as Mary Tilford Katherine Emery as Karen Wright Anne Revere as Martha Dobie Robert Keith as Dr. Joseph Cardin Edmonia Nolley as Agatha Katherine Emmet as Mrs. Amelia Tilford Jack Tyler as A Grocery Boy The financial and critical success of the New York production encouraged Shumlin to present The Children's Hour in other cities. In December 1935, authorities in Boston declared that the play did not meet the standards of the Watch and Ward Society and that it could not be performed there the following month as scheduled. Shumlin filed a $250,000 suit for damages, but in February 1936 a Federal judge refused to prevent the city from interfering in the presentation of the play. In January 1936, a municipal censorship ordinance was used to decline granting a performance permit for The Children's Hour in Chicago. Les Innocentes, André Bernheim's French-language translation of The Children's Hour, was first presented April 21, 1936, at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris. Although the Lord Chamberlain banned the public performance of The Children's Hour in Great Britain in March 1935, the play was presented in its entirety on November 12, 1936, at a private performance at the Gate Theatre Studio in London, managed by Norman Marshall. Characters Philip M. Armato, an assistant professor of Northern Illinois University, argued that while members of the public perceived Karen and Martha as overall good characters, he felt they overlooked the two treating Mary Tilford and Lily Mortar without mercy, prior to the spreading of the rumors. He argued that when Karen forgives Amelia Tilford, this breaks a cycle of vengeance that occurs between those characters. Tanfer Amin Tunc wrote that because Mary Tilford spreads the rumor to deliberately attack the teachers, many reviewers had perceived Mary as "a corrupt and immoral child or adolescent". Reception Screenwriter and playwright Paddy Chayefsky considered The Children's Hour to be one of the most carefully structured plays ever written, and learned play-structure in his youth by copying in longhand the entire script. Some readers and critics perceived the work as a "melodrama" with each character being a completely good one or a completely bad one, with a 1942 preface talking about "goodness" and "badness" used as evidence; Hellman responded in a 1965 interview that none of her characters were completely good or bad and that the preface was misinterpreted. Accolades The Children's Hour was in serious consideration for the