Maxwell Anderson Filmography

Lost in the Stars

Crew: From Musical by, Play Author

Actors: Brock Peters

Synopsis: Lost in the Stars was an American Film Theatre adaptation of the musical play by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill--which in turn was based on the Alain Paton novel Cry the Beloved Country. Brock Peters portrays a South African minister who goes to the Big City to locate his son Raymond St. Jacques Read More

Anne of the Thousand Days

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Richard Burton, Geneviève Bujold, Irene Papas, Anthony Quayle, John Colicos

Synopsis: Anne of the Thousand Days is the belated film adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's 1948 stage play. The story concentrates on the romance between Britain's King Henry VIII (Richard Burton) and his ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn (Genevieve Bujold). After holding out for marriage rather than an Read More

The Star Wagon

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Orson Bean, Dustin Hoffman

Synopsis: Dustin Hoffman was only a few months away from his star-making role in The Graduate when he appeared in this television adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's satiric dark comedy. A disgruntled inventor (Orson Bean) whose career is going nowhere finally comes up with something that could change the Read More

Caught in the Net

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this children's movie, an ingenious boy whose brother is a fishery researcher, catches the bad boys who are poaching salmon using dynamite. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Never Steal Anything Small

Crew: Play Author

Actors: James Cagney, Roger Smith, Shirley Jones, Cara Williams, Nehemiah Persoff

Synopsis: Only one of three films directed by screenwriter Charles Lederer, known for movies as disparate as The Thing (1951) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), this crime comedy-drama-musical obviously defies categorization. Mixing James Cagney as a gangster out to control a big union, with musical Read More

Ford Star Jubilee: High Tor

Crew: Play Author

Synopsis: Originally telecast in 1956 as a presentation of the CBS anthology Ford Star Jubilee, "High Tor" was a musical adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's 1937 stage play, with lyrics by Anderson and music by veteran Broadway and Hollywood tunesmith Arthur Schwartz. Bing Crosby stars as Van Van Dorn, the Read More

The Wrong Man

Crew: Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold J. Stone, Charles Cooper

Synopsis: Director Alfred Hitchcock lets us know from the outset that The Wrong Man is a painfully true story and not one of his customary fabricated suspense yarns, through the simple expedient of walking before the camera and telling us as much (this introductory appearance replaced his planned cameo role Read More

The Bad Seed

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones, Eileen Heckart, Evelyn Varden

Synopsis: Can evil be inherited? That's the question posed by Maxwell Anderson in his stage play The Bad Seed. This 1956 film adaptation stars many actors from the Broadway version, including Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones and Eileen Heckart. Young McCormack plays Rhoda, a too-good-to-be-true Read More

A Christmas Carol

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Fredric March, Basil Rathbone, Richard Miles

Synopsis: This version of the Dickens classic appears in musical form. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

What Price Glory?

Crew: Play Author

Actors: James Cagney, Dan Dailey, Corinne Calvet, William Demarest, Craig Hill, Robert Wagner

Synopsis: James Cagney signed on to play Captain Flagg in 20th Century Fox's 1952 remake of the 1926 classic What Price Glory after being told that the old property was being converted into a musical. By the time Cagney learned that Fox had no intention of adding songs and dances to the venerable Maxwell Anderson Read More

Cry the Beloved Country

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Canada Lee, Charles Carson, Sidney Poitier, Joyce Carey, Geoffrey Keen

Synopsis: This deliberately paced British film about a black rural priest and a white landowner whose paths cross in 1940s South Africa remains one of the most powerful cinematic statements on racism. Based on Alan Paton's landmark novel, Cry the Beloved Country is, in hindsight, naïve in its belief that Read More

Joan of Arc

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, José Ferrer, Selena Royle, Ward Bond, Robert H. Barrat, Jimmy Lydon, Francis L. Sullivan, Cecil Kellaway, Rand Brooks

Synopsis: Director Victor Fleming's final film features Ingrid Bergman as a vivid and luminous Joan of Arc, the 15th-century French peasant girl who led the French in battle against the invading English, becoming a national hero. When she was captured, tortured, and ultimately executed by the English, she Read More

Key Largo

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Monte Blue, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: Richard Brooks and John Huston's screenplay for Huston's Key Largo eschews the lofty blank verse of Maxwell Anderson's original play, concentrating instead on the simmering tensions among the many characters. Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, an embittered war veteran who travels to Key Largo Read More

The Eve of St. Mark

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Anne Baxter, William Eythe, Michael O'Shea, Vincent Price, Ruth Nelson

Synopsis: Maxwell Anderson's Broadway play Eve of St. Mark is here brought to the screen by 20th Century-Fox. William Eythe and Anne Baxter are young lovers whose plans for the future are interrupted by the pre-war military draft. Eythe is shipped to the Philippines, where he is trapped on a small and Read More

Knickerbocker Holiday

Crew: From Musical by, Play Author

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Charles Coburn, Constance Dowling, Ernest Cossart, Shelley Winters, Johnnie Davis, Percy Kilbride

Synopsis: The wild and woolly early days of New York -- when it was still known as New Amsterdam -- provide the backdrop for this period musical-comedy. In 1650, Peter Stuyvesant (Charles Coburn) arrives in New Amsterdam to assume his duties as governor. Stuyvesant is hardly the fun-loving type, and one of Read More

