Stardom
In 1924, she and Guthrie were part of The Actor's Theatre, a successor to the Washington Square Players, and was a group of actors that sought to be a democracy without any stars. As their first production, they selected Candida, by George Bernard Shaw. At the time, the play was considered perfect for the group, as none of the characters were considered as outshining the others, as Shaw intended the play to be about ideas, and no so much characters. Even though the leading protagonist is Candida, she doesn't really come into her own until the third act. However, Cornell essentially re-envisioned the play. She made Candida the core of the play, a view adopted by directors and critics ever since. Reviews were ecstatic and audiences responded in kind. The Actor's Theatre changed their plans and decided that Cornell's name must appear above the play's title in all future productions of the troupe. Another acting troupe, the Theatre Guild, controlled the rights to all Shaw's plays, and thereafter only allowed Cornell to play the role of Candida so long as she was alive, a role which she reprised several more times in her career. Shaw later wrote her a note stating that she had created "an ideal British Candida in my imagination."
Cornell's next role was to play Iris March in The Green Hat, a romance by Michael Arlen in 1925. The play had themes of syphilis and loose morals, and Iris March was a strong sexual creature. Leslie Howard played the role of Napier. While the play was still in Chicago, it became an international hit, known all over the US and Europe. Ashton Stevens, senior drama critic in Chicago, wrote that The Green Hat "should die at every performance of its melodramatics, its rouge and rhinestones, its preposterous third act.... Already, I am beginning to to forget its imperfections and remember only its charms." Its chief charm, he conceded, was Cornell, who sent "tiny bells up and down my unpurchasable vertebrae." Most other critics panned the play itself, but nonetheless found it irresistible because of Cornell's ability to mesmerize, despite the garish dialogue. Critic George Jean Nathan wrote that the play was "superbly acted in its leading role by that one young woman who stands head and shoulders above all the other young women of the American theater, Miss Katharine Cornell."
The play had 231 performances in New York before going to Boston and then a cross-country tour. The play's success spawned a fashion in green hats of the type worn by Cornell in the play. Later, Talullah Bankhead played the role of Iris March in a failed London production, and Greta Garbo played the role in a movie version.
She then starred in The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham as Leslie Crosby, the woman who kills her lover, in 1927. Maugham himself suggested Cornell for the part. Although the critics weren't too excited, Cornell by then had developed a loyal following and opening night was a such a sensation that the New York Sun wrote that the sidewalks were packed with people after the performance straining to catch a glimpse of her. The play was later made into a movie starring Bette Davis.
In 1928, Cornell played the lead role of the Countess Ellen Olenska in a dramatized version of Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. The performance received not a single bad review. After this success, Cornell was offered the lead in The Dishonored Lady. Originally, it was intended for Ethel Barrymore who failed to accept the role. The play is a lurid melodrama about true-life murder in Glasgow, Scotland. Walter Winchell wrote, "Never in the history of the theatre has an actress of such distinction permitted such an exciting scene. She actually permits a man to crack her a powerful wallop in the face!" One critic complained about the "fifth rate claptrap" of a play, and chastised Cornell for selecting such low brow theater as a waste of her talents.
Vogue asserted that Cornell does these types of plays because "she prefers... to be blunt, trash of a violent kind." Biographer and playwright Tad Mosel counters that although this is meant as a reproof, when stripped of its condescension, "it is a simple statement of the truth. There was a part of her that indeed preferred trash of a violent kind. Her integrity as an artist was the only defense such a preference needed. Every performance had to be as much a revelation of herself as it was an interpretation of a role, and therefore her choice of roles and the way she played them offer great insights into her nature, greater perhaps than can be inferred from her gracious, smiling, always agreeable, and increasingly guarded behavior offstage. One must look at her performances as one looks at the output of a writer or a painter."
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