Plot Summary
- Characters
- Julie Cavendish - Fanny's daughter
- Tony Cavendish - Fanny's son
- Gwen Cavendish - Fanny's granddaughter
- Herbert Dean - Fanny's brother
- Kitty Dean - Fanny's sister-in-law
- Fanny Cavendish - Cavendish Family Matriarch
- Oscar Wolfe - Cavendish Family's Long-time Agent
- Gilmore Marshall - Julie's Love Interest
- Perry Stewart - Gwen's Fiancee
The story is a parody of the Barrymore family actors, with particular aim taken at John Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. The character Tony Cavendish, a heavy-drinking womanizer, represents John Barrymore. Julie Cavendish is the prima donna Broadway star Ethel Barrymore. Ethel Barrymore was offended and her critical comments were quoted by the press; however John Barrymore saw the production in Los Angeles and was amused, and congratulated Fredric March on his performance as Tony Cavendish. (Otto Kruger had played the role on Broadway.)
Read more about this topic: The Royal Family (play)
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)