Heiress, The

Heiress, The (1947), a play by Ruth and Augustus Goetz. [Biltmore Theatre, 410 perf.] Dominated by her unloving father, Dr. Austin Sloper ( Basil Rathbone), Catherine Sloper ( Wendy Hiller) is receptive to the courtship of Morris Townsend ( Peter Cookson). But Townsend is a fortune‐hunter, so when he learns Catherine will be disinherited if they wed, he jilts her. After Dr. Sloper's death, Catherine gets her revenge by allowing Townsend to seek her hand again and then spurning him. Based on Henry James's Washington Square, the play was rejected by several important producers who insisted on a happy ending. The Goetzes finally acquiesced, but the production failed out of town. Recast and revived with the ending the authors had initially written, it succeeded. Robert Coleman of the Daily Mirror called it “a bitter, relentless, absorbing character study.” A Broadway revival with Jane Alexander and Richard Kiley failed to interest audiences or critics in 1976, but a beautifully staged and acted version with Cherry Jones and Philip Bosco in 1995 was a critical and popular hit. Ruth GOETZ [née Goodman] (1912–2001), the daughter of producer Philip Goodman, and her husband, Augustus GOETZ (1901–57), were also the authors of the dramas One Man Show (1945), The Immoralist (1954), and The Hidden River (1957).