Jean Webster

Daddy-Long-Legs Jean Webster

Daddy-Long-Legs is a 1912 epistolary novel by the American writer Jean Webster. It follows the protagonist, Jerusha "Judy" Abbott, as she leaves an orphanage and is sent to college by a benefactor whom she has never seen.




This book was Webster's best-known work. Webster herself adapted it into a stage play which debuted in 1914. In addition, it was adapted into a 1952 British stage musical comedy called Love from Judy, as well as films in 1919 (starring Mary Pickford), 1931 (starring Janet Gaynor and Warner Baxter), 1935 (a Shirley Temple adaptation called Curly Top) and a 1955 film, Daddy Long Legs (starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron). The latter two film versions departed considerably from the plot of the original novel.




The 1990 TV serial Watashi no Ashinaga Ojisan (My Daddy-Long-Legs) was directed by Kazuyoshi Yokota for the Nippon Animation studio as that year's installment of the studio's World Masterpiece Theater.




In India, the novel was adapted into a Malayalam movie, Kanamarayathu in 1984. Anokha Rishta, a Hindi remake by the same director was released in 1986.




The 2005 Korean movie Kidari Ajeossi has elements of Daddy-Long-Legs transferred into a modern setting.




In 2009, the novel was made into a two-person musical play by John Caird (book) and Paul Gordon (music), which premiered at the Rubicon Theatre Company (Ventura, California) and TheatreWorks (Palo Alto, California). On September 27, 2015, the musical premiered Off-Broadway at the Davenport Theatre with Megan McGinnis and Paul Alexander Nolan. (wikipedia.org)