Seven Keys to Balpate

In the words of the November 1913 reviewer in Theater Magazine, This play is a novelty in many ways. And Channing Pollock comments in The Green Book in December 1913, It is a play within a play within a play, with the characters in each separate play laughing at those in all the other plays. The amazingly ingenious scheme of the piece suggests those wooden eggs, contained by one inside another, that used to be imported from China. Seven Keys to Baldpate is a play and a burlesque of that play synchronized. Its authors deride the trashy melodrama, in melodrama, and then justify melodrama by showing real life to be full of melodrama. Finally, they justify themselves and defy criticism in a brilliant bit of effrontery. Based on the novel of Earl Derr Biggers by the same title, Seven Keys to Baldpate opened on September 22, 1913 at The Astor Theater, in NYC, and has been revived and filmed many times ever since.