Dancing mothers

   Opening on 11 August 1924 at Booth's Theatre, the provocative drama written by Edmund Goulding with producer and director Edgar Selwyn ran for 311 performances. Mary Young played the mature wife who responds to her husband's infidelities and her flapper daughter's partying by beating them at their own game. She goes out with the man who has been seeing her daughter Kittens (played by Helen Hayes) and enjoys her freedom so much that she heads off to Europe, leaving her suddenly distraught husband and daughter. It was the Doll's House-like ending that particularly captured the fancy of audiences in 1924.