Smith saw the potential of the play. He agreed to rewrite it and stage it at the Gaiety Theatre in partnership with Bacon and Golden. Bacon played the lead role. It was first staged in August 1918. A critic said that Lightnin' Bill was as delightful a character as Rip Van Winkle. President Woodrow Wilson attended a show with his wife, and called Golden to his box, where he told him the play was the most entertaining they had ever seen. Lightnin''' played for 1,291 performances on Broadway, a record at the time. After Lightnin closed the cast paraded down Broadway to Pennsylvania Station, where they boarded a train for a tour of the nation. The parade was headed by Mayor John Francis Hylan and Commissioner Grover Whalen. Lightnin played in Australia and South Africa, but was not staged in London until 1925. Smith had agreed that Frank Bacon, co-author and player of the principal role, should appear in the London production. However, Bacon died in 1922. The play was put on at the Shaftesbury Theatre in January 1925 in a production supervised by Smith. In 1919 John Golden arranged a meeting with his fellow producers Fred Zimmerman, Archibald Selwyn, Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., Winchell Smith and L. Lawrence Weber with the goal of cooperating on common issues such as censorship and ticket speculation. He wanted to set up a forum so the producers could share ideas, and wanted stop the rival organizations poaching each other's stars. This led to formation of the Producing Managers' Association, which may have inadvertently shown actors the value of organizing into the Actors' Equity Association. Winchell Smith continued to work with John Golden Smith decided that The Wisdom Tooth, a comedy by Marc Connelly, should be staged at the Little Theatre in February 1926. When it was tried out in Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Connecticut, it flopped in both cities. However, Golden sent Smith a cable, "We have had plenty of successes. Let's have a failure for a change. The Little Theatre needs a tenant. Try it out for a week or two there". In the event, The Wisdom Tooth was a hit, and played for 160 performances. Later that year Smith's Two Girls Wanted was a greater success. Films The Saphead (1920) was presented by John L. Golden and Winchell Smith in conjunction with Marcus Loew. The film was based on The New Henrietta,