Word: invalidism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Fabulous Invalid (by Moss Hart & George S. Kaufman; produced by Sam H. Harris) is picture-postcard history of the U. S. theatre, as Noel Coward's Cavalcade was of modern Britain. For framework, Playwrights Kaufman & Hart have told the story of a particular Manhattan playhouse called the Alexandria Theatre, and for theme they have shown that the theatre, a fabulous invalid frequently on the point of dying, somehow never quite dies...
...general muddles through, but the Alexandria sinks into a coma. First it turns into a movie house (see cut) featuring Screeno night. Then it stoops to burlesque, complete with striptease. Then the police raid it, board it up, leave it grimy and forgotten. At the end the fabulous invalid is once more sitting up in bed: a band of young hopefuls, led by someone who might be Orson Welles, sweep out the dust and start rehearsing...
This maudlin hocuspocus, together with far too much stunting and propagandizing, slows down the tempo of the show to a very ordinary invalid's walk. If the fabulous invalid survives, it will be thanks more to its own constitution than to the ministrations of Broadway's highest-paid, by-appointment-only play doctors...
...When hulking, hard-drinking Stephen G. Simmons of what is now Wayne, Mich, was hanged in Detroit in 1830 for beating to death his invalid wife, Hangman Ben Woodworth made such a public spectacle of the affair that public aversion was aroused. Hanging Indians was one thing, hanging whites another. Eight years later, just across the border, Canada hanged a man subsequently proved innocent. Eight years after that, Michigan startled the world by declaring against capital punishment except for traitors...
Third and most influential champion of the idea is Robert Rhea (pronounced Ray), a Colorado Springs invalid, author of The Dow Theory, textbook published in 1932 at the bottom of Depression I. Printed at his own expense. 91,000 copies have been sold. Robert Rhea first went to Colorado Springs in 1910 with tuberculosis, in three years was pronounced cured. But in the air service during the War he had a minor crackup, got influenza and pneumonia, was discharged as permanently and totally disabled. Seeking relief from pain in utter exhaustion, he worked in bed at market studies begun earlier...