I have been so deeply, terribly moved." It was a commercial success, with three impressions that year, and eight more by 1939. Greenwood said he had "tried to show what life means to a young man living under the shadow of the dole, the tragedy of a lost generation who are denied consummation, in decency, of the natural hopes and desires of youth." The play The novel was adapted for the stage by Ronald Gow, and opened at the Manchester Repertory Theatre in 1934, with Wendy Hiller as Sally Hardcastle. The "real" speech and contemporary social themes were new to British audiences. One reviewer said the play had been "conceived and written in blood." It toured Britain with two separate companies, playing up to three performances a day, sometimes in cinemas in towns that had no theatre. A million people had seen it by the end of 1935. Runs in London, New York and Paris followed, making a name for Wendy Hiller, who married Gow in 1937. But not all reviewers were impressed: writing in the New Statesman, Seán O'Casey said that "there isn't a character in it worth a curse, and there isn't a thought in it worth remembering." Love on the Dole drew the British public's attention to a social problem in the United Kingdom in a similar way that Look Back in Anger (1956), Cathy Come Home (1966) or Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) would do for future generations (although its style is closer to 1915's Hobson's Choice). The historian Stephen Constantine attributed the impact of Love on the Dole to the way it moved the mostly middle-class audiences without blaming them – Gow said he "aimed to touch the heart". In 1999, it was one of the National Theatre's 100 Plays of the Century. TV adaptation In 1967 the play was adapted for Granada Television by John Finch, with a cast including George A. Cooper, Martin Shaw, Malcolm Tierney, and Anne Stallybrass as Sally Hardcastle. Musical version A musical version of the play opened at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1970, written by Terry Hughes and Robert Gray, with music by Alan Fluck, directed and choreographed by Gillian Lynne. Film adaptation Although the book and play were successful, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) would not allow a film to be made during the 1930s: it was a "very sordid story in very sordid surroundings", and