeterred, she exposes him and thus ruins her own reputation. Moving to New York, she befriends a rich Jew, Rudolf Solomon ( Claude King), and she lives by selling her jewelry. Solomon proposes marriage and Helen accepts, though she confesses that she still loves Thayer. Thayer suddenly reappears, so Solomon offers to release Helen from her promise. Misunderstanding Solomon's change of heart, Helen rushes out into the night, where she is struck down by a taxi. Only as she is dying and sees Thayer does she understand Solomon's action. Although critics were impressed with the sensitivity and acuity with which the Missouri‐born Akins depicted English high society, it was generally agreed that the strength of the evening came from Barrymore's acting. Dorothy Parker, so often venomously critical, wrote that she had never seen “any other performance so perfect.”