Megan McGinnis and Robert Adelman Hancock in Daddy Long Legs. Photo by Jeanne Tanner
The Route to Musical Love
by John Herbert Cunningham
Daddy Long Legs has walked a great distance to get from page to stage making many transformations along the way.
It began its journey in 1912 as a novel by Jean Webster, daughter of a wealthy socialite family who, when she arrived in New York to attend Vassar College as a budding English major and future novelist, became exposed to the American orphanage system and became an advocate for reform. Its next incarnation was as a 1919 silent movie starring Mary Pickford whom many may remember as a Canadian actress. It first appeared as a musical in 1931, sticking close to the original, before Shirley Temple, in 1935, starred in a musical version which required significant changes. This revamping continued when, in 1955, a movie version starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron was created with music and lyrics by Johnny Mer, as an anime television series, (1990), and South Korea (2005).
Finally, through a joint effort by the Rubicon Theatre Company of Ventura, California, TheatreWorks of the Silicon Valley, and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the original plot was restored before finally settling onto the mainstage of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (RMTC), the John Hirsch Theatre.
