Earl Derr Biggers

Seven Keys to Baldpate Annotated Earl Derr Biggers

Seven Keys to Baldpate is a 1913 play by George M. Cohan based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers. The dramatization was one of Cohan's most innovative plays. It baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit, running for nearly a year in New York, another year in Chicago and receiving later revivals; Cohan starred in the 1935 revival. Cohan adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, and later for TV and radio. The play mixes all the formulaic melodrama of the era with a satirical send up of just those melodramatic stereotypes.