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ABSTRACT

RITUALS OF REASSURANCE: STUDIES IN
WORLD WAR II AMERICAN DRAMA

BY
Richard Lee Hasbany

This study investigates the American theatre during
World War II. It uses the texts of selected plays produced
between 1938 and 1945 and the contemporary reviews and
comments of theatre critics to provide a history of the
theatre's evolving reaction to this great and traumatic
historical-cultural event. Terminology and concepts are
largely suggested by Northrup Frye's Anatomy of Criticism
and such cultural historians as Henry Nash Smith. The
study's emphasis is on discovering the themes, images, and
motifs that became dominant during the period.

The first chapter is an historical survey of

Broadway's search for an appropriate role in a wartime

Culture A few people in and out of government felt that

the theatre should aid the war effort by producing propa-
ganda and education plays. A few felt that playwrights

Should respond to the'war with serious artistic, rather than

prepagandistic, considerations of the war. But most

 

assen'ers dcsbted that tr.
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Richard Lee Hasbany

observers doubted that theatre could or should fill any

role in a war culture other than that of public entertainer.
Chapter two focuses on three major playwrights of the
period, Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherwood, and Lillian
Hellman, and traces their evolving dramatic and philosophic
responses to the war. All three moved from a philosophic
or dramatic vision in which the individual and his moral
experience was of primary concern to a vision in which the
individual moral destiny was linked to the communal destiny.
In the plays this identification of individual and communal
destinies is imaged in the figure of Christ, a figure
having a poignant similarity to the contemporary soldier
who also sacrificed his life to save the community.

Chapter three looks in depth at a single play, Thorton

Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. The play demonstrates the

 

sophisticated use of such culturally meaningful figures as
Adam, Noah, and Odysseus, to suggest concurrently Western
man's long cultural heritage and the survival potential of
nan and civilized values. The chapter uses the tools of
literary analysis to probe how Wilder uses the figures of
Western myth and legend to create a dramatic form remi-
niscent of Brecht and a content that was topically relevant.
Wilder's play and the Christ figure of Anderson and

Sherwood drew basically upon Western, Christian cultural

images and motifs. The World War II theatre also sought a

more specifically American image. The fourth chapter

traces the development of this American local color image,

 

 

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Richard Lee Hasbany

nurtured originally by the W. P. A. Federal Theatre project

and developing into the Americana-nostalgic images of
wartime theatre. The fourth chapter notes as well the
increased popularity and prevalence of the historical play
during the war period. The increased incidence of such
plays seems related to the increased desire for dramatic
projection of American images and themes. The history plays
also provide convenient vehicles for Americanizing universal
or mythic hero-figures such as are described in Joseph
Cambell's _'I_'_h_<-_a_ Egg 5.32.9.9. _a_ Thousand 23333. The ancient
pattern of heroic adventures is shown to exist in the
dramatically rendered adventures of American legendary
figures.

The form that most successfully fused cultural myth
with popular Broadway fare was the musical. The musical as
exemplified by Oklahoma, flowered and reached a new peak
of artistic quality during the war. The fifth chapter
fecuses on this musical genre, both as a theatrical form
and as the clearest and most popular expression of the
trends thus far noted. The musical after 1943 was dominated
by nostalgic projections of the American past, featuring
specifically American themes and figures. In the musicals
America is depicted as nearly a pastoral paradise, virtuous,
innocent, and strong against evil. The musicals identify
the individual with community destiny as did Anderson in
rue Christ figure, but here the figure is identifiably

American, often bearing strong similarities to R. W. B.

 

 

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Richard Lee Hasbany

Lewis's American Adam figure, and the tragic implications
of the Christ mythos are absent. The final chapter returns
to a survey approach to show the theatre emerging from the
war, shifting from the celebration of American culture and
heritage and looking more satirically and critically at
America and its social problems.

The study suggests that the theatre did actually
respond profoundly to the wartime home front culture. Its
expression became attuned to the subconscious need in a
wartime audience for projections of images suggesting a
virtuous, powerful heritage and cultural identity. The
dramas and musicals of the war period became rituals of
reassurance, subtly celebrating American goals, character-

istics, identity, and potency.

 

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ITCALS 0? PE.

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RITUALS OF REASSURANCE: STUDIES IN

WORLD WAR II AMERICAN DRAMA

BY

Richard Lee Hasbany

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English

1973

 

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Copyright by
RICHARD LEE HASBANY

1973

 

I am sincerely <5!

 

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inrran, Dr. Victor How
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lime, and, not least
send special apprecia:

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.and to Dr. Jose

up“ -
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ding Of the s
ngratiw‘

tace.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am sincerely grateful to the members of my
committee for their aid in preparing this study. To my
chairman, Dr. Victor Howard, I extend special thanks for
his always sensible suggestions, for his sensitive
guidance, and, not least of all, for his time. I must also
extend special appreciation to Dr. Barry Gross for his
insightful and encouraging letters from Portugal. To
Dr. Clarence Bahs for his careful reading and most useful
advice, and to Dr. Joseph Waldmeir for his very kind last
minute reading of the study and advice, I wish to express

my gratitude.

ii

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
INTRODUG ION O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 1
Chapter
I. ELUSIVE JUSTIFICATION: THE THEATRE
SEEKS A ROLE o o o o o o o o 0 0 o 8
A wilderness of Voices. . . . . . . . 8
The Practical Response. . . . . . . . 40
The Creative Response . . . . . . . . 48
II. PLAYWRIGHTS ADJUST: THE WAR AND ANARCHIC
INDIVIDUALISM. . . . . . . . . . . 66
Maxwell Anderson, Christ, and the War. . . 66
Anderson' 3 War Plays . . . . . . . 101
Robert Sherwood' s Rugged Path . . . . . 116
Abstract and Practical Morality. . . . . 140

III. EPIC THEATRE: THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH. . . . 158

The Wedding of Form and Content. . . . 158
Wilder' 3 Sources: Joyce, Brecht, and the
Human Race . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Making Myth Fun . . . . . . . . . . 178

IV. ON NATIVE GROUNDS: LOCAL COLOR AND THE
UNIVERSAL HERO . . . . . . . . . . 188

The Local Image . . . . . . . . . . 188
The Wedding of Local and Universal. . . . 205

V. BROMIDIC PARABLES: THE MUSICALS . . . . . 230

The Evolution of a New Form . . . . . . ’ 230
Cultural Celebration in 4/4 Time . . . . 253

iii

 

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ll. 1946: THE WORLD

Period of Adjus
Who's Afraid of
Conclusions: T

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Limitations and

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Chapter

VI. 1946: THE WORLD IS LIT BY LIGHTNING

Period of Adjustment.

Who' 8 Afraid of the Big Bad World?
The War, the Audience

Conclusions:
the Theatre

Limitations and Hopes

NOTE S O O O O O O

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

iv

0 O Q 0 O

Page
276

276
296

303
311

312

344

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INTRODUCTION

The subject of the following study is the American
theatre during those years, 1938-45, when global war
threatened and engaged the American nation. The study is
primarily a literary history, though it is not an inclusive
history. It tries to record such significant events and
trends as the opening of Oklahoma! on April 1, 1943, the
subsequent flowering of musical drama and its ascendency
during the war over the musical comedy and revue. The
central concern of the study, however, is an examination of
the recurrent themes and figures and the possible reasons
for their dominance in the wartime theatre.

I was introduced to the study of theatre as a
cultural phenomenon in a seminar with Dr. Victor Howard at
Michigan State University. The seminar's topic was World
War II home front culture. In my research on the American
musical theatre during the war years, I found what I thought
to be an intriguing relationship between literary or
theatrical works and non-literary events. The fact that
there was a war on did seem to influence what went on in

theatre in a more profound way than was represented by the

 

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very visible American Theatre Wing Service activities.
Significant as the Lunchtime Follies, free tickets to
servicemen project, and Stage Door Canteen may have been,
they were only the tip of the iceberg of theatre's response
to the wartime conditions. A more significant response
came in the very heart of the theatre, its dramatic and
musical events. In addition to the usual escapist fare
that made only the most superficial recognition that war
was on, I found trends emerging in the musicals that
signalled direct creative reaction to a wartime culture and
audience. Treatments of Americana themes abounded, and the
theme dominated the most successful musical dramas from
1943 till the end of the conflict. The nostalgic image of
a fresh, pastoral, confident America made a powerful appeal
to the wartime audience. Why these themes and images at
this particular time?

In this most public of the traditional literary
genres, what the audience wants or needs determines somewhat
directly what is produced. The eccentric play has less
chance of being successful than the eccentric poem or
novel. The poet or novelist writes for the individual
reader. If the eccentric poem creates a meaningful experi-
ence for a single individual, it is a success. If a play
creates such experience for only scattered individuals, it
is a theatrical failure. A playwright must keep an eye on
the crowd and its probable responses. Thus, the musicals

and plays of the war at least indirectly reflect and

 

 

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suggest something about the wartime audience that paid
money to see them. When certain themes and images recurred,
we may infer that those themes and images were especially
poignant or meaningful to the American wartime audience.

If those themes and images tended to dissipate after the
war, as they did, we might infer that the war milieu helped
create a rather unique cluster of tastes of needs in the
theatre audience, a cluster of needs and expectations that
changed as the war ended. An increasingly complex and
interesting relationship became evident between the
literary-theatrical event, the historical context, and the
audience psychology.

The present study allowed me to pursue this inter-
esting cluster relationship more extensively. The scope
has been broadened to include non-musical as well as
musical drama. The period under study includes the entire
war period rather than just the four years of United States
involvement that were covered in the seminar research. The
increased scope and time span provided a clearer sense of
context. The local color, Americana impulse was not unique
to the war period: it began in the W. P. A. Federal Theatre.
But it flourished and gained dominance only during the war
years. The musical revue and musical comedy had been
evolving into more sophisticated forms during the thirties,
and they achieved their apotheosis in Oklahoma! in 1943.
The theatre can more easily be seen in the broadened

context as an organic body, evolving according to its own

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genetic heritage. But as the dominance of certain themes
and figures during the war suggested, it was an organism
also responding to its environment.

In trying to identify those responses and speculate
on the reasons for those particular responses, I decided
that a purely chronological approach was inadequate.

Though the following chapters are arranged in a roughly
chronological order, they may make more sense if seen as
separate studies employing varying perspectives to view the
prOblem of the culture-audience-theatre relationship. The
first chapter is a basic historical survey of the American
theatre's seeking and adjusting to a wartime role. The
second chapter focusses on three major playwrights of the
period, Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherwood, and Lillian
Hellman. The chapter tries to trace their evolving
responses to the historical crisis. The third chapter uses
literary criticism's tools to discuss a single play,
Thorton Wilder's _T_h_e_ §k_i_n_ of 923 _T_e_e_gi_. The analysis finds
in the eccentric, integrative techniques of that play the
same impulses toward myth and culturally pregnant figures
that were found in the ideas and works of Anderson, Sherwood,
and Hellman. The fourth chapter looks at a movement or
theme, local color, and at the hero and historical figure
in war period drama. The fifth chapter traces the develop-
ment and thematic content of a theatrical form, the
musical. The final chapter returns to an historical

perspective in an attempt to describe the theatre's

 

exam from its wartlT'

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teatrical relationship .
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emergence from its wartime character, and to suggest the
possible nature of the cultural-audience-historical-
theatrical relationship.

The critic most helpful to me in considering the
relationship has been Northrup Frye and his Anatomy of
Criticism. Implicit in his theory of myth and genre is the
idea that literary expression is actually the expression of
profoundly deep human responses to the threats and joys of
existence. Narrative is the recounting of basic mythic
patterns that have their ground in man's dreams of power
and control, and conversely in his recognition of man's
always incipient defeat by natural and human forces. These
basic mythic patterns become displaced, i.e., are disguised,
made more credible and polite for the contemporary, largely
middle class theatre audience, but the underlying patterns
remain recognizable because human dreams and fears remain
the same. Frye's premise and terminology seem to me
especially appropriate in a study which tries to investigate
the relation of literary expression to the subjective needs
of its audience. His work provides categories and terms
and a broad human and literary context with which to view
the theme and image patterns of World War II American
theatre. Frye's inclusive view of literature allows us to
see the popular musical, for instance, as essentially
ritual celebration of community, i.e., as the masque.

Using Frye, then, to help identify form and the deeper

subjective and communal implications of form, it may be

 

gcssible to make tentati‘.
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possible to make tentative comments about the intriguing
cluster relationship I first noted in the seminar research.
If the masque, the folk tale and folk hero, and the Christ
figure are dominant in the theatre literature of the war
period, there is suggested a communal need for public,
almost ritual affirmation of the community's heritage, power
and righteousness. Also suggested is the poignant recog-
nition of the tragic need for sacrifice, and of the mythic
affinities and communal significance of that sacrifice.

Frye's methodology is not followed rigorously. In
fact, the methodology for the study may be fairly called
eclectic, using as the study does the various tools of
history, literary criticism, and cultural or anthropological
speculation. Such eclecticism may be accused of lacking
scholarly rigor. But it seems appropriate given the
multiple focus of the study, i.e., the drama, the audience,
the historical period and the relationship of all three.
Frye and his work remains the one constant critical strand
throughout, however, because he provides a broad human and
formal framework for looking at literature. Literary
history needs to be more than the history of plays or poems
in isolation. It must also take into account the historical,
psychological milieu of those plays or poems. The study of
structures without human context may lead to the acquistion
of truth without enlightenment. Literary history, to be

enlightening, should be the study of man exposing and

 

 

stressing his deepest se
11513:}! of man. I hope ‘

me neasure be .

expressing his deepest self. Literary history should be a
history of man. I hope that is what the following may in

some measure be.

