Maxwell Anderson of Anderson and Weill's "Lost in the Stars", a story of South Africa based on the Alan Paton novel "Cry, The Beloved Country". Anderson's long-running 1927 comedy-drama about married life, "Saturday's Children", in which Humphrey Bogart made an early appearance, was filmed three times – in 1929 as a part-talkie, in 1935 (in almost unrecognizable form) as a B-film "Maybe It's Love" and once again in 1940 under its original title, starring John Garfield in one of his few romantic comedies, along with Anne Shirley and Claude Rains. The play was also adapted for television in three condensed versions in
Cry, the Beloved Country by Charles Carson, and Msimangu by Sidney Poitier. In 1983, a historic stage adaptation was performed by the Capital Players theatre group at the Moth Hall in Gaborone, Botswana. The country was at that time one of the leading "frontline states" to apartheid South Africa and a centre for artistic activity that often stood in quiet opposition to the racist regime just across the border. The premiere was attended by Paton himself, who had travelled from Natal, as well as Botswana's then-President Quett Masire (with political acumen, the director had arranged for the first performance to take place on the