The Grand Duchess and the Waiter

A play in three acts by Alfred Savoir. Opened at the Lyceum Theater, New York City, October 13, 1925, and lasted 31 performances. Produced by Charles Frohman, staged by Frank Reicher.

Cast of characters

Act I — Lounge of the Palace Hotel, Montreux, Switzerland Act II — Boudoir of the Grand Duchess in the same Hotel. Act III — A Cabaret at Deauville.

"The Grand Duchess Xenia, run out of Russia by the Bolshevists, is staying at a Swiss hotel with a small but loyal band of royal relatives, living on her pawned jewels. Albert, the waiter, falls hopelessly in love with her and she undertakes to cure his passion by making him a sort of valet de chambre and submitting him to the most humiliating of intimacies. Then she confess her love and learns that he is the son of the president of the Swiss republic learning the hotel business from the rugs up. She hates and dismisses him for being a republican, but he follows her to Deauville, where she opens a Russian cabaret. There she finds use for him."
[from The Best Plays of 1925-26, ed. by Burns Mantle (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1926), page 471.]

Elsie Ferguson was a friend of the Rathbones.

Grand Duchess and the Waiter, 1925 (Oct in NYC, May in Calif) This play earned between $9500 and $10,000 for its first week at the Lyceum. Takings the second week at $9500 indicated only moderate money for star attraction. Earnings the third week around $10,000. Fourth week was final week. Then show went on the road.

originally called Grand Duchess and the Floor Waiter. The play opened in San Francisco May 19 with Elsie Ferguson and Gilbert Miller Jr.  (not BR)

Nov. 4. Variety reported that the play was being transferred to Boston (the Park Theater). First week in Boston the play earned $8000.After a couple of weeks at The Park, the Grand Duchess was replaced with The Dark.

Notes on Tour of play:

Nov. 11. John Farrar back with the play on tour.

caption to pic of program booklet: i am offering a vintage piece of theatre memorabilia, a program booklet for the Columbia Theatre in San Francisco California.  this booklet is a program for Alfred Savoir's "The Grand Duchess and The Floor-Waiter", as staged by Elsie Ferguson in conjunction with the Henry Miller Company.  this play started its run on 18 May 1925 & in the cast of this production were Basil Rathbone, Elsie Ferguson & Ilka Chase.  the program measures about 6.0 x 9.0 inches & there are 28 pages plus cover.  there are some great advertisements inside, & the program is in great condition (it appears to have been folded once but has long since flattened out nicely).  the Columbia Theatre became the Geary Theatre which in the 1960's became home of The American Conservatory Theater. 

BR and Elsie Ferguson

BR and Elsie Ferguson

From TIME, October 26, 1925

The Grand Duchess and the Waiter. Elsie Ferguson's appearance is always of extraordinary interest. Last year she did Molnar's Carnival and saw it fail promptly.

From the French of Alfred Savoir her new play is taken. Again she seems to have chosen unwisely.

For yourself you can read the title and figure out the theme. Waiters and grand duchesses are not normally companions. When they are you wonder why. Alfred Savoir attempts to answer the interrogation. Only in one act is his reply amusing.

Basil Rathbone (the tutor in The Swan) gives his usual excellent account. Of Miss Ferguson the judgments were mixed. Some thought she did very well, others very badly. Nearly all agreed that the venture as a whole was of indefinite consequence.

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From TIME, March 30, 1925

Elsie Ferguson will be seen, next season, in a comedy called The Grand Duchess from the pen of Henry Savoir, Frenchman. Miss Ferguson leaves presently for the coast where Henry Miller is about to open his annual repertory season in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He takes with him Margalo Gillmore, Basil Rathbone, Philip Merivale. Their opening piece will be The Swan. The Grand Duchess will be tried out with Miss Ferguson as distinguished visitor in the company.

From NY Times, October 6, 1925:

"The Grand Duchess and the Waiter," with Elsie Ferguson as its star, opened last night in Atlantic City and will come to the Lyceum next Monday.

The play was originally called "The Grand Duchess and the Floor Walker" (NY Times, May 24, 1925). The title was changed later in May (NY Times, May 31, 1925).

 Henry Savoir's play was adapted by Arthur Richman.

There is a bedroom scene in the play, but it's off stage. The waiter sleeps on a mat before the door.

From NY Times, October 30, 1925 (p. 25):

Elsie Ferguson in "The Grand Duchess and the Waiter," now at the Lyceum, will open in Boston in two weeks.

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The Era, 4 November 1925

At the Lyceum Theatre this three-act play from the French of Alfred Savoir has been produced by the Charles Frohman Company. The story is all about the Grand Duchess Xenia, a Russian exile, who is unable to divest herself of  her former importance, and Albert, a love-sick waiter, who is really not a waiter at all, but the son of the proprietor of a dozen Swiss hotels. [reminds me of Undercover Boss.] Albert's open admiration offends the Grand Duchess, and she would punish him. Being no longer able to send obnoxious servants to Siberia and the salt mines, she devises a method of torture which consists of making him a personal attendant of the kind to which ladies of exalted rank, we are told, give no more thought than they do to their bedroom furniture. She goes to such extremes, in fact, that Albert complains that servants are supposed to be "sexless like the angels." However, she falls in love with him, and in the end, when she is running Russian cabaret in Deauville, and he has become an enthusiastic royalist to please her, everything seems to be quite all right. The role of the Grand Duchess Xenia is delightfully acted by Elsie Ferguson, the part suiting her admirably. Basil Rathbone as Albert and Alison Skipworth as an amorous lady-in-waiting are excellent.

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The Stage, 12 November 1925

We may be of two minds regarding Alfred Savoir's comedy, but of one only regarding its American production. The latter is in every respect excellent, and is well up to the high standards set by Gilbert Miller as executive director of the Charles Frohman company who )by arrangement with James K. Hackett) are presenting the piece at the Lyceum, by Frank Reicher as producer, and by the distinguished cast headed by Elsie Ferguson, Alison Skipworth, Frederick Worlock, and Basil Rathbone, all of whom are familiar figures in Frohman productions. Miss Ferguson, more happily cast than she was in Molnar's "Carnival" last season, plays the Grand Duchess Xenia with considerable finesse and high comedy flair, and is admirably imperious and sufficiently cruel; Miss Skipworth is the embodiment of bonhomie and tact in the somewhat ticklish role of the lady-in-waiting; Mr. Worlock is properly nonchalant and feckless as the ethically lax Grand Peter; while Mr. Rathbone as the waiter discloses quite unsuspectedly high talents as a farceur, and is the hit of the piece. Others in a completely satisfactory cast include Paul McAllister as the Grand duke Paul, and Ernest Stallard, who does one of the best pieces of acting he has accomplished in recent years, as the President of the Swiss Republic.

In all it is, so far as performance is concerned, an exceptionally delightful affair; and it may further be said that any tendency towards suggestion to be found in the script is most discreetly handled. I need not of course enter into a discussion of the play, which is sufficiently entertaining for two acts and sloughs off badly in the third. An English version is too recent a memory with you, and indeed this present uncredited American adaptation seems to differ little from that prepared by captain Harry Graham for use at the Globe. In the case of the American adaptation the script seems always adequate, and at times give forth a genuine sparkly. So that it would seem that such shortcomings as are to be found in "The Grand Duchess and the Waiter" are mainly the French author's affair. I understand the piece is to end its New York run a week from tonight, having lasted just a month in this city; but it will be taken on tour.

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