 

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I. ELUSIVE JUSTIFICATION: THE

THEATRE SEEKS A ROLE

A Wilderness of Voices

All we need is to break out of the minuteness of the
modern drama into some of the big social themes that
the last decade has been grimly accumulating.
Brooks Atkinson, "New Forms for Old,"
February, 1941

I believe it is the solemn duty of producers of plays
these days to seek out such plays as would arouse the
public to the dangers and calamities that confront us.
I. Einstein, letter in the New York Times,
March 9, 1941
Whatever the judgment about them in a distant future

. . . these playwrights have had to face an almost
insurmountable problem.

Ernst Schwartzert, "Notes on the Theatre
during the War"

The war period began with at least one portion of
the American theatre being called on to justify its
existence. On the evening of June 16, 1939, Everett
Dirksen rose from his seat in the United States House of
Representatives. After making a preliminary concession to
the cultural value of the theatre, he decleared that "there
comes a time when the theatre can be prostituted by
suggestion and otherwise, and I think that has been done by

the theatre project under W. P. A."1 In his deep voice,

 

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using the dry irony for which he became famous, Representa-
tive Dirksen read through a list of the titles presented by

the Federal Theatre, including A_New Deal for Mary, 92 in

 

Mabel's Room, and A New Kind 2; Love. "I wonder what that
can be?" he asked. "It smacks somewhat of the Soviet."2

Dirksen's attack was not the first nor the last as the
Congress debated whether or not to exclude the Federal
Theatre from the Work Progress Administration Art Project
appropriations. But his remarks, which his House colleagues
found highly amusing, were representative of political
attacks on the theatre project in particular and implicitly
on the theatre in general.

The assaults on the most public of literary forms
were a confusion of political, racial, and moral motives
and fears. The bulk of votes for denying the Federal
Theatre further appropriations came from Republicans and
Southern Democrats. The Republicans doubtless were not
Opposed to discrediting the Roosevelt administration by
suggesting communist influence, while some Southern repre-
sentatives and senators were upset by the theatre project's
integration of blacks and whites. Senator Robert Reynolds
of Ashville, North Carolina spoke to his colleagues, when
the bill reached that body, of certain directors of a
W. P. A. theatre group who attempted to persuade a white
girl to date a negro man. In a curious amalgam of mixed
metaphors, Senator Reynolds was able to associate all the

contemporary devils with the theatre.

 

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an. 3}. COE’SIESSYEI: f

10

The only persons who have been going to town have been
the communists who are disguising their red pills with
salacious coverings so as to lure, like a siren, all who
can hear.’ The titles [22 in Mabel's Room, etc.] speak
for themselves; and I judge that the only literature
ever read by those in charge of the W. P. A. theatre
project was written by Boccaccio or bore the name of
Cassanova- . . . Through such materials the cardinal
keystone of communism-~free love and racial equality--
is being spread at the expense of the God—fearing, home
loving American taxpayer who must pay the bills for all
this dangerous business.

 

The Federal Theatre was not without support among
the Congressmen. It was defended by the New Yorkers--
Representative Sirovich, Senators Wagner and Cellers, and
also by Congressmen from such hinterlands as Florida
(Senator Pepper), and Nevada (Senator McCarran). Theatre's
spokesmen defended it for its aesthetic value. Senator
Henry F. Ashurst of Prescott, Arizona rose on June 28, 1939
to speak. "I hope the Senate will not go on record as
censoring art. The stage is art. Art is truth, and in the
final sum of worldly things, only art endures. . . ."4 But
most defenders felt their strongest appeal lay in pointing
out the project's practical role in society, i.e., as an
absolutely necessary relief function serving between 7,000
and 9,000 unemployed theatre people. Neither appeal could
carry the day. The Senate did allow continued funds for
the theatre project, but when adamant House members in
conference committee refused to permit the funds, the
Senate acquiesced. The Federal Theatre was dead.

Congressional opposition and the demise of the

project.raises several interesting questions about the

F1

 

--::~ve'5 role in Arte:

—“ "

:::e:.:ial social value

:risis, be that crisis
:ere. awar? What, i'
alture in which

sgrings? Is it to be
atzztxes about hose
hieral 'I’Z'zeatre as a
anion and functigni;

am 1
“at?“ te

Edencies .

3'3:-

J -a€n_ed labCr L‘J‘
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11

theatre's role in American culture. What, if any, is the
potential social value of the theatre to a culture in
crisis, be that crisis a depression, or, of more interest
here, a war? What, if any, is the responsiblity of art to
the culture in which it finds itself and from which it
springs? Is it to be a mirror to events or a proponent of
attitudes about those events? Hallie Flanagan saw the
Federal Theatre as a microcosm and mirror in its compo-
sition and functioning; it was an expression of the period's
liberal tendencies. "The Federal Theatre cost money; it
represented labor unions, old and new; it did not bar aliens
or members of minorities. In other words, Federal Theatre
presented a small but graphic example of the adminis-
tration's characteristics, which were regarded, of course,
as defects by all enemies of that administration. It was
perhaps the triumph as well as the tragedy of our actors
that they became indeed the abstract and brief chronicles
of the time."5
Because it reflected the characteristics of a
particular outlook and administration, the Federal Theatre's
opponents could say it became politically and socially
functional; it could become a too valuable political asset
to whichever faction controlled it. The debate in Congress
demonstrated the apparent consensus among lawmakers
concerning the potential power and influence of theatre
over the minds of its audience. Observors commenting about

the threatre of the thirties have generally continued to

 

 

e: i: as a truly format
:azeral public. Caspar
1.323.113 sees the anti-

tfzrtant persuasive ro‘

 

hie a reluctant natic.

Lac

u-
I

c in the world and

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:c.:..iC power was not c

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pers and magazine
eventhe hourly radio I
state facing the worl.

IE"seatre, with the 1'

taken a somnolent kte‘

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5 O‘Jerestima

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12

see it as a truly formative influence on the opinion of the

general public. Caspar H. Nannes in Politics ig_the Ameri-

 

ggg_2£2ma sees the anti-nazi dramas of the '305 playing an
important persuasive role. The anti-nazi plays, he claims,
"made a reluctant nation aware there was a demonic force
loose in the world and impressed upon audiences that this
satanic power was not content to remain overseas. . . .
Newspapers and magazine accounts, scenes in newsreels, and
even the hourly radio reports failed to bring home the
menace facing the world. . . . It remained for an evening in
the theatre, with the immediacy of footlight impact, to
awaken a somnolent America to the danger."6 It would seem
that Nannes overestimates theatre's power to persuade. The
public opinion polls of the period do not show the American
public ever really waking up to the alarms sounding the
Axis threat, whether those alarms were from the theatre or
some other source. In February, 1940 a Gallup poll
described 77% of its sample declaring that the United
States should not take up arms against Europe even if
England and France were losing.7 Even as late as August,
1941, Gallup found 83% of its sample against sending an

8 If Americans were awakened,

expeditionary force to Europe.
they still were not ready to stir.

Within the theatre itself there was no consensus
either as to the correct role for the theatre in external

political affairs, or how potent the theatre might be in

influencing those external events. This state of internal

 

,-=-1

 

  
   
  
  
   

::er:air.ty and diViSiC7
teFimish relief cont.

0h Novetber 30 ,
inland. The Finns mac.-
vae able to hold out a
kill, 1940 when a p
as :uch sympath for F
lead the Finnish Relief
aim the 700,000 ref;

2332:: '~

0"

on
b

If-

9
hld. The s.~1pp0r

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zzsso-FH '

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9 1938-45

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l3

uncertainty and division was demonstrated quite clearly in
the Finnish relief controversy.

On November 30, 1939, Russian troops invaded
Finland. The Finns made a remarkably strong resistence and
were able to hold out against the Eastern Goliath until
March 12, 1940 when a peace agreement was signed. There
was much sympathy for Finland in America. Herbert Hoover
lead the Finnish Relief Fund, Inc., a fund designed to give
aid to the 700,000 refugees. My January 17, 1940 Hoover
announced that 500,000 Americans had each given $1.00 to
the fund.9 The support, then, was broad. It included moral
and financial support from the American theatre community.
Robert Sherwood's EEEEE.§ES$2.ES.E2.E$EEEI a play about the
Russo-Finnish war, appeared while the fighting went on and
was one of the most successful and sympathetically received
plays of the 1938-40 season.

On January 13, 1940, various producers and stars
including Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, and Eddie
Dowling, met at the Algonquin Hotel to plan for theatre's
help in aiding the refugees. Helen Hayes, chairman of the
fund's Amusement Committee, announced a goal of at least
$500,000. Lee Shubert pledged that any or all of his
theatres could be used for benefit performances. Shows
already promising such performances included 222.3Eil27
delphia £35251, Hellzapoppin, 222.5. 29.9. Needles, 23 m was
a £231, and The Little Foxes. Miss Hayes further announced

that she and Jean Hersholt hoped for a radio show in which

 

Ereza Garbo would on"
:eai a plea for Finni
The mood at t
zererit : what the th
fixationaoly correct
shatter d. All invo]
:plicitly felt the 1

.-
HI-u ..

:gact of its deeds '

J: everyone felt t"
:zsso-Fimish War
_:r::‘"

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euefits ‘ev-
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14

Greta Garbo would overcome her aversion to microphones and
read a plea for Finnish refugee relief.10
The mood at the Algonquin was one of confidence and
serenity; what the theatre folk were about to do was un-
questionably correct and beneficent. The serenity was soon
shattered. All involved in the ensuing controversy
implicitly felt the theatre to be a powerful and influential
medium. Such a medium must be very careful about the
impact of its deeds, even its good deeds. Consequently,
not everyone felt the theatre should get involved in the
Russo-Finnish War. Conflict broke into the open when
producers Oscar Serlin (Li£g_fli2h Father) and Herman Shumlin
(The Little nggg) refused to allow benefit performances of
their productions. Shumlin and Lillian Hellman, author of
£2522, became spokesmen for those against the performances,
and their rationale attested to their belief in the
theatre's power as an attitude influencer. Shumlin said
the benefits demonstrated a "war hysteria" to which the
theatre should not contribute, and further suggested any
"unneutral attitude" at odds with the government's official

11 If relief went anywhere it should go to needy

policy.
Americans, especially stage people.

Charges arose that Shumlin and Hellman's and others'
reluctance to help the Relief Fund came not so much from a
desire to keep the theatre neutral and aloof as from

sympathy for the Russian invaders. The Amusement Committee

of the Fund issued a statement signed by John Shubert,

 

r1

 

' i.
EiiieDm'lihg, John Go.

 

insist cunning mask

:‘ieaamer of the Ge

    
   
  
   

:22 controversy that ha
heaiit performances f:
Tallulah Bankhead, wh

:ivho had refused to
play for Spanish Loyal
:zzroversy with her '1;
Etc-Soviet bias. Hell
'25“ a Pre-war moveme-
.".:' add to the war 5
Bite-‘ts to aid Spanis

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15

Eddie Dowling, John Golden and others, charging that
"Communist cunning masked in the phoney cloak of Americanism,
in the manner of the German Bund, is solely responsible for
the controversy that has arisen in the theatre over the
benefit performances for Finnish non-combatants."12
Tallulah Bankhead, who played Regina in The Little Foxes,
and who had refused to play a benefit performance of that
play for Spanish Loyalists, added further heat to the
controversy with her intimations of Hellman's and Shumlin's
pro-Soviet bias. Hellman answered that such aid might
”mask a pre-war movement in the United States," and that it
could add to the war spirit. She went on to explain her
attempts to aid Spanish Loyalists. A Republican victory in
Spain, she had reasoned, would forestall a general European
war. Now that the war had come, her hope was to keep from
enflaming war sympathies in the United States.13

Whether one accepted Miss Hellman's somewhat
intricate reasoning or not, one could not help but note
that theatre people generally known to be leftwing in
orientation (Odets, Clurman, Shumlin) were creating a
counter-benefit group urging restoration of the W. P. A.
Federal Theatre to aid needy theatre people.14 It was
hard not to connect liberal/leftist sentiments with
reluctance to aid Finland's refugees.

In this controversy, which grew so hot that back-

stage arguments even began to affect performances on

stage, Equity decided to stick with democracy, hoping

“‘1

.~ 4"
..-\'./‘4;.'-='v" "' N‘

waited Pal’. hey mg“

 

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sixvould give “Ch pe

:e:.sfits began after a

 

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man dressed in hativ»

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16

thereby to please the majority. The Association's council
stated that any actor could refuse to perform in a benefit,
and individual casts could decide for themselves if their
show would give such performances. If a minority felt they
wanted pay, they might get their regular wages.15 So the
benefits began after a picture was circulated of Alfred Lunt
(of Taming 2£.EES.§E£§!) putting the first contribution into
a jar held by Gertrude Lawrence (of Skylark). Finnish

women dressed in native costumes solicited relief funds in
the lobbies. With some bitterness, name calling, and
anxiety, the American theatre had made its first stand
during the war, a stand more of good will than of ideological
clarity. To an extent this stand would prove prophetic of
theatre's role throughout the war-~a role always poised
tenuously between, on the one hand, purely professional
concerns, great good will, and devotion to the cause that
was to become clear after December 7, 1941, and on the other
hand, an uncertainty whether it should discuss ideology,

and if it should, how it should.

