American Literature: Biographies

The Oxford Companion to American Theatre The Oxford Companion to American Literature Further reading

Get‐Rich‐Quick Wallingford

The Oxford Companion to American Theatre | 2004 | | Copyright

Get‐Rich‐Quick Wallingford (1910), a comedy by George M. Cohan. [Gaiety Theatre, 424 perf.] J. Rufus Wallingford ( Hale Hamilton) and his crony Horace “Blackie” Daws ( Edward Ellis) are consummate con men. They move from town to town setting up promising businesses, selling stock in the companies by telling the local “boobs” that “There's millions in it!,” then disappearing before the bubble bursts. A favorite Wallingford trick is to walk into a hotel when he first arrives and, as he signs the register, beg the clerk not to sell his autograph. But when Wallingford comes to Battlesburg to set up a plant for the manufacture of covered carpet tacks that will match any carpet, his plans go awry. The company succeeds, and Battlesburg prospers. Wallingford looks to become richer than he ever dreamed and even wins the hand of Fannie Jasper ( Frances Ring), who believed in him. Based on George Randolph Chester's short stories in the Saturday Evening Post, the play was Sam H. Harris and Cohan's first successful work without music. Cohan's fast‐paced co‐direction (with Sam Forrest) glossed over myriad improbabilities, while the colorful minor figures that filled the play led the Boston Evening Transcript to note that his characters were “Americans, keenly observed, shrewdly put to speaking [for] themselves in their own idiom.”

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Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Get‐Rich‐Quick Wallingford." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Get‐Rich‐Quick Wallingford." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-GetRichQuickWallingford.html

Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Get‐Rich‐Quick Wallingford." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-GetRichQuickWallingford.html

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