Born On This Day In 1885- Arthur Wing Pinero

He is rather obscure even for your host, a theatre major & pop culture savant. Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was a late 19^th century & early 20^th century actor, director & playwright. I don’t know all that much about except that he was homosexual & Jewish which couldn’t have been easy in Victorian England.

I have 2 small connections to him. Pinero authored a charming play- The Enchanted Cottage which I was very good in at my high school & I saw a very young Meryl Streep in a nifty production of Trelawny Of The Wells in 1975.

The movie version of The Enchanted Cottage (1945), starring Dorothy McGuire & Robert Young, is an A+ film going experience. I recommend seeing it. The theme of Pinero's The Enchanted Cottage, which was produced as a play directly after WW1 & as a silent film in 1924, concerns the illusion of beauty & the moral courage which are mutually by a homely girl & a maimed war veteran when they viewed each other through the eyes of love. Even in this age of easier plastic surgery, the theme is still quite appealing today just as it was when it was first presented & one which can bear repeating.

In his era, Pinero was prodigious, prolific, & stupendous success, a peer of Shaw & Wilde. Today he is mostly forgotten & his works are seldom revivied.

 
I like that among Pinero’s 60 plays are the titles:
Dandy Dick, Sweet Lavender & The Gay Lord Quex.