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 collection of books on Abraham Lincoln, and the writings of Lincoln are featured several times in the novel. Paton describes Arthur's son as having characteristics similar to his when he was a child, which may allude to the resurrection of Christ. In 1951, the novel was adapted into a motion picture of the same name, directed by Zoltan Korda. Paton wrote the screenplay with John Howard Lawson, who was left out of the original credits because he was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to give information to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Kumalo was played by Canada Lee, Jarvis