But there was another side to the theatre's problem
of finding its role in American culture in these war years
of 1939-1945. Broadway, though convinced of its propa-
gandistic powers, i.e., its ability to plead a case, create
a sympathy for a particular cause, saw itself primarily as
an entertainment rather than an educational medium. The
debate that ensued as 1940 turned into 1941 and war drew

ever closer became less specific than the Finnish Relief

 

 

g-iarb. The issue be‘
guzaside its establiS
educator. a propagandi
caret: and instructic
escape, a refuge of g
thugs in the Aneric
7;:lence and long hon
:estby forsaking its
the reverse and emp‘r.
Prcviz‘ed no real ans

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17

\
rhubarb. The issue became to what extent theatre should I

put aside its established personality and serve as an
educator, a propagandist, a commentator. Was serious
comment and instruction its role, or was it to serve as an
escape, a refuge of gags, color, pretty girls and happy
endings in the American's world of unendingly reported
violence and long hours on the defense job? Would it serve
best by forsaking its childish ways, or by doing exactly
the reverse and emphasizing them? World War I theatre
provided no real answer. It had spawned, said Rosamond
Gilder in 1939, "A spate of war-tinged plays of no intrinsic
value,” and provided as spectacle the warrior-chorus girl
and the patriotic tableaux. The hits of that war were the
usual comedies and melodramas, such as 22921.9222.EE&§ and

16 But much had happened in the

Elmer Rice's On Trial.
American theatre since then--O'Neill, Freud's arrival on
Broadway, The Theatre Guild, the Group Theatre with its
superb acting. Broadway had matured. So World War I
theatre's response was not really relevant. Certainly post-
Depression theatre's greater maturity should be reflected
in its responses to this second war crisis of the century.
In early 1942 the role of the theatre in American
life once again became the subject of Congressional debate.
Though inspired by such mundane matters as draft deferments
and Melvyn Douglas's salary at the Office of Civilian

Defense, the debate's scope encompassed the profession's

total value to the nation in time of crisis. The threatre

 

  
  
  

asahighly visible in
mould. for better c.
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18

was a highly visible institution with well known figures
who would, for better or worse, be watched and noted by
citizens in New York City and across the nation. Here was
a reservoir of talent and competence capable of producing
spectacles that could, perhaps, influence a people's
feelings and opinions. And it might be capable of even
greater influence during a war than before, for there would
probably be the usual wartime seeking of amusement, and
certainly there would be more money to enable people to go
to the theatres. What was the nature of the influence to
be then? More Tobacco Rgggg, murder melodramas like Angel
Street, fast moving, somewhat bawdy revues and nonsensical
musical comedies? Or an unofficial arm of the government
to be used for propaganda and "education?"

As usual when Congress started discussing the
theatre's priority and value, the debate grew warm, the
polemics and rhetoric rich and bitter. Recreation is
essential, said Roosevelt. How essential? asked Congress.
Some members of the House were upset at what they felt was
preferential treatment afforded members of the entertain-
ment industry. The nation had to settle the question of
who was to be deferred from serving in the armed forces.

As far back as December, 1940, theatre people had asked for
special consideration. At that time New York City Selective
Service director, Col. Arthur V. McDermott was asked to
grant several performers in Hellzapoppin a deferment until

the show closed.17 Prospects were that each case would

19

have to be decided by individual draft boards. But that
was 1940; the United States was not at war, and the numbers
getting preferential treatment were few.

It was now 1942; the United_States was at war, yet
it had taken Brigadier General Lewis B. Hershey, director
of Selective Service, only four days after the request was
made to sanction draft deferred status for actors, writers,
directors, producers, cameramen, sound engineers, and other
technicians. Why, demanded Representative August H.
Andersen of Minnesota on February 9, 1942, could not Hershey
move on a six month old request to get deferments for

farmers?18

Andersen's question was echoed bitterly by
Rep. Clevenger of Ohio, who raised again in his attack the
traditional spector of theatre's immoral influence. "May
not sugar," he asked, "milk, canned fruit, and vegetables,
meats, and grain be more essential than a lot of this
salacious bedroom drama, low comedy, and propaganda so
generously interlarded into legitimate entertainment?"19
The question of entertainers' relative wealth became
an issue in the 1942 debate. On February 6, 1942, Rep.
John Taber of New York spoke against the parasites on the
Federal payrolls, and noted especially actor Melvyn
Douglas's $8,000 a year appointment in the Office of
Civilian Defense. Rep. Charles Fabbis of Pennsylvania drew
a comparison that is illustrative of the attitude held by

many about the relative value of the entertainer in a war

culture. The salary drawn by Douglas would be, Fabbis

 

  
   
  

new, 'as much as “9
soldier. General Doug1
1e forests of the Phi
an every minute-~in
iate of the white race
political reputation c
this attack, and hove:
Isained remnants 0f

zational loyalties . 2]

20

began, "as much as we are paying that matchless and heroic
soldier, General Douglas MacArthur, when he is battling in
the forests of the Philippines everyday, every hour--yes
even every minute--in danger of his life, to preserve the

fate of the white race in the Orient."20

Douglas' leftist
political reputation of the '308 certainly helped provoke
this attack, and hovering in the background of the debate
remained remnants of suspicion about actors' political and
national loyalties.21
After a considerable amount of such rhetoric and
sentiment, the bill under discussion, the Deficiency
Appropriations Bill, was passed on February 9, 1942 by a
margin of more than two to one. The bill included an
amendment forbidding the Office of Civilian Defense from
spending money for ”the employment of persons, the rent of
facilities, or the purchase of equipment and supplies to
promote, produce, or carry on instruction or to direct
instruction in physical fitness by dancers, fan dancing,
street shows, theatrical performances, or other public

22 What the amendment amounted to was a

entertainments."
refusal by Congress to have any official relations with
the theatre, a refusal to recognize any serious contri-
bution that the theatre could make to the nation at this
period, even if the suspect profession was disposed to do
so. Yet, even with this financial hand-slapping, the

watchful and hostile attitudes in Washington were probably

less pronounced in World War II than they had been in

 

   
 
  
  

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21

World War I. During that war Attorney General A. Mitchell
Palmer investigated the Broadway theatre to make sure no
German propaganda would be disseminated through plays and
that no income could go indirectly into German hands.23
But whether the attacks were less blatant or not,
actors responded with anger to the attacks on the loyalty
and good will of the theatre industry. Eddie Cantor, Ole
Olsen, and Chick Johnson sent a telegram on February 9,
1942 to the heads of the A. F. of L. and C. I. O. asking
them to lend the actors their prestige against "any attempt
to segregate [actors] from the rest of labor's energetic
role in the war effort and thereby help achieve the unity
of all sections of the population, which is essential to
final victory." The telegram went on: "Need we remind the
politicans that only a week or so before this malicious
attack upon the entertainment profession the United States
Congress lowered its heads in mourning for our dearly
beloved Carole Lombard, killed while returning from a

government mission."24

The telegrams that flowed from 7
enraged theatre people in response to the Congressional
sentiments and actions suggested two roles for the pro-
fession and its workers in a wartime society. Both are
seen in the Cantor-Olsen-Johnson telegram. There was first
the personal effort of stars like Carole Lombard, adding
visibility and glamor to certain government activities.

Second, there was a useful, ideological, attitude-creating

function that even the mere entertainment industry could

 

 

gerfc-m. Ccngress see

iszizated as it was by
I
were at best frivolous

ninety packed with ;.
:pcli‘tically dangercl

In this atmos;
Caller rose to sugges:
:zldsen'e. The date
they soldier prod;
“We produced and :
iiatsic by Irving 5.:
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22

perform. Congress seemed to have ignored the possibility,
dominated as it was by suspicions that theatre and movies
were at best frivolous and perhaps immoral, and at worst an
industry packed with people who would gladly use its power
in politically dangerous ways.

In this atmosphere of mutual hostility, Emmanuel
Celler rose to suggest the useful function that the theatre
could serve. The date, July 7, 1942; the occasion, a
Broadway soldier production. The show was This i§_thg Army,
a revue produced and cast entirely by soldiers, with words
and music by Irving Berlin. Celler's enthusiasm was almost
embarrassingly intense. "It [2223.32.EEE.§£EXJ is a sheer
pageant of patriotism. . . . You are lifted out of your
seat with enthusiasm. You feel like throwing your living
arms around our army. Do not fail to see it. It is a great

25 Celler's remarks included more than

gloom antidote."
praise for that specific show alone, however. He suggested
that Athens, a symbol of democracy, had been helped during
its war with Sparta by one of Euripides' plays.26 Here was
another side to the coin. The theatre might not be just a
parasite sucking the enriched blood of the fully employed
home front; it might even be of some indirect value to the
war effort.

There was a party to the debate that saw a potential
in the theatre for patriotic excitation and information.

This party, which included theatre and non-theatre pe0ple,

‘vanted to see a conscious development of a patriotic,

 

sizzational theatre.

tedeals behi .d the
tarti la in the Dec».
lesser. First, the e
si- for public educa‘
involved basic issue:
idea: and a settl
1:355] not too soon
i’é’u‘ attention in his

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23

educational theatre. The argument for a theatre expressing
the ideals behind the Allies' war effort were summarized in
an article in the December, 1942 Current History, by John
Gassner. First, the advocates of a war theatre cited a
need for public education. Unlike World War I, this war
"involved basic issues essential to a victorious conclusion
of the war and a settlement of past-war problems for which

"27 Gassner

it [was] not too soon to educate the nation.
drew attention in his article to a statement released by
the Office of War Information in the summer of 1942 that
had given some startling statistics. According to the
statement, one-third of the American people would have
accepted at that time a negotiated peace with German army
leaders. Americans were not sensitive, the statement
implied, to the real evil that the German nation and
movement represented and that must be destroyed. Fifty
percent of the American people admitted that they were not
sure what the war was about, and so it was necessary, said
the War Information Office statement, to "carry into the
everyday consciousness of every citizen the realities, the
horror and menace of which they are so dangerously
unaware."28
The logical result of such a demand for a patriotic
and educational treatre would have been, of course, a
government inspired, directed, and produced theatre, and

certain critics did at times draw attention to the effective

igovernment theatres of Russia and China, both of which were

 

pnfiucinq anti-fascist
ons-mption. As far a
itat the United States
Pserican theatre indus

rmaction of dramas i

ieatre advocated by \

 

iv
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.ooks Atkinson, and
:a.led for a theatre 1
:csermnent dictation.

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24

producing anti-fascist dramas for civilian and military
consumption. As far as is known, no one actually suggested
that the United States government either dictate to the
American theatre industry or get into the sponsorhip and
production of dramas itself. Even the plans for a national
theatre advocated by various people, such as Robert Sherwood,
Brooks Atkinson, and Edith J. R. Isaacs of Theatre Arts,
called for a theatre safely protected from any direct
government dictation.

Of course, service productions, such as Thi§|i§_thg
Army, may be said to be indirectly government productions.
In fact, the government did send three shows out on the road
in 1942 to, as Variety put it, hypo "U. S. morale to a fever

fighting and production pitch." Stars of the first show,
United Nations §g£g_Parade, were military figures such as
Bigadier General James Doolittle, British fliers, and eight
American soldiers and sailor cited for bravery. The men
were to tell about their experiences before big rallies.
The second show, IE§.§£EX.§2£.§EQEJ was to include exhibits
of equipment and 1,200 enlisted men and officers staging a

”battle" every evening.29

The somewhat epic affairs were
similar to the Nazi-produced Thingspiel (from.ghigg, a
Teutonic tribal assembly). In Thingspiels citizens watched
S. A. or Hitler youth battalions stage battles, saw other
examples of military skills displayed, and heard choric

30

declamations. But the U. S. government's involvement in

theatre spectacles was short-lived, somewhat to the chagrin

.fl-‘l

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25

of people wanting a perhaps less epic, but more relevant
and idoelogical theatre than appeared in the offing. '
”If America is the leader of the ideological war," they
asked, "why is it not taking steps to use theatre's powerful
arsenal in the struggle."31
Without directives coming from a central, powerful
agency of some kind, the theatre was left to find its way
in the encircling gloom of dimmed-out midtown Manhattan.
The issues surrounding theatre's wartime role were very
real to theatre people, but were often necessarily reduced
from such grand conceptions as the power of art and enter-
tainment to strengthen and idealize democracy to the more
immediate problems of which shows would first get investors
and then audiences. Producers had to live with the fact,
and probably were grateful, that American theatre was not
government subsidized as was the Russian. As Rosamund
Gilder noted in Theatre Arrg in 1943, the American Broadway
show must pay its way first. It must get people into the
theatre and then do what patriotic thing it could.32
The rule of economic necessity on Broadway has long
been lamented and continued to be so lamented during the
war years.33 The first problem for a producer to settle
was what would attract enough people into his theatre and
grosses into his till. Thus, among practicing theatre
people (as opposed to critics and treatre columnists), the

debate about the theatre shifted from what it should do to

what it must do. In 1943 Martha Dreiblatt of the New York

 

 

Event to several
ties of what the the a
'rs‘t' and "should" me
anion was formed: ne
equalled goodness and
siculd do). John 001;
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26

grmgr'went to several theatre veterans to discover their
views of what the theatre must do. Often the categories of
"must” and "should" merged, and a neat metaphysical propo-
sition was formed: necessity (what Broadway must do)
equalled goodness and virtue (what Broadway rightfully

should do). John Golden, producer of Claudia, reported to
Miss Dreiblatt: "In my experience people don't want the war-
in their theatrical entertainment. They want escape. Also,
the best war plays are written after the perspective comes,

not during the heat of battle."34

Golden's second comment
displays a commonly held explanation of the lack of good war
plays during World War II. F. Hugh Robert, author of rrgg
grg’ggrl'commented. "The majority of war plays so far
produced have met with the general opinion that the things
they say are trite and obvious. I still think the function
of the theatre today is to provide not sheer escapist
entertainment, perhaps, but entertainment. The crowds
milling around on Broadway these evenings at showtime want
to spend the money in their pockets to buy entertainment and
forgetfulness of the day's work."35 So, often the theatre
audience was envisioned as a crowd wistfully seeking a

lotus land behind the dim marquees.

