Scotch Mist 1926

This was a new play in the 20s that Beatrix Lehmann was the understudy for Tallulah Bankhead. She had a few lines as one of the party girls, but most of the play was Tallulah and her husband and several would be lovers. The play was listed on the title page but to me it read like a melodrama. It was all about an unhappily married woman who was, and wasn't having affairs. The ending was very odd as it appeared she was raped by one of her pursuers. She was (rightly) upset by this the next morning and wanted to leave and live on her own, but somehow ended up with the guy who raped her! As I said not really a comedy. I've got several reviews of the play which I need to read. After the London performances it transferred to New York, so it must have been quite popular. It was very much a "new" play about liberated women, and probably a little scandalous at the time. But it just seemed quite sad looking back at it now.

Scotch Mist
The stage Jan 14 1926
Scotch Mist by Sir Patrick Hastings will be produced by Mr Basil Dean at the St Martins on Tuesday week, January 26. The action takes place in an old Scottish castle. Mr Godfrey Tearle, Miss Tallulah Bankhead, and Mr Edmund Broon are in the cast.


HASTINGS, P. and J, E., 1926, Jan 31. "SCOTCH MIST.". The Observer (1901- 2003), 11. ISSN 00297712.
Scotch mist
This is a play about a jazz woman who lived in a Jazz house. Her name is Mary Denvers and she was married to a cabinet minister whom she did not love. And no wonder, for such a person could not have drawn love from any human being, himself being more of a lobster than a man. Not that Mary was the misused and misunderstood and misloved person she imagined herself to be. She saw herself as a pilgrim in a quest of Real Love, but in fact, she was a baggage. Her husband, and one Henry and one David Campbell had been sworn friends until she appeared upon the scene. Each of them fell in love with her and out of friends with each other. Lawson got her. Harry went away and died somewhere and David, a strong silent Scotch caveman, took to pioneering in Africa.

In London, Mary lived in a house that would have given any sober person the creeps – even her telephone was kept in a box that appeared to have delirium tremens and associated with vamp women in hideous clothes and creepy-crawly men strongly resembling the things one sees under a large stone. One of them, a Freddie person, dropped in every afternoon to inquire whether there was any likelihood of Mary committing adultery with him that evening. Her husband made epigrams about him. Her uncle made more epigrams about him. He made eipgrams about himself. Nobody kicked him, a fact which worried and annoyed him. He felt he deserved to be kicked, that he was being robbed of his right to be kicked. So did we. We would have kicked him ourselves if we could have believed in his existence. However, he went un-kicked.

Then the strong Scotch caveman turned up and uttered monosyllables. Would Lawson come to Kinlochie Castle with him for the Fishing? Lawson would. So would Mary, although neither Lawson nor David desired her company. In Scotland, the vamp is up. Freddie incredibly arrives there too, and is sent off with Lawson to fish. Mary and David remain behind, and she proceeds to be vampish. This rouses the caveman in him, and before the young person knows what ho is about, he has locked all the doors, smashed the lamp, and set about her in a very brisk and hearty manner. I thought at first that he was about to kill her, but no suck luck! He ravished her instead, and we narrowly missed seeing him do it. This, seemingly was what Mary had been searching for all her life, and the next morning told everybody about it. Freddie said, Well I’m damned! Several times and departed. Lawson listened wile Mary and David talked the matter over at some length, and then, when they had settled to go off to Africa together and be as elemental as they knew how, he murmured a few cross words to his wife, telling her that she need not think he would receive her back when she was tired of being bashed about. And he, too, departed. The curtain descended on Mary and David assuring each other that this was a far better thing that they had ever done!...

Where DOES Sir Patrick Hastings live? He cannot be in court all day long, and even in police-courts human beings are encountered. I have seldom seen a play in which so little effort was made to present people in human form. The dialogue, especially that spoke by Freddie, might have been uttered by a derange gramophone. Characters were wastefully and wilfully employed. Five people appeared in the first act and were not seen again. This was a piece of kindness which was hardly deliberate. Another character, the only human one in the piece, was brought into the second act and then abolished. Acted by Miss Frances Ross-Campbell, she was a delight and we wished we could have seen her again. Mr Godfrey gave a capital performance as Capmbell, and Mr Edmond Breon and Mr Robert Horton strove hard to put some life into parts that were out of human reach.l Miss Tallulah Bankhead proved once more what an admirable actress she is by her performance of the vamp part. I will not go so far as Sir Patrick Hastings, who described her as the finest actress on the English stage, but undoubtedly she did more for Mary than he did. But she ought to put some variety into her voice. She speaks too much on one note, and that a low and monotonous one.

In my opinion, this play, it it were produced in the provinces, would ruin the Labour Party, whose attorney-general Sir Patrick was.

Billboard March 20, 1926
Scotch Mist coming
New York, March 13 Sir Patrick Hastings play, Scotch Mist, in which Godfrey Tearele and Tallulah Bankhead are now scoring at St Martin’s theatre, London, is to be produced here by the Dramatists’ Theatre…. The play is being much discussed in London and the Carpenter claims that it is the outstanding hit of the season there. The author is a celebrated English jurist and former attorney general.

Billboard, wed sept 29, 1926
“a highly touted comedy from London where tis said to have hurt a few folks’ feelings and to have offended the morals of others…
It’s run there has been called “fair” and if scotch mist goes here for more than two months (approximately) to any kind of business it will be a surprise.
Notwithstanding its reputation for being off colour, it is one of the tamest exhibits on Broadway,