Frederick Lonsdale
Frederick Lonsdale ( born February 5, 1881 in Saint Helier in Jersey, † April 4, 1954 in London; actually Lionel Frederick Leonard ) was a British librettist and playwright.
Life
Frederick Lonsdale was as Lionel Frederick Leonard was born in a small cottage in Saint Helier, the capital of the Channel Island of Jersey, 1881. His father was a tobacco merchant, his mother a housewife. Lonsdale was initially an employee of the London and South Western Railway, before he could start his writing career with his wife Leslie Brooke Hoggan. As a chorus girl Hoggan had made her employer aware of a work of her husband. This gave it to the theater producer Frank Curzon, who eventually brought Lonsdale's libretto King of Cadonia 1908 as the musical in London on stage. Inspired was the libretto of Anthony Hope's novel The Prisoner of Zenda ( The Prisoner of Zenda, 1894 ), the music wrote Sidney Jones. 1910, the musical was also performed on Broadway. Lonsdale provided then additional templates for musicals, of which The Maid of the Mountains (1917 ) was by far the most successful. In addition he adapted operettas such as Jean Gilbert's That Lady in Ermine and Katja, the dancer or Leo Fall's Madame Pompadour for the British public.
From 1923 he also wrote plays, preferably ironic comedies about good manners and the then modern ideas of marriage. The comedy The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1925 ) about a maid who gives up his criminal career within a band of thieving domestic worker to marry an aristocrat, almost a year ran on Broadway and was repeatedly filmed, including in 1929 with Norma Shearer, 1937 with Joan Crawford and 1951 with Greer Garson.
Lonsdale, of London, died of a heart attack in 1954, was among other things a father of Frances Donaldson, in 1957 published a biography of him with Freddy Lonsdale, and Angela Fox, which emerged from an extramarital relationship and the mother of actors Edward and James Fox should be.
Works (selection)
Libretti
- King of Cadonia, 1908
- The Balkan Princess, 1910
- Betty, 1915
- The Maid of the Mountains, 1917
- Monsieur Beaucaire, 1919
- The Street Singer, 1924
- Lady Mary, 1928
Dramas
- Are not We All, 1923? ( Eng.: Are not we all? )
- Spring Cleaning in 1923
- The Fake, 1924
- The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, 1925 ( Eng.: Mrs. Cheney's end )
- On Approval 1926 (German: Marriage on probation )
- The High Road, 1927
- Canaries Sometimes Sing, 1929
- Once Is Enough, 1938 ( Eng.: Once is enough )
- Another Love Story, 1943
- The Way Things Go, 1950