Gold Diggers, The

Gold Diggers, The (1919), a comedy by Avery Hopwood. [Lyceum Theatre, 720 perf.] When rich, proper Stephen Lee ( Bruce McRae) learns that his nephew, Wally Saunders ( Austen Harrison), would marry a chorus girl, Violet Dayne ( Beverly West), he is duly alarmed. He decides to talk to Jerry Lamar ( Ina Claire), a worldlywise showgirl he has known and who, he learns, has taken Violet under her wing. Jerry assures Stephen that Violet is an exception to the rule that all chorus girls are out to marry rich men solely for their money, a rule exemplified by Mable Monroe ( Jobyna Howland), Trixie Andrews ( Lilyan Tashman), Eleanor Montgomery ( Luella Gear), and Gypsy Montrose ( Gladys Feldman). But while she is reassuring Stephen, she is also plying him with whiskey. When he is drunk he proposes, and she accepts. Because she is in love with him, she soon confesses he trickery, but since Stephen loves her in return, he is forgiving. Although Arthur Hornblow of Theatre Magazine typified the many negative critical reactions when he dismissed the play as a “trivial hodge‐podge of chorus girl slang, bedroom suggestiveness and false sentiment,” the David Belasco production was the second longest‐running show in Broadway history when it closed, and it gave popular currency to the expression “gold digger.” The play later was the basis of several successful Hollywood musicals.