Did the audience want only escape? Would it accept
war dramas? Coe Ladd concluded in 1942 "that the nearer a '
country comes to getting into war the less threatregoers
are attracted to plays having to do with international

36

conflict." In the allied industry of motion pictures,

 

execstives of Warner E
about what the public

astrav vote in 1942 c

  
    

 

 

Estes tallied indicate
readies, fever serio:
praiuction in the cor:
£5118, 1942 that t'.
firing the year and t'
antage years of the .
L‘erican audience see
iz'ertairrent industi

traction of melody

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27

executives of Warner Brothers wanted to do more than guess
about what the public wanted and would pay for, so it took

a straw vote in 1942 of film editors in forty U. 8. cities.
Votes tallied indicated that the studio should schedule more
comedies, fewer serious dramas, and fewer war pictures for
production in the coming year.3.7 Variety reported on

March 18, 1942 that there would be fifty "filmusicals"
during the year and that this number would top even those

38 The mood of the

vintage years of the early thirties.
American audience seemed evident, and in response the
entertainment industry seemed definitely pointed in the
direction of melody and sweetness.

But for individual playwrights serious about their
work and the implications of its content, acceptance of
role of entertainer often came hard. As the next chapter
will show at some length, the war period forced playwright
after playwright to define for himself the role he should
play, forced him to balance somehow the demands of artist,
entertainer, and citizen, and to find a content which would
be both congenial to his individual talent and relevant to
the world realities outside him.

Perhaps no clearer expression of role uncertainty
exists than S. N. Behrman's E2.ZEEE.£2£ Comedy. In this
1939 play starring Katharine Cornell and Laurence Olivier,
Behrman seems to have been writing autobiography of a kind,

though the playwright made no claims of being the model for

his character. The play concerns Gay Esterbrook, a writer

 

af fashionable

tarda. a Home

is successf

:ztrivzrg s

‘35 Pia
use . ls.
:-

28

of fashionable social comedies. Suddenly, with the help of
Amanda, a woman angling for both an affair and distinction
by bringing him to serious achievement, Gay grows disgusted
with himself for not having faced the real and horrible
world. He says to Linda, his wife and the star of most of
his successful comedies, "you expect me to sit in my room
contriving stage situations for you to be witty in! Or I
go to Hollywood and sit in endless conferences agonizing
over novel methods for boy to meet girl. I tell you it's
all an irrelevance, an anachronism, a callous acqui-
escence."39 Amanda does inspire Gay to write a rather
absurd play about immortality, but by doing so seems to
force him into betraying his own best talent. Behrman
appeared to be dealing with the conflicting forces within
the psyche of the comedy writer. Amanda, on the one hand,
suggests and stirs in him the vague but profound feelings
that respond to the ugly realities. Under the influence of
Amanda and these sincere but vague emotions Gay rejects his
previous mode of drama in one of Behrman's most strongly
felt speeches. "No I'm sick of it, sick of my work, sick
of myself. I want something clear and outside myself to be
enlisted for. I'm sick of the triviality, sick of ringing
changes on what I've already written, sick of the futility.
I swear to God, I want it shot out of myself" (p. 189).
Opposed to the deeply felt need to respond
emotionally to the immediate world stands Linda, suggesting

the hard and objective parts of Gay's psyche, those parts

.- w
.ry I: . .1, e.“ fwr I E P1 ..o—. .. . :4 .
r a 3 3 e 5 ..z . s. . r
,7, e, 5, 3 S a. w... .1 i
, .. n 5 .I
I .1 v. . q I x ae-p . ' r a

 

 

29

that allow him to write sharply observed and witty comedy.
She begs him not to ignore his natural comic talent, and
she states what may be seen as an attempt by Behrman to
justify the social comedy he had written, and what could
become justification for Broadway's wartime emphasis on
escape. "I gather," she tells Gay, "the besieged Spaniards
love the American films. If they enjoy seeing our glamor
boys pursue our glamor girls before they're knocked to bits,
why grudge them? . . . The eternities are a bore. They're
inhuman. You can't take them in. We can only laugh at our
plight. That's what distinguishes us from the animals and
from the savages you're so excited about. They can't
laugh" (p. 49). The playwright is poised between the two
women and the two sides of his mind. He opts for wife and
natural gift. To deny that is to create a false art,
flatly untrue because dramatically unembodied. The play
dVrote under Amanda's influence, he later judges, "was

1165
/%%%{;» (if%¥iequate to its idea. . . . I wasn't equipped to do it--
// /

\\

”_744g§;7=f1;:eessnation without form--passion without authority--. . .

fl;;==_;3gt_tragic but thin and petulant" (p. 188).

"’ » Behrman was apparently forecasting his own dramatic
direction, and it was to be a direction similar to if not
exactly the one he had been traveling in. But the forecast

was wrong. The Talley Method, 1941, shows Behrman attempt-

 

ing less detached characterization--he more clearly takes
sides and allows only the morally suspect to be foolish.

The sensitive and good are very sensitive and very good;

 

 

30

they are never foolish. Dr. Axton Talley, renowned surgeon,
is the scientific man, precisely rational to the point of
inhumanity. He is the kind of figure Behrman's Playwright's
Co. associates, Maxwell Anderson and Robert Sherwood,
suggested as prototypically fascist. Indeed, there are
unmistakable suggestions that Dr. Talley is a Hitler in
attitude. He is scornful of Manfred, a German refugee who
had been imprisoned because he had lacked the brutal energy
necessary to kill and thereby effect a successful putsch
against the nazis in Bavaria. When Talley converses with
Manfred, he displays both the lack of understanding that
isolates him from people, including his children, and the
near obsession with rigorous pursuit of a goal that deprives
him of any moral base. "When you are undertaking a job that
require ruthlessness--you must be ruthless," he tells the
less rigorous Manfred.40
Enid, a former patient of Dr. Talley's and a
grifggitive poet, often unsure of personal direction and

/’
,1/ eff:;;ipose, is attracted to the doctor's assurance and

“reéeieitrength, that is until she sees how that strength and

f::' obsessive rigor has sapped his human sympathy and under—
standing. In Dr. Talley she sees the implications of the
man so obsessed by efficiency that all human weakness,
opposition, and simple slackness must be eliminated. Seeing

this she refuses to marry him. The play has a thematic

 

 

seriousness perhaps lacking in earlier plays, and a structure

of character analogies that are both somewhat obvious and

 

I
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31

destructive of convincingly full characterizations. Dr.
Talley is the totalitarian type; Manfred, the sensitive,
martyred victim of a Talley dominated world; Enid, the
thoughtful person, perhaps the America of 1941, who must
make the morally weighty choice between the two. Oh, where
is the Behrman of yesteryear? Brooks Atkinson found him
hiding behind the mask of a "writer of diffuse platitudes
about human nature."41
In reviewing Th2 Talley Method, Atkinson praised
E2 SEES £23 Comedy as a serious but funny study of the
comedy playwright's dilemma. He regretted that Behrman
had decided to take Gay Esterbrook's need to be relevant
so seriously. In doing so the playwright had abandoned his
talent and had, in fact, written a play (Talley) of "indig-
nation without form--passion without authority." In the
review, Atkinson finds a real rationale for comedy in
wagkime. "As our foremost writer of the comedy of manners,

fi;:, Behrman has talent that is sorely needed. Although the

e

<€i‘ad expressions of tragedy are outside his orbit . . .

today." He nearly echoes Linda of fig ZEES rgr Comedy.

"It [comedy] represents the application of intelligence to
a world that is engulfed in anger and despair."42 Whether
Behrman was influenced by Atkinson's comments, or by 2&2
Talley Method's relatively short run for a Behrman play
(only fifty-six performances), is uncertain. His next

p1ay, however, abandoned any pretense of weight and

 

..._
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light medy, full
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32

relevance. TEE Pirate, opening in November, 1942, was a
light comedy, full of colorful, pseudo-Caribbean costumes;
it was a vehicle really for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
It ran 177 performances.

What we see in Behrman's experience and Atkinson's
comments on that experience, is in miniature the debate
that went on explicitly and implicitly throughout the period
of this study--1938-45. A congress sceptical of both the
theatre's possible value to a nation at war and even, at
times, of its ideological soundness, serious playwrights
who questioned the value of their own art, critics and non-
professionals who charged the theatre with missing its
great missions, all these tended to make the American
theatre introspective and defensive. On the one hand there
were the voices suggesting perhaps impossibly grand roles.
Maurice Schwartz, director in the Yiddish Art Theatre: "As

’9 asthetic and moral guide [theatre] stands as path-

//// ' éisagier for humanity at the crossroads."43 On the other
l,/7” 4;;rivr~%gg¥' there were the indictments. Private citizen P. W. T.
, r/rrry' /.
r 'a/

 

rrgéf:y;;::liA~°esn in a letter to the New York rrmgg: "The reason the
ufih‘ "‘“‘ theatre is not the propagation of thought and controller of
decisions . . . is that, owing to the undemocratic and
commercial hands it has got into, it is no longer a temple
of culture."44

Into the confusion came the voice of Brooks

Atkinson, reviewer for the New York Times and probably the

foremost critic of the period. Atkinson, in a series of

 

 

 

articles appearing
Segtezber, 1942: at
Rifle! and guide.
creative role it S
ushrhles. He,
socially relevant
emit to recogni
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33

articles appearing at various times from June, 1940 to
September, 1942, attempted to speak to the theatre as a
teacher and guide. He tried to define the essential and
creative role it should take in response to a world falling
to shambles. He, like John Gassner and others, demanded a
socially relevant role. But he, as many others did not,
sought to recognize both the theatre's natural proclivities
and its diversity. In short, he took both the times and
the theatre seriously and sought to find a suitable
relationship between them. He felt the fall of France in
1940 to be the great crisis that would force the nation
politically and culturally to find direction and commitment.
"None of the other victims of conquest . . . has cracked
the structure of democratic thought quite so deeply as the

"45 The

quick collapse of this great and venerated nation.

crisis of democratic culture was at hand, and people would
,4an to turn from their individual pursuits and develop a

ingness to serve the few states left fighting tyranny.

?’::;e-tre was one of the "active forces of culture" and the
H;ieeth of creative theatre in Italy, Russia, and Germany was

:: symptom of cultural death that democracy cannot
survive."46 In other words, Atkinson saw cultural vitality
and democracy as inseparable. Thus dramatists had a
mission to keep alive an active and innovative theatre.
Such a theatre, Atkinson pointed out in this attempt to

suggest the theatre's place in the contemporary situation,

need not eschew its role as entertainer. "There is no

 

 

 

reason why that the
for need it be cont
retreat from maturi
tzserents like cor
escape is to be so;
raid down?“ A
Esterbrook had in
3iiective conscior
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Share from barb
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34

reason why that cheerful function . . . should ever change.
Nor need it be contemptuously dismissed as an escapist
retreat from maturity. . . . To regard unpretentious
amusements like comedies and musical shows as forms of
escape is to be sophomoric and to turn cultural morality
upside down."47 Apparently he felt in 1940 as Linda
Esterbrook had in 1939 that the ability to use hard
objective consciousness to laugh at oneself and one's
state was a civilized trait, one necessary to save a
culture from barbaric self-seriousness. By December 14,
1941, the Sunday after the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
Atkinson had shifted a bit. The role of entertainer for
the theatre? "Although it is not dishonorable, it is not
sublime," he said.48
The June, 1940 article was hopeful; Atkinson felt

fie: American theatre could and would respond creatively.
3.11; the article was also vague. The subject of theatre's

" was dealt with in only the most general terms. Later

1..“

f9““f :zgficles attempted to be more specific—-first dealing with

::;§}§eggxa1 problems of subject matter, but by March, 1942 with
specific problems of composing war plays. In December,
1940 he declared the relevant subjects for dramatic
treatment to be "Man and the hopes of his soul. . . ."49
In the article he asked only for dramas of integrity and
insight no matter what their subject. "The dramatist need

not snatch his topic out of the current whirlwind and his

characters need not wear uniforms or pick up shell fragments

 

 

maltose borbed f r
as a self-containe:
:ernary and Gre
Staggering size of
against man and t':
After the
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35

in a home bombed from the skies. . . . To regard [the war]
as a self-contained conflict between the military machines
of Germany and Great Britain is to underestimate the
staggering size of the battle. The total warfare is . . .
against man and the hopes of his soul."50
After the United State's entry into the war in 1941
and doubts about theatre's value to the American effort
were heard from Congress and elsewhere, Atkinson continued
to defend the theatre, but he began to define theatre's
role a bit more narrowly. He never denied the validity and
cultural value of good dramas no matter what their content,
but he increasingly called for dramas that somehow created
meaningful images of the contemporary conflict. In a
September 6, 1942 article he affirmed that "art has a
practical function in wartime. It works in the common
cause. [The artist] can pull together all the scattered
aeehils of war-making and give them an eloquent meaning."51
ԤE%;yeasingly he suggested a direct dealing with the war.
In this Atkinson represented a trend in wartime
flégziticism. On Broadway there were few enough war dramas,
and the number, and to some extent, the quality of those
dramas was the criteria used by critics and commentators
to gauge the moral and social health of the threatre. The

critics and columnists did not accept Broadway producers'

identification of economic necessity with social and moral

 

 

responsibility. Reading through the columns in which

Observors discuss war drama production during the four

 

years of the var i
start. Disregardi
tees, such as _T_
limesticians co
relevance and bee

In Never}
us fill a new to
Ci! 319 M for
after Atkinson' s
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25 War. He f0

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‘‘‘‘‘

 

36

years of the war is a bit like examining a hospital patient's
chart. Disregarding the occasional musical revues with war
themes, such as Tsis is gas 5521 and 9i 2 Es §ifli' the
diagnosticians could see little progress toward social
relevance and health in their patient.

