Katherine Cornell in The Barretts of Wimpole Street became one of American theater's legendary plays with a legendary star. Written by Rudolf Besier in 1930, the play was based on the romance between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett and her father's unwillingness to allow them to marry. The play was Besier's only real success as a playwright. He had be in a production staged in staged in Malvern. He then turned to the United States, but was rebuffed by no fewer than 27 producers, before Katharine Cornell took a personal interest in the play and had it staged at the Hanna Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio in 1931. The role of Elizabeth Barrett worked so well for her that it became her signature role. The Barretts of Wimpole Street then went to Broadway, where Katherine opened on February 9, 1931 at the Empire Theatre with Brian Aherne portraying Robert Browning. The play was revived there in 1934 and again in 1945. The play's success engendered a revival of Robert Browning's poetry, and cocker spaniels became the popular dog that year. Irving Thalberg, head of production at the MGM movie studio, wanted Katherine to reprise her part in the film version, even offering that if she was not completely satisfied with the result, the film would be destroyed, however, Katherine passed on the opportunity, the movie was produced with most of the cast intact and Thalberg's wife, actress Norma Shearer, in the lead role. Katherine never made a full-length motion picture, although she did a brief cameo in the wartime movie, Stage Door Canteen, which starred many of Hollywood's best actors under the auspices of the American Theatre Wing for War Relief.
General George C. Marshall asked Katherine to take The Barretts of Wimpole Street into Europe to entertain the troops as part of the USO Special Services Division.The tour opened in Santa Maria, a small town 15 miles north of Naples, in 1944. The company eventually played for six months, from August 1944 to January 1945, throughout Italy, including stops in Rome, Florence and Siena. From there, the company was transferred under the aegis of General Dwight D. Eisenhower in France. In 1956, she revived the play again in a Hallmark television production for the Producers' Showcase, a series of lavish, full-color 90-minute specials that brought the best of Broadway to the tiny screen. The series' April 2, 1956 presentation was Guthrie McClintic's adaptation of Rudolf Besier's The Barretts of Wimpole Street with Katherine repeating her celebrated stage role as the fragile, invalided poetess.