Young, Rida Johnson

views updated

YOUNG, Rida Johnson

Born 28 February 1875, Baltimore, Maryland; died 8 May 1926, Southfield Point, Connecticut

Daughter of William A. and Emma Stuart Johnson; married James Young, 1904

Rida Johnson Young attended Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Her poems and stories had frequently been published in Baltimore-area newspapers. When she finished writing her first play, she decided, over parental objections, to take it in person to New York. Her persistence won her an interview with theater manager Daniel Frohman, who turned down the lengthy, 100-character play about Omar Khayyam but gave her a walk-on part.

Two years later, convinced she would never be a good actress, Young turned to songwriting for a music publisher. This experience was training for her later success as lyricist for her musical comedies. She collaborated with such composers as Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, and Rudolf Friml. Her best-known songs were "Mother Machree" (Barry of Ballymore, 1911), "When Love is Young in Springtime" (Brown of Harvard, 1906), "I'm Falling in Love with Someone" (Naughty Marietta, 1910), and "Sweethearts" (Maytime, 1917).

In 1906 Brown of Harvard began the long string of her plays produced on Broadway. Until 1921 there were one or two of Young's works on Broadway every year. The longest running were Naughty Marietta (1910, revived 1929, 1931, 1936, 1964), Maytime (1917), Sometime, with Mae West and Ed Wynn (1918), and Little Old New York (1920). Young claimed that all but one of her plays had been successful in production. That one, The Girl and the Pennant (1913), was written in hopes of breaking a theatrical jinx: no play dealing with baseball had ever triumphed on Broadway. Young's manager sent her south with the Giants one winter to learn about baseball and write a play in consultation with pitcher Christy Mathewson, but the result only confirmed tradition. The considerable royalties from her plays went into a summer home at Bellhaven, New York, and an estate at Stamford, Connecticut.

The Lottery Man (1909), directed by Edith Ellis, was one of Young's most popular early plays. Its bumptious young hero hits upon a scheme to pay off his debts and to provide for his charming mother. He advertises a lottery at a dollar per ticket with his hand in marriage as the prize, and then—too late to cancel the lottery—he meets the girl he would like to marry. He, his mother, and the girl's aunt begin buying tickets in her name. The girl is properly scandalized at the whole idea of the lottery, but love finds a way in the end. As in most of Young's plays, the plot and its resolution are trite, but there is freshness and sparkle in the dialogue and comic business. In this play, she pokes fun at a current fad by having the wealthy aunt test various diet schemes (pills, massage, medicine balls) on her emaciated paid companion before trying them herself. A minor character is an Irish girl who affects a Swedish name and accent to promote her business as a masseuse. Young often used national types in her plays, most frequently Irish and Scotch Americans.

Asked for the secret of her success, Young said, "I know that a play cannot succeed if it does not please women…. I am supposed to write musical comedies which will please the 'tired business man.' But if they do not please the lady whom the tired business man brings with him, the show will not last long." Her plays usually feature a self-possessed, bright young woman with modern wit and old-fashioned values. The heroines of her novels Out of the Night (1925) and Red Owl (1927) both achieve financial success in a man's world before accepting the traditional fulfillment sought by heroines of popular romances—a husband, home, and family.

Author of over 25 plays and musical comedies, three novels, and approximately 500 songs, Young was—among such playwrights as Anna Caldwell, Catherine Chisholm Cushing, Edith Ellis, Harriet Ford, Margaret Mayo, and Martha Morton—one of the most prolific and successful women dramatists of the 1910s and 1920s.

Other Works:

The Boys of Company B (1907). The Lancers (1907). Glorious Betsy (1908). Next (1911). The Red Petticoat (1912). The Isle o' Dreams (1913). Lady Luxury (1914). Shameen Dhu (1914). Captain Kidd, Jr. (1916). Her Soldier Boy (1916). The Little Widows (1917). Little Simplicity (1918). Macushla (1920). The Front Seat (1921). The Dream Girl (1924). The Rabbit's Foot (1924). Cock o' the Roost (1924).