Saturday's Children

Crew: Play Author

Actors: John Garfield, Anne Shirley, Claude Rains, Roscoe Karns, George Tobias, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: This third film version of Maxwell Anderson's play Saturday's Children stars Claude Rains as the impecunious but proud father of a large brood. Rains' daughter Anne Shirley marries idealistic John Garfield, a would-be inventor who works for Shirley's father. Feeling that he's been tricked into Read More

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale

Synopsis: It is no secret that Bette Davis and Errol Flynn were at each other's throats throughout the filming of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Boiled down to essentials: Davis felt that Flynn was unprofessional, while Flynn thought that Davis took herself too damn seriously. Besides, Davis had Read More

Winterset

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Burgess Meredith, Margo, Eduardo Ciannelli, John Carradine, Edward Ellis

Synopsis: Maxwell Anderson combined the Sacco-Vanzetti story with elements of the still-unsolved disappearance of Judge Crater, and the result was the blank-verse theatrical piece Winterset. Burgess Meredith, Margo and Eduardo Cianelli repeat their Broadway roles, respectively playing the grown son of an Read More

Mary of Scotland

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, Douglas Walton, John Carradine

Synopsis: Maxwell Anderson's blank-verse play Mary of Scotland was adapted for the screen by Dudley Nichols and directed with a surprising paucity of verve by John Ford. Katharine Hepburn, in one of the "icy" roles that would later earn her the onus of "box office poison", stars as Mary Stuart, who serves Read More

So Red the Rose

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, Walter Connolly, Janet Beecher, Harry Ellerbe, Robert Cummings

Synopsis: So Red the Rose is a Civil War drama that plays like a warm-up for Gone With the Wind--and, unlike Wind, has two genuine Southerners in the leading roles. Margaret Sullavan is the aristocratic mistress of a sprawling Southern plantation, whose sheltered lifestyle is rent asunder by the War. Read More

Maybe It's Love

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Gloria Stuart, Ross Alexander, Frank McHugh, Helen Lowell, Phillip Reed

We Live Again

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Anna Sten, Fredric March, Jane Baxter, C. Aubrey Smith, Ethel Griffies, Sam Jaffe

Synopsis: We Live Again was based on Tolstoy's Resurrection; the title was changed upon producer Sam Goldwyn's theory that it meant the same thing as Resurrection and was easier to understand. The film was meant as an introductory showcase for Goldwyn's latest discovery, Russian actress Anna Sten. The Read More

Death Takes a Holiday

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Fredric March, Evelyn Venable, Guy Standing, Katherine Alexander, Gail Patrick

Synopsis: In this adaptation of Alberto Casella's stage play, Death assumes human form in order to discover why men fear him. Posing as a Prince Sirki (and played by Fredric March), Death appears as a house guest at the villa of an Italian duke. While "Sirki" is present, Death takes his titular holiday, and Read More

Rain

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Joan Crawford, Walter Huston, William Gargan, Guy Kibbee, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: The pleasures of the flesh confront the discipline of the Lord's teachings in this screen adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's story Miss Sadie Thompson. Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford) is a sassy streetwalker who lands in Pago Pago in the South Pacific after an epidemic grounds the ship on which Read More

Washington Merry-Go-Round

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: Lee Tracy, Constance Cummings, Alan Dinehart, Walter Connolly, Clarence Muse

Synopsis: In this political melodrama, an idealistic freshman congressman swears to do his best to get relief for his impoverished constituents who lost everything in the Great Depression. Unfortunately, he discovers that many of his colleagues have been corrupted by avaricious crooks. He begins lobbying to Read More

All Quiet on the Western Front

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Raymond Griffith, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: One of the most powerful anti-war statements ever put on film, this gut-wrenching story concerns a group of friends who join the Army during World War I and are assigned to the Western Front, where their fiery patriotism is quickly turned to horror and misery by the harsh realities of combat. Read More

Maybe It's Love

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown, James Hall, Laura Lee, Anders Randolf

Synopsis: Maybe It's Love is one of the many college football musicals which bred like minks in the early talkie era. A very young Joan Bennett tops the cast as Nan Sheffield, the daughter of a college president (George Irving). The nominal leading man is Tommy Nelson (James Hall), the black-sheep son of a Read More

Saturday's Children

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Corinne Griffith, Grant Withers, Albert Conti, Alma Tell, Lucien Littlefield

Synopsis: Playwright Maxwell Anderson's domestic comedy drama Saturday's Children was adapted for the screen three times between 1929 and 1940, each time by Warner Bros. The first version, a part-talkie, starred Corinne Griffith and Grant Withers as youthful sweethearts Bobby Halevy and Jim O'Neill. A Read More

The Cock-Eyed World

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Lili Damita, Lelia Karnelly, El Brendel

Synopsis: This sequel to the enormously successful silent film What Price Glory reunites director Raoul Walsh with stars Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe. As in the earlier film, McLaglen and Lowe are cast respectively as Flagg and Quirt, those ever-brawling U.S. Marine sergeants. With WWI but a dim memory Read More

What Price Glory?

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Dolores Del Rio, William V. Mong, Phyllis Haver

Synopsis: From the minute it opened on Broadway in 1924, Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson's gritty WWI comedy-drama What Price Glory? was a center of controversy. Prudes and blue-noses condemned the play for its explicit language, while a group of politicians tried to bring about a federal action to Read More