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The Gorilla is a three-act play written by Ralph Spence. Donald Gallaher produced it on Broadway, where it opened at the Selwyn Theatre on April 28, 1925. The play was a success and ran on Broadway for 257 performances.^[1] A production opened in London at the New Oxford Theatre on June 30, 1925, and ran for 134 performances.^[2]^[3] The play was a parody of popular theatrical mysteries such as The Bat and The Cat and the Canary. Its advertisements claimed it "outbats The Bat".^[4]

Plot

Alice Denby visits her uncle, Cyrus Stevens, at his old, dark mansion on Long Island. She brings along Arthur Madsen, who has written a mystery play about a criminal called "The Gorilla". Alice asks her uncle to consider investing in the play. As he begins to read it, elements from Arthur's play begin to appear in the house. Detectives arrive looking for The Gorilla. The lights go out suddenly at midnight. A gorilla (an ape, not the criminal) escapes from captivity and carries Alice away. In a twist ending, the strange happenings on stage are revealed to be the imagined events of Arthur's play within the play.

Adaptations

The Gorilla was adapted as a silent film of the same name in 1927, and was filmed again in 1930 and 1939, the latter as a vehicle for The Ritz Brothers. The play also served as source material for the 1937 Warner Bros. comedy Sh! The Octopus starring Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins, with the gorilla converted to an octopus.^[5]

References

^ Bordman 1996, p. 260
^ Kabatchnik 2009, p. 356
^ Lachman 2014, p. 132
^ Rigby 2007, p. 29
^ Kabatchnik 2009, p. 357

Works cited

Bordman, Gerald (1996). American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1930–1969. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-535808-2. OCLC 252547085.
Kabatchnik, Amnon (2009). Blood on the Stage: Milestone Plays of Crime, Mystery, and Detection: An Annotated Repertoire, 1900–1925. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6123-7. OCLC 190860037.
Lachman, Marvin (2014). The Villainous Stage: Crime Plays on Broadway and in the West End. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-9534-4. OCLC 891369417.
Rigby, Jonathan (2007). American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema. London: Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 978-1-905287-25-3. OCLC 70845190.