Baby Mine

A young wife, caught in a lie, tells her husband she has had a baby — and then has to produce one, at short notice, in a New York flat, with the help of a friend and a series of borrowed infants. Mayo was an actress who turned playwright and gave Broadway one of its most durable farces; the mechanics are ruthless, and it was filmed twice. Fifty-seven plates of painting from 1895 to 1928, among them Gibson's studies in expression and Shinn's Keith's Union Square, catch the New York comedy of manners this farce depends on.