The Green Goddess (play)
A 1921 melodrama that inspired films, salad dressing, and a locomotive.
The Green Goddess is a stage play written by William Archer in 1921. It toured in both America and England after its publication and was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1920-1921.
Quick Facts
- Writer
- William Archer
- Setting
- Remote area near the Himalayas
- Premiere date
- January 18, 1921
- Premiere place
- Booth Theatre; New York City, New York
- Original language
- English
- Genre
- Drama
Facts from the source article.
Adaptations
The play was adapted into a silent film in 1923 and a talkie in 1930, with George Arliss and Ivan F. Simpson reprising their roles as the Raja of Rukh and his chief aide. Orson Welles staged a version in New York in 1939, preceded by a short film prelude whose footage is now believed lost. A third film adaptation, Adventure in Iraq, was released in 1943, moving the setting from India to the Middle East. A novelization by Louise Jordan Miln appeared in 1922.
Things named after the play
Green Goddess salad dressing was created in the 1920s by a chef at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco to honor actor George Arliss and the play. A railway locomotive was named after the play in 1925, its owner having been inspired by the stage production. The play also appears as an obscure reference in a 1943 letter by Bruce Truscot, the pseudonym of Edgar Allison Peers, to Professor Geoffrey Tillotson.
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