"It was our north land that we saw": Willard Mack and the Great Northwest
Abstract
Willard Mack (a.k.a. Charles W. McLaughlin) was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1887 and at an early age moved to the United States where he spent most of his adult life involved in the theatre and film as a playwright, actor, and director. At the time of his death in Hollywood in 1934, Mr. Mack had written over forty plays, mostly adaptions of popular stories and novels or extensions of vaudeville pieces; none of them stands up to criticism and certainly none is to be found among the canon of great works, yet most of them were produced on Broadway and toured both the U.S.A. and Canada and placed the author in the company of the leading popular writers and performers of that time. Even though Willard Mack was an American, he maintained contact with Canada and chose to set a number of his plays, such as Tiger Rose and The Scarlet Fox in northern Alberta. This paper deals with Mack's image of the North in terms of his claimed connection to the region and the people he wrote about and portrayed. Willard Mack, aussi connu sous le nom de Charles W. McLaughlin, est né en Ontario, Canada, en 1887. Quand it était très jeune, il a déménagé aux États-Unis où il a passé la majorité de sa vie travaillant dans le théâtre et dans les films comme écrivain, comédien, et directeur. Avant sa mort en 1934, M. Mack avait écrit plus de quarante pièces de théâtre, la plupart étant des adaptations d'histoires et de romans populaires ou des extensions de pièces vaudevilles. Aucun n'ont été acclamé critiquement et ne se trouvent certainement pas parmis la collection des grandes oeuvres, mais la plupart ont été produite à «Broadway» et ont faite des tournées aux États-Unis et au Canada; ces pièces ont placées l'auteur dans la compagnie d'écrivains et de comédiens les plus reconnus de son temps. Malgré que Willard Mack était un Américain, il a maintenu ses contactes au Canada et il a choisi d'établir le décors de plusieurs de ses pièces au nord de l'Alberta, par exemple, Tiger Rose et The Scarlet Fox. Cet article est à propos des images du nord que Mack utilise en termes de ses «connections» à cette région et à des personnes dont il a écrites et représentées.Downloads
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