Edward Knoblock is an almost completely neglected playwright. Almost, but not quite. One of his plays, Kismet , produced in 1911, has been resurrected year after year. A naive, sentimental, oriental frolic, Kismet had an immense run in London, was produced in America, and was made, first in 1930, into a film. It must share responsibility with a few other frothy productions of the period, such as Oscar Asche's Chu-Chin-Chow, which ran in London from 1916 to 1921, for helping to develop in American and English theatergoers that insatiable appetite for spectacle, color, music, and silly plots which led to the success of musical comedy. Although he remained a popular playwright for nearly thirty years, Knoblock never duplicated the success of Kismet ; and his remaining plays, especially those written without a collaborator, have drifted into oblivion.

Born at 60 West Seventeenth Street in New York City, Knoblock in his early years enjoyed fully the...