The Rise and Fall of Madam X

Max Schulman is an assistant professor of theatre at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Madam X by Alexandre Bison premiered in France in 1909 and then almost immediately afterwards premiered in America. It was one of these towering melodramas that showed up right before the kind of arrival of American realism with Protestant players. There have been about a dozen versions of Madame X turned into movies. The last one being in 1965 with Lana Turner and Burgess Meredith.