Jeff Chandler - Theater
Summer theaters in pre-World War II Chicago were popular, with over twenty of them in the five-state area. In Wisconsin, play goers had seven such theaters to choose from; in Iowa, one; in Indiana, three; in Michigan, three; in Illinois, seven, including the Grand Detour Players, the Lake Zurich Playhouse, and the Shady Lane Playhouse, known for its public dining room's fried chicken.
One of the best plays of 1933-34, The Milky Way, a comedy by Lynn Root and Harry Clork, concerned a Borden milk wagon driver who suddenly finds himself in a middleweight championship. His opponent, the middleweight champ, was portrayed on the New York stage by actor Brian Donlevy. After its short run in the Big Apple, The Milky Way toured the United States during 1934-38. In 1936, Paramount Pictures brought the production to the screen, this time with actor William Gargan portraying the middleweight champ.
It's a good guess that Jeff Chandler played the role of the middleweight prize fighter; he would later portray a prize fighter in Universal-International's 1951 Iron Man. If, indeed, this is the role that Chandler portrayed, it would not be the only time he stepped into shoes worn by actor William Gargan.
Jeff Chandler (as "Ira Grossel") portrayed "Sam Peters," the supporting role opposite Olivia De Havilland in the November 6, 1946, Academy Award radio program's adaptation of the motion picture Cheers For Miss Bishop. William Gargan, "King of the B's" at the Warner Brother Studios and affectionately called the "Big G" (as in the "Big Gargan") by fellow actors James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, portrayed the character "Sam Peters" in the United Artists 1941 movie of the same title. William Gargan, like Jeff Chandler, hailed from Brooklyn, New York; both were nominated for an Oscar for their performances in a motion picture (Gargan for 1940's They Knew What They Wanted; Chandler for 1950's Broken Arrow); both actors had starring roles on radio (Gargan as as Ross Dolan, private investigator, in I Deal in Crime, 1946-47; Chandler in the starring role in the crime-drama The New Adventures of Michael Shayne).
In 1920, the satirical comedy, The Bad Man, written by Porter Emerson Browne, held the stage at New York's Comedy Theatre for 342 performances. One of the early successes of that theater season, the play toured the country, playing to theater houses over the next nineteen years. The Bad Man came to the silent screen once (in 1911) and to the silver screen twice: in the 1930 First National Pictures production, starring Walter Houston, and the 1941 MGM production starring Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Laraine Day (who, with Jeff Chandler, appeared in the Universal-International comedy The Toy Tiger) and Ronald Reagan.
The comedy Pigs, written by Anne Morrison and Patterson McNutt, kept audiences laughing 312 times at New York's Little Theater during the 1924-25 season. It played to theater audiences on the East coast over the next twelve years, and came to life for movie goers in the 1926 Fox Film Corporation presentation, The Midnight Kiss, starring Janet Gaynor.
A feature of the 1920-21 theater season in London, the drama A Bill of Divorcement came to the George M. Cohan Theater in New York, on October 10, 1921. The play, by actress-author, Clemence Dane, traveled across America and back to London before coming to the big screen twice from the same studio, RKO: in 1932, starring John Barrymore and Katherine Hepburn, her screen debut; in the 1940 scene-by-scene remake starring Maureen O'Hara (who, with Jeff Chandler, appeared in the Universal-International western, War Arrow).