In November, 1942 Brooks Atkinson left for Africa
to fill a new role as war correspondent. He was replaced
on the Eigss for the duration by Lewis Nichols. Immediately
after Atkinson's departure, December, 1942, Nichols surveyed
the Broadway scene for productions that dealt seriously with
the war. He found that only two of the twenty-nine shows

"52 Though he

open "thoughtfully considered the times.
found the statistics for that date "curiously bad," he took
heart in the fact that Maxwell Anderson's 22s Egg 9i s5.
EEEE was coming up for production, and further, that if one
looked back to the previous war he would find the statistics

flat much better. In April, 1918, at the end of the first

<e» of American involvement, only six of forty-six shows

A

21;;i-lt with war. Nichols seemed in this 1942 column to have

"‘%§>— ‘rre faith that the public would accept more than mere

 

escape, but it would not accept war plays unless they were
good.

It is interesting, then, to compare this momentarily
embarrassed but hopeful column of December, 1942 with one
of Nichol's written just before the end of the war. The
hope has disappeared and the embarrassment has modulated

into bitterness. "The war was affecting everyone last

 

res

 

week--' he writes «
theatre. That was
little undignifiet
sefineit‘ser to re}
glass for the fut
faith in the pub}
Bell for Adamo.
‘ —- ——.

of little faith.
'res's SYmposiun
relevance after
°f the Var: "'2‘:
535 the threatn

waif °f Peace

1.10111; the ne‘
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itertain was
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37

week--" he writes on March 11, 1945, "everyone except the
theatre. That was retaining the position, now grown a
little undignified, that its sole function was to entertain,
and neither to report the facts of the present nor discuss

plans for the future."53

He feels justified in his original
faith in the public; they support such good war plays as s
Esii is; sssss. But the theatre. . . . He has become a man
of little faith. If it failed in wartime to take part in a
"news symposium of the time," it may fail to establish
relevance after the war. He writes shortly after the end
of the war: "The world has had enough of war and warriors
and the threatre admittedly should offer its best efforts on
behalf of peace and a decent society. But just as it sat
out the war, it may through caution and inertia decide to
sit out the new world."54 Broadway, as judged by its
closest watchers, had done little except entertain, and to

efib‘ertain was, according to the critics, a subordinate role

issging wartime. Refusing to approach the world crisis in

  

/,»*" . , 44‘::;14attitude of high seriousness earned the industry the
fw駧3i¢;:2:; ~.éisappointment and disillusionment of its professional
. M '21 , its, ~

critics and commentators. It was just a public enter-
tainer, and as for the role of public entertainer, most
critics would concur with Brooks Atkinson's 1941 evaluation
--"although it is not dishonorable, it is not sublime."

So the American theatre stood generally condemned
for its lack of social awareness and ideological guidance--

for its abundance of Junior Misses and Claudias and Ex

 

 

fl and its
&' But 01
it resorted to h:
Letter from 'the

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38

Jupiters and its dearth of 5 Bell for Adanos and Winter

 

Soldiers. But others were ready to condemn the theatre if
it resorted to high seriousness. Note, for instance, the
letter from "theatregoer" in December 1, 1940's New York
Eisss, "Must a play always be a smash hit full of this and
that significance and written on high? 0r might we not have
just an attractive offering with no pretensions to being an
exercise for a critic's undoubted learning, but merely . . .
to being a 'amusing evening.‘ It used to be like that when

the theatre was something."55

And the same newspaper, in
a November 6, 1940 editorial noting the escapism of the
1940-41 season, suggested that the absence of socially
relevant and significant plays might be a natural,
"desperate and successful attempt at escape from plays of
social significance."56

Here and there even critics defended theatre's
propensity for froth. George Jean Nathan spoke with his
usual vociferousness against the critical demands for a
theatre of "soapboxes full of grease paint."S7 Nathan, who
could applaud the unpretentious fun of a song and dance
show as well as applaud superb tragedy, found the critical
demands for discursive relevance a malignant force in
Broadway theatre, possibly one that would halt the advance
of American drama. He praised O'Neill for standing aside
and not being pushed into writing the kind of play he

considered ”dubious journalism," and felt in Anderson's

analogies in Journey is Jerusalem, Rice's discursive

 

assassiorrs of ice
tersmd‘s race w:

‘i‘fat deteriora'

*

tat avail, this

lira . . . tr:-
world today
themselves p
aloof from t.
We and try
traditions.

beaten and 1
do . , . but

it is going
the simple ‘
editorials.

I‘. was Rathdfl's
11$ plea f0! ar
Eility. F0! 1'
said be dealt

1: £13.11"
J

Am; ha

“are this dis:

39

discussions of ideologies in Flight is the West, and
Sherwood's race with the headlines in There Shall EE.§2.
Night a deterioration of American playwrighting. And to

what avail, this artistic deterioration?

Why . . . this belief that there is no place in the
world today for men and women who steadfastly hold

themselves professionally, if mayha s not personally,
aloof from the current confusion an who steadfastly

hope and try to keep alive the inspiriting old artistic
traditions. . . . No one . . . wants to see Naziism
beaten and liberty and democracy preserved more than I
do . . . but I'll be good and bedamned if I can see how
it is going to be done, or even helped to be done, by
the simple process of converting the fine arts into as_
editorials. 8
It was Nathan's "so there" to Dorothy Thompson ssflsi. and
his plea for artistic integrity and Wordsworthian tran-
quility. For he felt, as did many others, that the war
could be dealt with really only after the emotional upheaval
of fighting had dissipated. ”Meditation and reflection
have thus distilled [in previous wars] what was mere stark
propaganda into the tincture of philosophical dramatic
literature. Heat makes reporters; calm makes poets."59
Everybody wanted to make or remake Broadway.
Broadway was caught in the middle, self conscious and
feeling a little guilty in this wilderness of accusations,

suspicions, pleas for mission, economic realities, and war

realities to which everyone expected it to respond.

r-s

earricah wartime eh'.

 

"7‘
A.
—

The theatre is 7
critical Probler
and high “ate: a
to knuckle do“

Edw':

    
   

 

The Broadw a":

:eroted hours of th6
211i drives and U. E
.es;onse, was more

9‘ 5,
...race. Each pla

 

Reduction, such as
Mays determined
5791i. personal p21
1‘15 in the case o‘|

j a theatre fox--

 

40
The Practical Response

The theatre is mighty slow in settling its own private
critical problems, but come disaster, pestilence, hell
and high water and German or Jap, and it is the first
to knuckle down and do a job.
Edward Raquello, head of survey for the War
Production Training Committee

The Broadway theatre responded in two ways to its
American wartime environment. First, theatre people
devoted hours of their time to patriotic activities such as
fund drives and U. S. 0. shows. The second, the creative
response, was more oblique, more diverse and more difficult
to trace. Each playwright, producer, each genre of Broadway
production, such as the musical comedy, reacted to the war
in ways determined by a complex relationship of historical
event, personal philosophy, an intuition of audience taste,
and in the case of the musical, its own point of development
as a theatre form. An examination of this second, creative
response will constitute the bulk of this study. But a
brief survey of Theatre people's practical service activi-
ties during the war years must be included if a full
picture of World War II American theatre is to be drawn.

As if to refute Congressional innuendoes concerning
the patriotism of the profession, actors, producers,
stagehands, and others engaged in litsgsily_dozens‘sf

patriotic projects_and jobs. Maxwell Anderson became

_______ ._._._.--.__..- .__._..—._ —.——-—--

 

involved in local civil defense, and in 1942 he toured

parts of northern Africa in preparation for a play on the

 

 

ear front there. MC
ready to write his c‘
flyer in the Air Co:
isnediately became a
then served as assis
finally acted as 0».

Information .

 

For those as

 
 
 
 
 
 
   

the coordinating a-

0n Febr‘
society of stage W'
Spectacular for th'
Win? the first 11

l-- - .

T s
He‘gh' Leslie How:

Sharespeare , and

be
an England. a

 

41

war front there. Moss Hart traveled 28,000 miles getting
ready to write his documentary-like play of becoming a
flyer in the Air Corps, Winged Victosy. Robert Sherwood
immediately became a speechwriter for President Roosevelt,
then served as assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, and
finally acted as overseas director of the Office of War
Information.

For those willing to work in cooperative projects,
the coordinating agency was the American Theatre Wing, which
had been active even before the United States entered the
conflict. On February 21, 1941, the Wing, at that time a
society of stage women only, staged a Radio City Music Hall
spectacular for the benefit of the British War Relief Fund.
During the first hour a radio hook-up with London brought
American listeners the voices of Laurence Olivier and Viven
Leigh, Leslie Howard, Beatrice Lillie, Maurice Evens reading
Shakespeare, and Gracie Fields singing "There Will Always
be an England.” American performers in the Music Hall
itself included Ed Wynn, Ethel Merman, Burns and Allen,
Victor Moore, George M. Cohan, and Olsen and Johnson.60

By July of 1941, The Defense Recreation Committee,
a part of the Wing, started a program that continued
throughout the war, providing servicemen with free tickets
to Broadway shows. The idea came to producer John Golden
when he spotted five servicemen standing under the marquee
of the St. James Theatre. He approached them and found

that they had no money and no place to go. Golden, recalling

 

yayor La Guardia' s "
experience for serv

Jen to this current

‘he show free; the t

 

:95

...er the legitimat
to shows was approv
over a thousand 301
mm and
The list of

aid ambition. The

People With the ap

children. It orga
entertainers. It
train

3» i‘
“.th
or. T e inf
“Viol/ed
OVQr
3‘?
." Cd‘!

 

42

Mayor La Guardia's campaign to make New York City a good

experience for servicemen spending time there, took the
men to this current production, Claudia. Four of them saw
the show free; the fifth was a movie lover and refused to

61 The idea of free tickets

enter the legitimate theatre.
to shows was approved by the committee and on July 16, 1941
over a thousand soliders saw Claudia, Hellzapoppin, EX
Sister Eileen, and Separate Besss.62
The list of Wing sponsored activities grew in number
and ambition. The Wing provided a workroom where threatre
people with the appropriate skills could make clothes for
children. It organized Red Cross blood donor drives among
entertainers. It established a speaker's bureau that
trained entertainers to use their visibility and influence
for the promotion of war projects. The Wing's Manpower
Conversion Project started by sending out 27,000 question-
naires to people in the theatre industry in an attempt to
get information on the skills and resources within the
industry. The information helped place hundreds of un-
employed, overage and draft exempt theatre people into war

production work.63

The project had its benefits to the
theatre just as had the free ticket project. Getting
servicemen into the theatre might help create a new
audience for the stage after the war. Putting show people
in war production plants, in additions to helping the war

effort, was said also to dispel the stereotype of the lazy

and weak actor.

 

For projects
he United Theatrica
The Committee helper
touring camp show wt
or comedian had com
people to the Lunch
medians, and musi
plants in their are
”firmed during the i

Program the perforr.

zation.
The Frog ra

Eton '
J Sting PrOdLJctir
Poll;
«es Presented .
C

39:8 the U. S o
o . I

 

 

43

For projects using specifically theatrical skills,
the United Theatrical War Activities Committee was set up.
The Committee helped direct the dancer or comedian to the
touring camp show whose dancer had just sprained an ankle
or comedian had come down with the flu. It assigned the
people to the Lunchtime Follies program where singers,
comedians, and musicians went into various war production
plants in their area to give brief revue—like shows to
workmen during their lunch break. For this particular
program the performers were paid by the theatre organi-
zation. The program hoped to become self-supporting by
proving so valuable in maintaining factory morale and in
promoting production that owners would pay to have the

Follies presented at their plants.64

And, of course, there
were the U. S. 0. shows and canteens where show people
served to help entertain and sustain allied military
personnel.

