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 American writer Maxwell Anderson and music composed by the German emigre Kurt Weill. In the remote village of Ndotsheni, in the Natal province of eastern South Africa, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from a fellow minister summoning him to Johannesburg. He is needed there, the letter says, to help his sister, Gertrude, who the letter says has fallen ill. Kumalo undertakes the difficult and expensive journey to the city in the hopes of aiding Gertrude and of finding his son, Absalom, who traveled to Johannesburg from Ndotsheni and never returned. In Johannesburg, Kumalo is warmly welcomed by Msimangu,