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 frequent use of literary and linguistic devices such as microcosms, intercalary chapters and dashes instead of quotation marks for dialogue to indicate the start of speech acts to portray the devastating conditions in South Africa. The novel is filled with Biblical references and allusions. The most evident are the names Paton gives to the characters. Absalom, the son of Stephen Kumalo, is named for the son of King David, who rose against his father in rebellion. Also, in the New Testament Book of Acts, Saint Stephen was a martyr who died rather than give up his beliefs. The Gospel of