This is Ehg_§£gy_proved the ability of a show
business venture to earn money for the war. The show was a
reworking by Irving Berlin of his popular World War I show,
XEEDXEE'Yaphank, and included Berlin singing his famous
song from that earlier production, "0h, How I Hate to Get
Up in the Morning." The cast for this revue consisted
entirely of soldiers, 60 percent of whom had never been on
stage before. Others, however, had been enlisted from

their jobs in show business. The soldier-actors were

assembled at Camp Upton where they were directed by

 

Sergeant Ezra Stone.
51.9.9. Family radio

The show may
:ant in the war effo
Berlin, himself, wou
1. he ultimately ga
shew and his patriot

received much press

became a way for pr<

strata their patrio

two tickets to the

Health

my and less vi

113111: seats. A tot

23v4

‘9 rights . Aft

my Cam-m.

and th
Went

° England,

 

44

Sergeant Ezra Stone, better known as "Henry" of the
Aldrich Family radio series.

The show may not have been ideologically signifi—
cant in the war effort, but it was financially viable.
Berlin, himself, would accept no money from the proceeds,
and he ultimately gave over $1,000,000 revenue from the

65 The show

show and his patriotic songs to the government.
received much press ballyhoo. Supporting the production
became a way for prominent and famous citizens to demon-
strate their patriotism. Kate Smith sent in $10,000 for
two tickets to the opening night performance.66 Less
wealthy and less visible folks paid $27.50 top for opening
night seats. A total of $45,000 came into the till that
first evening. Later Warner Brothers paid $250,000 for

movie rights. After its stint on Broadway, and its tour of

army camps, and the making of the movie, This i§.E§E.§£EX.
went to England. Eisenhower saw the show and was so
impressed that he recommended that it tour all the theatres
of operation. Everywhere it went, nearly everyone loved
it. It was funny and stirring, and particularly because
Berlin had used indirection to avoid a rowdiness and
triteness common to patriotic, "incantation"-like revues.
”It is Irving," wrote George Jean Nathan, "who seems to
have mastered the salesmanship of patriotism as no one else

67 He sold well. By the time the show

has in his time."
had closed in Honolulu on October 22, 1945, it had earned

$10,000,000 for the Army Emergency Relief Fund and

 

$050,000 for the Bri
inhy,l942 that 35
relief funds were M
was anticipating thé

Broadway fi
:fthe relatively f
qwnimuwas whethe
always somewhat pre
yachts and those 0
IncleSam. During
iii, indeed, allow
involved were only
Raised to pay Off
We POtential a:

.‘-.‘.s
onote that the

313% fro

m the perf

 

 

45

$350,000 for the British War Charities. Variety reported
in May, 1942 that 35 percent of the "coin" for Army and Navy
relief funds were to come from show business; it probably
was anticipating the receipts from This is The A;my.68

Broadway financial facts allow only the investors
of the relatively few big hits to breath easily. The
question was whether these investors would permit their
always somewhat precarious returns to be diverted from their
pockets and those of their creditors into the pockets of
Uncle Sam. During the Seventh War Bond Drive some investors
did, indeed, allow this diversion of cash, but the shows
involved were only the big ones, the successes that
promised to pay off investments even after money from part
of the potential audience had been given to the government.
Also note that the greatest sacrifices of time and energy
came from the performers.

On June 17, 1945, late in the war, the New York
Times announced that the casts of fifteen leading shows
planned to present special matinee performances from
June 25, 1945 to July 5. Eighteen thousand tickets ranging
from $25.00 to $5,000.00 bonds were to be sold, and the
special performances were expected to result in the sale of
$10,000,000 worth of series B, F, and G bonds. The shows
participating were the leading ones on Broadway and

included, in drama, Harvey, The Glass Menagerie, A_Bell for

 

 

Adano, and leemember Mama. Among musicals there were

Carousel, Song 92 Norway, Bloomer Girl, Up_ig Central Park,

 

32:1 of the Moon.

 

shows was Oklahoma
the project but cc
show's musicians r
The Times reportec
:A .
..rzances began tr
3305560105, and t?
'icrt'n of bonds. 70
foil "

Wing the Aug
sentative of the L
recognizing the (:5

“ad Drive by BC)?

I!

 

46

Dark 2f the Moon. Conspicuously absent from the list of

 

shows was Oklahomal, which had planned to participate in
the project but could not when over two-thirds of the
show's musicians refused to work without regular pay.69
The Times reported only two days after the special per-
formances began that the sales for five shows totaled
$3,506,105, and that Carousel alone had sold $1,287,400

worth of bonds.70 Carousel's cast iced their cake of honor

 

following the August 30, 1945 performance when a repre-
sentative of the U. S. Treasury gave Jan Clayton a citation
recognizing the cast's oversubscribing to the Seventh War
Bond Drive by more than 200 percent.7l‘ Though critics

might see the central symbols of Broadway musicals to be
merry-go-rounds and marvelous rabbits rather than simulated
howitzers or refugee camps, they could not deny the personal
commitment shown by many Broadway folk.

Probably the most famous and glamorous emblem for
show people's personal involvement in war activities had
little to do with fundraising or even U. S. 0. shows. This
emblem was the Stage Door Canteen. The Canteen was the
American Theatre Wing's primary and most successful project,
and its success spurred the opening of similar canteens at
the Philadelphia Academy of Music, the Belasco Theatre in

72 The New York

Washington, and in Cleveland and Newark.
Centeen was located downstairs in the 44th Street Threatre.
All were open to Allied servicemen, and the one in New York

offered a place to go for the soldier or sailor who had

 

 

aissed getting a f
provided a place t
from a sugar beet

see stars, get his
Smell, still in

performed. He mig
out in the kitchen
over by Irving Ber
When he heard that
tune, he sent anot

m3
2‘" the 1.200 seru‘

week saw the bigge

 

47

missed getting a free ticket to a show. For everyone it
provided a place to go after the show. Here the pimply boy
from a sugar beet farm in Michigan's thumb could actually
see stars, get his cup of coffee handed to him by Katharine
Cornell, still in the make-up from the show she had just
performed. He might glimpse Alfred Lunt separating garbage
out in the kitchen. And the piano he heard had been sent
over by Irving Berlin. (Berlin actually sent over two.
When he heard that the first one he had donated was out of
tune, he sent another.) The Canteen opened in March, 1942,
and the 1,200 servicemen per night who came down that first
week saw the biggest stars of the musicals perform numbers
from their shows. On Monday Gertrude Lawrence performed
numbers from Lady 3.29. 3.313 22515. On Tuesday night Best E22.
Forward was featured. On Wednesday the vaudeville-like
team of Olsen and Johnson, so popular throughout the war,
did bits from their current success, Sggg_9f Egg. On
Thursday it was Danny Kaye from EEEL§.EEEE.£E and on
Friday, Eddie Cantor from Banig_§yg_.73 The cream. The
next week over 10,000 servicemen were entertained by
Tallulah Bankhead and Lynn Fontanne.74 Such large numbers
of men made expansion of the Canteen absolutely necessary.
So in 1944 a $25,000 renovation project added fifty feet to
the dance floor as well as swanky mirrors to the Canteen's
plaster columns and a mural of Allied flags.75
Stars and servicement felt a momentary unity in this

basement place. And this sense of unity and good fellow

 

feel

Em

ing may have b0

their knowled

them was imminent

theatre persons th

felt it demonstrat

curiously sentimen

for

the movie , Sta

Aprint of the
National Capit
from now can k
PEOPle and how
hostesses, bus
or otherwise 0.;
Nations. Yes

thWands of h
brief hours 0:
battle.“ ‘

 

‘V

48

feeling may have been able to divert the soldiers' thoughts
from their knowledge that the only meaning New York had for
them was imminent embarcation. Such was the hope. What
theatre persons thought about the Canteen, and what they
felt it demonstrated about theatre people, is seen in the
curiously sentimental and defensive full page ad in Variety

for the movie, Stage Door Canteen.

A print of the picture will be placed ina vault in our
National Capitol . . . so that people a hundred years
from now can know a few straight facts about show
people and how they worked and gave of themselves as
hostesses, bus boys, entertaining on the Canteen stage,
or otherwise waiting on the soldiers of all the United
Nations. Yes, how they played their part in helping
thousands of boys at the Stage Door Canteen find a few
brief hours of happiness before they sailed away to
battle.75

The Creative Respgnse

This is a people's war. We must find out what we are
going to die for or not die for, and state and restate
that cogently in the threatre.
Shepard Traube, co-producer of An e1
Street and director of Winter Solgiers

 

Wartime is not a time to inspire good create work.
Burns Mantle, EEE.§2§E.E$EX§.2£ 1941-42.
The creative response is a more difficult one to
chart. It cannot be described in terms of numbers of free
tickets to servicemen, or in terms of bonds sold, or even
in terms of numbers of plays produced. If one sets up a
simplistic criterion, such as the number of war plays

produced, then one can count those plays and evaluate the

 

 

degree and sue
what exactly 1
:haracter weal
situations anc
between 1941-4
for the Yankee
is a war situa
Shrtage. Cer1
3'5 the war, if
war play one wt:
5.916)! muSt be <
50 then exclude

nated '

 

49

degree and success of Broadway's response to the war. But
what exactly constitutes a war play? One in which a
character wears a uniform or the plot exploits the war
situations and so identifies the setting as somewhere
between 1941-45? Then A Connecticutt Yankee is a war play,

for the Yankee sported a naval uniform, and The Doughgirls

 

is a war situation comedy based on the Washington housing
shortage. Certainly such plays show a superficial response
to the war, if there is any response evident at all. Is a
war play one wherein battle conditions are simulated? Such
a play must be considered a war drama, but does defining one
so then exclude such a play as Tomorrow EEE.EQ£$§' a play
showing the painful adjustment of a child born and indoctri-
nated in Germany when he is brought to the United States to
be raised? Must a war play have a Nazi of fascist or
Japanese in it? Must it be set in the present century even?
If so, we must exclude such plays as Harriett and Oklahoma!
and 222.§Ei2.2£.92£.22§£§1 each of which actually shows the
influences of wartime.

The creative response to crisis, especially perhaps
a cultural crisis, may take many forms depending upon the
particular playwright's personality, philosophy, and
energy. He need not create a play about Bataan to be
responding to the war. He need only show in some way that
the events of the external situation have entered his
consciousness and so moved it that his work somehow

comments on it or tries to satisfy a need in the culture's

 

{i.e., his and“
definition of a
play written dur
broad wingS- I
szccess during t
registers no awa
of audience's “9
pretty constant '
Q, by Rose
periOd, may creal
the process crea1
woman and wife, I
to the '203 or '3
a

3.11945. Oklahc
in time and setti

A I
.ertai

It needs in
ted

 

Many 1-
5“”!
“die
3 real ,
l“ £11
5. e ' 30
S. .0
5C . A“
.t h

50

(i.e., his audience's) war conditioned psyche. Such a
definition of a war play is vague and perhaps allows every
play written during the war years to be included under its
broad wings. I think not, however. Angel Street was a huge
success during the first part of the war, but the play
registers no awareness of war problems, only an awareness
of audience's need for entertainment-~a need, after all,
pretty constant and not confined to periods of stress.
Claudia, by Rose Franken, another fine success of the
period, may create a charming child/wife character and in
the process create one cultural image of the desirable
woman and wife, but it is an image and theme as relevant
to the 'ZOs or '308 or 'SOs as to the period between 1938
and 1945. Oklahoma!, on the other hand, though far removed
in time and setting from the Second World War speaks to
certain needs in the psychological make-up of a world war
and cold war audience. It is an example, and perhaps one
of the finest examples, of playwrights, composers, and a
genre's creative response to the genetic and external
environment. But before dealing with the subtle kinds of
responses, it is worthwhile to look at the immedate and
explicit reactions of playwrights to the evolving war
crisis.

Many or even most major playwrights of the period
showed a real awareness of the unfolding events in Europe
in the '30s. Angered by the regime and the circumstances

of his wife, Dorothy Thompson's expulsion from Germany,

 

 

 

Sinclair Lewis

1935. Later he
hoping to awake
:aziism. By 19
Soothe Luce wen
The result was

called Euroge _i
more time in Sp
The PlaWrights
greater mobilit
dangerous Situa'
their still iso;
in earnest in E1
than eyel. the he

...cluded She moo

'iar be
gain to See

‘3.
we “Bed to

he 1p

‘
zcs

 

51

Sinclair Lewis wrote the novel, £2.922LE Happen Eggs in
1935. Later he dramatized it for the Federal Theatre,
hoping to awaken the American people to the dangers of
naziism. By 1940, after her play, Margin £g£_§££g£, Clare
Boothe Luce went to Europe to see the situation for herself.
The result was an at least semi-interventionist report
called Europe £2.EES Spring. Lillian Hellman had spent
more time in Spain with Spanish Republicans and Loyalists.
The playwrights were, if for no other reason that their
greater mobility and contacts, more cognizant of the
dangerous situation and more apt to call for action than
their still isolationist-minded countrymen. When war began
in earnest in Europe, some playwrights felt more strongly
than ever the need to educate their audience. The results
included Sherwood's EEEES.§EE$$.EE.§2.§$2EE¢ And when the
war began to seem nearly inevitable for the United States,
the need to help somehow became an absolute necessity for
most theatre people.

