Outward Bound is a 1923 play written by Sutton Vane.
The play is about a group of seven passengers who meet in the lounge of an ocean liner at sea and realize that they have no idea why they are there, or where they are bound. Each of them eventually discovers that they are dead, and that they have to face judgment from an Examiner, who will determine whether they are to go to Heaven or Hell. Producers stayed away from such an unusual combination of fantasy and drama, so Vane staged it himself, painting his own backdrops and building his own sets, reportedly for $600. It proved to be a huge success, becoming the hit of the 1923 London season.
It premiered on Broadway at the Ritz Theatre on January 7, 1924, running for 144 performances until May 1924. Dudley Digges, Leslie Howard, Beryl Mercer, and Alfred Lunt starred in the production.
The play was revived on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre, from December 22, 1938 to July 22, 1939, running for 255 performances. This production was directed by Otto Preminger, and featured Laurette Taylor, Helen Chandler, and Vincent Price.
Several film adaptations were made, the first being 1930's Outward Bound, with Dudley Digges and Beryl Mercer reprising their roles, while Leslie Howard played Lunt's. It was remade in 1944 as Between Two Worlds, with some changes reflecting World War II. John Garfield, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, and Eleanor Parker starred.
Famous quotes containing the words outward and/or bound:
“Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)