Paid in Full

Paid in Full (1908), a play by Eugene Walter. [Astor Theatre, 167 perf.] Joseph Brooks ( Tully Marshall) is an attractive but basically worthless young man who has been lucky enough to marry above his station. His wife, Emma ( Lillian Albertson), deeply in love with him, is blind to his failings. Not even the warnings of her mother, Mrs. Harris ( Hattie Russell), her sister, Beth ( Oza Waldrop), or of James Smith ( Ben Johnson), a loyal family friend who has loved Emma for many years, can open her eyes. When Brooks is caught embezzling company funds he demands that Emma plead for him with his boss, Captain Williams ( Frank Sheridan), who had once been a partner of Emma's father. In fact, Brooks hints that Emma should be willing to prostitute herself if that is what it takes to exonerate him. When Emma dutifully visits Williams, the old man recognizes the shamefulness of Brooks's ploy, writes a letter exculpating Brooks, then reads Emma the riot act. When Emma returns home Brooks demands a full accounting of what occurred, ready to condemn Emma for doing what he sent her to do. His baseness now is evident even to his wife, who walks out on him. Although he felt that Walter was not always steadfast in his seriousness of purpose, suggesting, for example, that Mrs. Harris and Beth were farcically exaggerated, Walter Prichard Eaton nevertheless agreed that the play “has a purpose above the mere trickle of a story, the rehashing of conventional situations—that is, searching for truth.” For all its comic interludes, many playgoers found the grimness in the Wagenhals and Kemper production too unrelieved.