The help of actors, producers, etc., has already
been detailed. Some playwrights put their verbal skills
to use trying to inspire, educate, and move those within
hearing. Broadway could not reach the broadest audience.
So a group of distinguished American writers, including
Maxwell Anderson, William Saroyan, Ernest Hemingway, John
Steinbeck, and Paul Green formed an organization called the
Free Company. Each member was to contribute without pay his

services to a series of radio plays designed not to exhort

 

"' I “ma

 

..—

 

but to remind the
lanes Boyd in desc
the necessity of t
intelligence of th
operating [in the
spirit which alone
centre.‘77 The p]
bedrock of the Arm
spirit, but not b}

preach or argue, ‘

ftillow t

he method

fables, . . .78

 

52

but to remind the American people of their possession.
James Boyd in describing the formation of the company noted
the necessity of this reminder. ”The mechanics and
intelligence of the country were unimpaired and fully
operating [in the fall of 1940] but it was as though the
spirit which alone could give them meaning hung on dead
centre.”77 The plays, stressing the Bill of Rights as
bedrock of the American system were to awaken the
spirit, but not by blatant propaganda. ”We did not wish to
preach or argue, we wanted to present. . . . We would
follow the method of the Bible parables, of Aesop's
fables. . . ."78 The goal of parabolic expression of
cultural values and traditions recognized that American
audiences would not be moved by bald statements. Even in
the most minor of forms, e.g., these radio plays, some
transmuting of message into art was necessary. And it
became clear, with such exceptions as Moss Hart's Winged
Victogy, that the less transmuted, the less successful was
the play. The journalistic, naturalistic plays that '
Anderson and Sherwood wrote late in the war (§22£E.QEE£T
gtigg'and.ghg Rugged P223) were among those playwrights'
least successful plays. For some reason the direct
approach to the issues and images of war simply were not
imaginatively satisfying to audiences.

Handling the subject of war and American values was

simply a difficult if not impossible task to approach

directly. Perhaps the problem was psychological and

”,3

 

philosophical -

L942 issue of :2
serious playwrig
or perhaps more

denials prove in
same suggestion .
creative renderi:
Brooks Atkinson.
if ‘he contenpora

motional forces

Howl the:

 

53

philosophical. So suggested Rosamond Gilder in the June,
1942 issue of Theatre 5532' "A war hits hardest at the
serious playwright. His faiths, his formulas are shattered,
or perhaps more correctly in this war, his non-faiths, his
denials prove inadequate anchorage in stormy seas."79 The
same suggestion of a world too distracting and chaotic for
creative rendering and interpreting had come in April from
Brooks Atkinson. "It seems to me undeniable that the chaos
of the contemporary world scatters the intellectual and
emotional forces of which plays are normally written."80
How, then, could one handle, if one could at all,
the subject of a world of nations battling one another? The
scope was too great, too epic for the four walls of a
theatre and realistic presentation.* And if the subject was
war, why tell the story at all? Lewis Nichols suggested
that only three of the twenty-two war related plays and
revues on Broadway between December, 1941 and October, 1943
succeeded because the other nineteen "came too near the
headlines and sought to tell a story more simply told in a
factual report than upon the stage."81 The stage was the
wrong medium for fact; fact, if respected, must be stated.

The stage, whose proper realm lay in imaginative constructs,

dealt more successfully in metaphor and myth. Further,

 

*The terms realistic and naturalistic in this study
will refer to the kind of stage presentation usually
associated with Ibsen, a presentation trying for undistorted
rendering of ordinary appearances and manners.

 

 

the physical spec
vast theatres of
assembled as armi
realistic portray
to deal with batt
Plalgoer who unde
Suggestion of a t
Patriotic tenets,
the realistic 17106

In
P.

..einson noted in

He. A

Clic’
39d. IBut ' '

fi .
M "at Without

”shellfish. . e 2

 

54

the physical spectacle of World War II, its war machine, its
vast theatres of war, its astronomical numbers of men
assembled as armies, all these things made any attempt for
realistic portrayal on stage almost laughable. Better able
to deal with battle was the Elizabethan playwright and
playgoer who understood and could respond to synecdochal
suggestion of a battlefield. Further, bald statement of
patriotic tenets, especially again, in the play composed in
the realistic mode, seemed sophomoric, obvious. As Brooks
Atkinson noted in 1942 in one of his attempts to locate and
diagnose the problems in writing war dramas, "the war is a
tremendous theme. It distorts dramatic proportions. It
throws everything out of balance." When not handled
delicately the subject grows blatantly propagandistic or
cliched. "But," he goes on, "there must be a way to write
about war without paddling in the shallows or sounding
amateurish."82

Many ways were tried. Atkinson felt the secret of
a successful war play, at least one in the realistic mode,
was the creation of full characters. Jordan Y. Miller
concurred years later in a fine survey of plays whose
subject was the Second World War. "The better plays of
the 1940's, though disappointingly few in number, follow
the lead of EEEE.E£$EE.§$2£Z? as they turn for their
primary dramatic source to the individual human being who

83

is forced to exist under war's inhuman tensions." With

psychological realism as the key to treating the war,

 

 

Killer finds Z
the B3313, 194
after he has 1
Decision, 1947
55:113.. and Hell]
memorable war 1
Pla‘is of psYCh(

John 51
best Selling tic
hard ‘0 dramatj
war's tenSions.
German Officer'
suffering from
aPPlied to the

audiehoe of spr

Portray al C a rr 1

55

thg_§£2!g, 1945, a play about a soldier's guilt and shock
after he has left his wounded buddy to die, Command
Decision, 1947, and possibly Sherwood's £2352 §E2ll be Eg’
flight and Hellman's figtgh_gn the Bhigg as the only really
memorable war plays. All had successful runs. But not all
plays of psychological realism were successful.

John Steinbeck's early 1942 dramatization of his
best selling novel, The £222 is 2233, apparently tried too
hard to dramatize the individual's pressures of existingum¢~
war's tensions, that is, he tried too hard to dramatize a
German officer's pressures as well as the pressures on those
suffering from aggression. It appeared that objectivity
applied to the enemy was unacceptable to the critics and
audience of spring, 1942. The result of this objective
portrayal carried too far was a critical, popular, and even
international controversy that demonstrated the complex
relation between dramatic art and cultural expectations
during periods of crisis.

Like so many of the plays of the war, IEE.§222.£§
2213 is a synthesis of styles. In depiction of character
it is in the realistic mode; its settings are also
realistic. In its approach to its subject it is more
parabolic. The story concerns a village of some unnamed
northern country as it is occupied by an aggressor army.
The democratically governed village, though quite obviously

Norwegian, remains nameless in the manner of Jesus's

gamble kings. and
theetemell by tot
villagers and t‘n
excellence for t
ltematically an
acceptable to a
was attempting
333 eSpecially ¢

and collaboratic

 

acts of sabotage
:eprisals. He be
spirit and resist
because they have
the very least, c
would only protre
inevitably make.

But Stei‘
lat representati !

treat“ also in l

‘7?

H”

I

;olone1 Lanser I

‘n
w

‘EESL EL

 

 

56

parable kings, and it suggests all free peoples who are
threatened by totalitarian aggression. The village, its
villagers and their mayor, Mr. Orden, spokesman par
excellence for democratic ideals becomes symbols of a sort.

Thematically and ideologically, the play seems absolutely

acceptable to an American critic and audience. Steinbeck
was attempting to depict the psychology of the free people
and especially of Mayor Orden, a man torn between resistance
and collaboration. If he collaborates and helps stifle

acts of sabotage, he also protects his villagers from brutal
reprisals. He believes, however, that a free people's
spirit and resistance cannot be crushed by momentary defeat
because they have known freedom. They will ultimately, at
the very least, outlast their aggressors. Collaboration
would only protract the resistance that his people will
inevitably make.

But Steinbeck went beyond creating a fairly complex
yet representative character in the sympathetic mayor. He
created also in Col. Lanser a complex German officer, one
quite unlike the Nazi monsters in Margin £2£|§££2£, Flight
2 £13.; lest, Liberty 921133, and Candle in the @3351.

Colonel Lanser is a cultured man, a man who in the original
version silently mouthed the words of Socrates' denunci-
ation as Mayor Orden speaks them just before his execution
for not helping to stop the sabotage. Otto Kruger, who
played Lanser on Broadway, persuaded Steinbeck to cut this

business, arguing that it made the Colonel too civilized.

 

 

He was already tc
found very dalnge1
is a very bad ti:
away from any 53"
But Steil
into the part- '
simply a tired f
actions he must
to do our job,"
occupation seems
cehstructions ar
tired sir. I mu
‘35 for the good

are ‘
r ahng colone

“esperate for h
u

 

57

He was already too human, too real, said Kruger, "which‘we
found very dangerous from the audience point of view. This
is a very bad time for it and I'm trying very hard to get
away from any sympathy."84
But Steinbeck had written complexity and sympathy
into the part. The Colonel respects the Villagers; he is
simply a tired functionary instrinctively repelled by the
actions he must take because of his position. ”We just want
to do our job," he wearily tells the mayor as orderly
occupation seems threatened by acts of sabotage. "Our
céhstructions are to get along with your people. I'm very
tired sir. I must have some sleep. Please co-operate with
us for the good of all."85 And on top of this almost
appealing colonel, Steinbeck creates an occupying army so
desperate for human warmth and acceptance that certain of
its members find the villagers' coldness to them maddening.
Lieutenant Tonder, though certainly neurotically needful of
warmth, makes a pathetic and sympathetic attempt to approach
the widow of a miner killed by the occupiers. "I want you
to like me," he tells the widow, Molly. "A man needs love.
A man dies without love. His insides shrivel, and his
chest feels like a dry chip. I'm lonely" (p. 97). Tonder
does not try to molest Molly. He does want her to like
him. She stabs him with a pair of scissors.

The novel and play caused probably the sharpest

critical controversy of the war (with the possible

 

 

Pro— teinbeck
.he greens bec
made of green
Fadiman and Ja
Kg Republic p
N progress c
autonomy of a:
“View of the
book needs mo:
Problem was t}.
:3: POrtray ev
Pfirtray their

\

:bie t0 rout t

u V

58

Pro-Steinbeck forces, lead by John Chamberlain and called
the greens because, said opponents, Steinbeck's moon was
made of green cheese, faced the blues lead by Clifton
Fadiman and James Thurber. The spring, 1942 issues of Th2.
Ngg_Republic provide a fairly complete record of the issues
and progress of the debate, and reveal the problematic
autonomy of art in wartime. James Thurber's March 16
review of the novel threw down the gambit. "This little

86 The

book needs more guts and less moon," he began.
problem was that the novel, and subsequently the play, did
not portray evil men in black enough colors and did not
portray their strength. "If the German Lieutenants of
today are really like Lieutenant Tonder, then American
Moores of [flhgt_§£igg’§l2£y?l and British Hibbets will be
able to rout the pussycats merely by shouting 'Boo!'”87
Here was one of the hearts of the matter. Critics of the
play and novel's portrayal of the enemy were alarmed at
what they felt to be the complacent assumption that the
enemy was weak. The novel and play had the practical
dysfunction of not steeling American's for a long hard
struggle. In the March 30 The_§gg.Republic, Thurber
declared that "nothing would help more toward [possibly
losing the war] than for Americans to believe Steinbeck's
version of Nazi conquest. . . ."88
Letters flowed in debating whether or not the

author's portraits were realistic. A Norwegian English

professor, who had been held in Mollergaten, a Gestapo

 

 

prison for seven
what has happened
have yet found 01
occupation of N01
to the play, Hans
Iegation in Wash:
portraits of the
3‘16 enemy. The c
brutal, Cynical .'
Perversion and 5;
id not dip his 1

Efibisg w .

rath ;

The cont

h
w successfully

 

 

S n
‘Vrt
’15:}(‘91 I
.{e ‘
c
35.“! ~
wit
the War
Calls '
"‘ F
o: Cans.
\J.‘ 18 DOW
6:4. \n.

