ABSTRACT
After the closing of The School Girl, Willie Gill began to find himself featured less largely on the playbills of America. One of his staunchest allies went when Jennie Kimball died and the Corinne Opera Company, which had so long trouped The Magic Slipper, Capers, Arcadia, and Hendrik Hudson, disintegrated. The style of American comic theatre was beginning to change too, as a new breed of American playwright emerged, a breed that turned out well-crafted comedies, pieces in which the play was indeed the thing, rather than merely a vehicle for the talents of a top-biller. Willie Gill had always been a star provider. The well-made play of the kind milled by the George Broadhursts of this world were not quite his thing. The world was changing, and Willie Gill—a genuine member of the old-world theatre—wasn’t really going to change with it.
