Seven Keys to Baldpate annotated

• After presenting the author, the illustrated introduction to this eBook reviews "Seven Keys to Baldpate” as a play, its revivals, and its film adaptations.
Although George Michael Cohan (stage and pen name George M. Cohan), an early 20th Century American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and producer, is considered by many the father of the American Musical Comedy, the work for which is remains still well known today is the melodramatic farce “Seven Keys to Baldpate,” certainly his most popular play and regarded as one of the best of the early 20th Century.
Based on the novel of Earl Derr Biggers by the same title, Seven Keys to Baldpate opened on September 22, 1913 at The Astor Theater, in NYC, and has been revived and filmed many times ever since. The play was adapted to movie for the first time in a 1916 Australian silent film after a successful Australian tour in 1914. There were later movie versions of the story in 1917, 1925, 1929, 1935, 1947, and most recently in 1983. The filmed version of 1917 starred Cohan himself, who starred also in a 1935 revival for the Player's Club. The most recent adaptation, in 1983, was titled “House of Long Shadows” and starred Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, John Carradine, and Peter Cushing.