Jules Eckert Goodman


Jules Eckert Goodman was an American playwright and author. He was best known for his plays The Man Who Came Back, The Silent Voice, Chains, and a series of plays featuring Potash and Permutter written with Montague Glass.

Life and career

Jules Eckert Goodman was born November 2, 1876 in Gervais, Oregon, one of six children born to S. Newman and Jenette Rothschild Goodman. His family was Jewish, and his mother was a native of San Francisco, California. Prior to settling in Gervais and starting a family, Jeanette had resided in Portland's Multnomah Hotel.
Eckert received an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1899 and master's degree from Columbia University in 1901. He was managing editor for four years of Current Literature and also wrote for Outing and the Dramatic Mirror. He had his first success on Broadway with 1910's Mother.
The successful The Silent Voice was adapted to film four times; first in 1915, then again in 1922 under the title The Man Who Played God. A talking-movie version also called The Man Who Played God appeared in 1932, starring George Arliss and Bette Davis, a role she credited as her big "break" in Hollywood. Lastly, and least appealingly, it appeared as a campy 1955 star vehicle for Liberace called Sincerely Yours.
Among other film adaptions of Goodman's work, The Man Who Came Back appeared in 1931. Goodman's reported last play Many Mansions was written with his son Eckert Goodman.
Goodman died of pneumonia in Peekskill, New York, where he had resided for forty years, on July 10, 1962. His wife died in 1959, and he was survived by one son, and two daughters, Helen Goodman and Anna Freedgood.

Selected bibliography

Plays

  • The Man Who Stood Still
  • The Right to Live
  • The Test
  • Mother
  • The Point of View
  • The Silent Voice
  • The Trap
  • Just Outside the Door
  • Treasure Island
  • The Man Who Came Back
  • Object - Matrimony )
  • Business Before Pleasure
  • Why Worry?
  • His Honor: Abe Potash
  • Pietro
  • The Law Breaker
  • Partners Again
  • Chains
  • Simon Called Peter
  • Potash and Permutter, Detectives
  • The Great Romancer
  • Many Mansions
  • George Worthing, American

    Novels

  • Mother