S9

prison for seven months testified: "Steinbeck's account of
what has happened to their souls is the truest picture I
have yet found of both German and Norwegians under the
occupation of Norway."89 But in a semi-official reaction
to the play, Hans Olav, counselor in the Royal Norwegian
Legation in Washington, found the effect of the fine
portraits of the villagers marred by the faculty picture of
the enemy. The Germans, he wrote, actually are "tough,
brutal, cynical and ignorant men with a fine flair for
perversion and sadism. We deeply regret that John Steinbeck
did not dip his pen in the vitriolic inkstand of . . . Egg
Grapes 2;.ng h and paint a picture of conquerors as they
really are.”90
The controversy shifted ground back and forth from
how successfully the writer created character to how
beneficial the creations were regardless of how good. The
controversy and its indictment of the play did seem to have
some effect on its Broadway run--only fifty-five per-
formances--though the novel sold very well and movie rights
were purchased for $300,000, a record high to be equalled
shortly when Hollywood bought Anderson's 222.§XE.2£.§E¢
§g£§.91 The critical issues were, first, the freedom to
create works perhaps not useful to the nation's attitudes
about the war, and there were those who smelt implicit
calls for censorship in the negative comments about The

Moon ig_Down. A closely related issue was finding proper

critical standards during a war. Were works of art to be

- .. m5

 

 

judged by intrinsi
stated and comment
determine the meri
effects upon publ;
to: much to condi‘
to swing it, and .
author must write
totalitarian atti

But quital
work's acceptabij

ans;
usher consider.

particular . The
Dr .

huh“;
S"!-

 

60

judged by intrinsic or extrinsic criteria. Brooks Atkinson
stated and commented on the problem. "Since when must we
determine the merits of a play or a novel according to its
effects upon public opinion? . . . Who is tocietermine just
how much to condition public opinion and in which direction
to swing it, and who is to draw up the rules under which an
author must write for public consumption? The criticism of
EEE.§222.£§.29!2 in terms of political tactics repeats the
totalitarian attitude toward literature."92
But quite apart from official determinations of a
work's acceptability, the play's experience suggests
another consideration for the artist, and playwright in
particular. The playwright especially is concerned with
presenting communally observed creations. Playwrights have
sometimes noted that their work is not generally created as

93 The

a part of the vanguard of thought of attitudes.
play's success, not just commercially, but in the more
fundamental act of simply communicating its vision, depends
upon an atmosphere of familiarity. The forms, the ideas,
its character types must be a least somewhat recognizable
and acceptable if the play is to be given a hearing by an

audience.94

The audience must have some way of dealing with
what is presented it. In wartime, when there is doubtless

a rise in the sense of communal unity, a greater conscious-
ness of communally held ideals, the deviation from such

communal or culturally familiar ideas and images is less

acceptable. The playwright must be aware of this closing

 

 

 

of ranks, of 1
images if he i
noted the lack
In 1940 Brooks
comparable to

Players.95 In
Theatre, Inc. '
productions, t}
2531 Equity
Rd 39th Street
"Jntried Young a
at the theatre

Faeral-y' 1944
Zone" and a sh.
And the Studio I

Research a1

 

61

of ranks, of this narrowing range of acceptable themes and
images if he is to write to his audience. Commentators
noted the lack of experimentation during the war period.
In 1940 Brooks Atkinson lamented the absence of any groups
comparable to the old Provincetown and Washington Square

players.95

In 1941 theatre patrons organized experimental
Theatre, Inc., which apparently expired after three
productions, the first of which was Euripides The Trojan
flgmgg, Equity did start the Theatre Workshop at Sixth Ave.
and 39th Street as an experimental theatre and one to give
untried young actors and actresses experience. But programs
at the theatre were generally composed of revivals. A
February, 1944 bill, for instance, lists "Ille," "In the
Zone," and a short version of Thglggn'flhgiggmg.tg’Dinner.96
And the Studio Theatre in the New School for Social
Research also tried some semi-experimental productions, such
as Dan James' Winter Soldiers. But real experimental
activity was scarce. The one truly innovative movement in
threatre form during the war, the development of the

musical drama, was acceptable because it was the result of
long genre evolution, and because its initial successes,
such as Oklahoma! and Bloomer EiEl used effectively
culturally familiar and dearly held beliefs. Quite apart,
then, from writing to please any official set of criteria,
the wartime playwright had to write for an audience feeling

probably a closer intellectual and emotional identification

with communal or cultural images. The most successful

 

 

plays of the peri
to be either with
Doughgirls, MI
of images, as in
various American

This doeJ
audience grew 1e:
Primitive, naive

despite its inf l

worker theatreg C

 

 

 

62

plays of the period seemed to recognize this and attempted

to be either without much thought at all (Junior Miss, The

 

Doughgirls, By Jupiter) or would tap the cultural reservoir
various American history plays.
This does not mean that the individual or collective
audience grew less discriminating of quality or more
primitive, naive, or child-like. The World War II audience
despite its influx of prosperous but inexperienced war-
worker theatregoers, was probably a more sophisticated
audience than that which had applauded the patriotic songs
and allegorical tableaux of the previous war. In Philip
Barry's curious 1941 play, Liberty Jones, a mixture of
simple and more obscure allegory is attempted. Liberty, a
beautiful young woman lies ill in her Uncle Sam's Washington
apartment and cannot be cured until Tom Smith, the young
American liberal, loves her enough to die for her. The
blatancy of this is countered by a complex and obscure
plethora of other symbols. At one point the three shirts
(Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin) hover over Liberty, large
against the sky.» Tom goes to defend her. This scene and
others, are close in style and mode to the tableaux of
WOrld War I productions. The play, despite a lavish
production by the Theatre Guild, was a popular and critical
failure. In addition to the obscurity of some symbols and
the static quality of the action, this blatant dealing with

the international situation and American ideals seemed

'F' 1 ,—-i

 

 

unacceptable to t
fairness it shoul
night audience di
Liberty. Basicall
writing. The ne'e
dealing with topLI
revues here) take
into forms both .I
indirect.

What the

Med by and cor"I
Smith in Virgin
hat . .
\H° R g Criti
iafined

; v
in

 

 

63

unacceptable to the contemporary audience, though in all
fairness it should be noted that some members of the opening
night audience did stand and applaud as Tom defended
Liberty. Basically the play was a form of discursive
writing. The new audience seemed to demand that is plays
dealing with topical content (we should exclude patriotic
revues here) take the trouble to transmute that content

into forms both entertaining and somewhat subtle and
indirect.

What the wartime audience apparently felt most
moved by and comfortable with is described by Henry Nash
Smith in Virgin 2229 as myth and by Northrup Frye in his
Anatomy of Criticism as myth and folk tale. Most briefly
defined, myth and folk tale are "abstract story patterns"
that use communally shared, emotionally charged motifs and
images. In America, then, the story of the rise from log
cabin to White House or executive suite becomes a folk
tale. Another is the pattern of movement to the free,
pastoral West. Because of the basically Christian culture,
the patterns of that mythos have been appropriated. The
pattern of the good man sacrificed to save the community
becomes an especially poignant folk or cultural pattern
during a war. If any trend may be seen in the general
response of American drama to its wartime environment, it
is the marked use of folk patterns, and especially the
marked use of folk motifs even in plays not drawing on folk

patterns.

 

 

The folk
wright with some

dominance because

 

 

 

representations
are broad patter.
characters and a
such eXpression
in folk tales fo
ested in Still-
essential Princi

then has the 855

64

The folk tale and folk motif presents the play-
wright with some problems during a period of realistic mode
dominance because folk tales and motifs are not necessarily
representations of life surfaces and life activities. They
are broad patterns and suggestive of larger than life
characters and activities. Frye notes the attraction of
such expression and its problems. "Writers are interested
in folk tales for the same reason that painters are inter-
ested in still-life arrangements; because they illustrate
essential principles of story-telling. The writer who uses
them has the essential problem of making them sufficiently
plausible or credible to a sophisticated audience. When he
succeeds, he produces not realism, but a distortion of

"97 The musical

realism in the interests of structure.
drama may perhaps be a more congenial genre for the folk
tale for its conventions of music, story, and dance first
of all diminish the expectation of absolute fidelity to
ordinary reality, and also suggest a kind of ritual--a
playing out of communal expectations. The straight play
presents more problems, especially when the audience has
been nurtured on naturalistic character presentation, when
contemporary critics should say, as did Brooks Atkinson in
March, 1941, "The character [not the story or pattern] is

the basis for everything,"98

and when, to complicate the
problem further, while demanding realism the war culture
audience also shows a desire and even need for expressions

of communally held beliefs and images. The techniques by

 

 

which an author
credible or lif
story pattern a
sass.

rates for emoti
reactions to an
flesh and blood
life idea, moti
acalturets Sha
5533' leveled Su
being fOUnded 0
Consider to be

Pression marked

 

 

 

65

which an author or playwright attempts to render his story
credible or lifelike, Frye calls displacement. When the
story pattern and motifs are displaced skillfully, as in
makes for emotionally satisfying art, if we may judge from
reactions to and popularity of such a play. Behind the
flesh and blood character on stages looms that larger than
life idea, motif, that fuses into one metaphor so much of
a culture's shared experience and beliefs. There exists a
many leveled suggestiveness, with the final or deepest level
being founded on what a member of the culture will usually
consider to be truth. In its finest moments, such ex-
pression marked more than anything else the creative

response of American drama to the Second World War.

 

 

II. I,

In his I
out a bad 5
tussel on hl
his efforts
Other of hi
attempt to
bEen eqnal

 

II. PLAYWRIGHTS ADJUST: THE WAR AND

ANARCHIC INDIVIDUALISM

Maxwell Anderson, Christ,
and the War

In his bout with the late war, [Anderson] has come
out a bad second. It has been a valiantly persistent
tussel on his part; he has not flinched for a moment in
his efforts to triumph over it in script; but, like
other of his buddies who have put on the gloves in an
attempt to subdue it to their dramatic ends, he has not
been equal to it.

George Jean Nathan, Theatre Book of the Year,

“1375:16—

 

The complex and sometimes painful adjustment made
by the theatre at large to war conditions was also
observable in such individual playwrights as Maxwell
Anderson, Robert Sherwood, and Lillian Hellman. For
Anderson the road from anti-war satire to affirmation of
war's purposes in Candle in 1:313 Wind, The §y_e_ g_f_ §_t_. M,
and The Rugged §g£h_proved a long and uneasy one, but also
a somewhat inevitable route for a man with Anderson's
earnest moral concern.

Anderson's first success as a playwright was a

collaboration with World War I veteran, Laurence Stallings.

It was a play about war, a play whose sincerity was founded

66

 

in the experienc,

 

Stallings had it
and Anderson ha:
Phi had a miss:
note, Anderson (‘1
Purpose. WE I
as it has been I
Years. The $01
world over,

flout, romantic

 

“at May has Us
%? may SEeI:

The me
profane: Ellen
Violent rearlit
were bailing,

l1
ere, abOVe a1.

67

in the experience and convictions of its creators.
Stallings had lost the use of his legs in the Great War,
and Anderson had a history of vociferous pacifism. So the
play had a mission--to deglamorize. In a short prefatory
note, Anderson and Stallings stated their missionary
purpose. "What Egigg.§lg£y? is a play of war as it is, not
as it has been presented theatrically for thousands of
years. The soldiers talk and act much as solidiers the
world over. . . . In a theatre where war has been lied
about, romantically effectively--and in a city where the
war play has usually meant sugary dissimulation--Wh§§.Pgigg.
§_l_o_ry? may seem bold."

The method of deglamorizing lay mostly in the
profane, even obscene language that expressed the crude and
violent reality of war. Sargeant Quirt and Captain Flagg
were brawling, seemingly honorless but not vicious men, and
were, above all, verbally violent and licentious. The
soldier heroes--the Yankee Doodle Dandies of Cohan
constuction--were nowhere to be seen. Even so, anddespite
the authors' hopes or fears on the subject, the production
did not strike the Broadway audience of 1924 as too bold.
Anderson and Stallings had remained true to their own
beliefs and at the same time had expressed the popular
assumptions of the twenties on the subject of war. The
play was hard-hitting, sincere, and popular.

Thus began Anderson's remarkable career in the

threatre. What Price Glory? was followed by two more

 

 

collaborations v.

Buccaneer, 19 25 .

 

Then Anderson b:
of successes cc:
play Anderson 1.
excursions into
as W to.
Versial

l as Was

contemporary 8e

 

on the EVE of I:
Anderson was P)?

p \
.tlitzer to Sh!

68

collaborations with Stallings, Figgg Flight, 1925, and The_
Buccaneer, 1925. Both were popular and critical failures.
Then Anderson began to write on his own, and a long string
of successes commenced with Saturday's Children, 1927, a
play Anderson later confessed to being a pot boiler.1 His
excursions into poetry and historical tragedy in such plays
as Elizabeth Ehg_ggggn_and Mggy of Scotland were contro-
versial, as was Winterset, 1935, a verse tragedy with a
contemporary setting. But critically controversial or not,
on the eve of American involvement in the world war,
Anderson was probably America's leading and certainly its
most produced dramatist. In 1932 he won the Pulitzer

Price for 22E5.222£ Houses, and in 1936, though losing the
Pulitzer to Sherwood's Idiot's Delight, he won the first
Drama Critics Circle Award for Winterset. In 1937 he had
three plays running simultaneously on Broadway, The Masque
2:.5i2221 §£25.22E (for which he won a second Drama
Critics' Circle Award), and $22.§E2£.E§3223 The three
displayed not only Anderson's prodigious creative output,
but also his range of styles and techniques. The Masque of
Eiggg was an historical verse tragedy dealing with Rudolph
of Hapsburg, §i22.22£.a poetic, comic, satiric fantasy, Thg’
S225 flag a another fantasy, but one more philosophical and
vague than §£32.22£° In 1938 Anderson joined forces with
four other leading playwrights, Elmer Rice, Robert Sherwood,
S. N. Behrman, and Sidney Howard, to form the highly

successful Playwrights Co., an organization designed to

 

 

produce or get I
swig: of 1939 1
an Anderson fes‘
popular, and cr,
In 1938
list of native .
and stature as
eXpressions of
essays and play

seemed doctrina

with respect .

 

69

produce or get produced the works of its members.2 In the
summer of 1939 the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse presented
an Anderson festival. The playwright was active, productive,
popular, and critically respected.

In 1938 Burns Mantel put him at "the head of our
list of native dramatists. . . ."3 Anderson's integrity
and stature as a theorist were generally accepted. The
expressions of philosophic faith that occurred in both his
essays and plays had a certain passion about them and
seemed doctrinally consistent. His passion was rewarded
with respect. All critics, even those genuinely sceptical
of Anderson's achievement, characterized the man and his
work as personal and sincere. Marxist critic, Eleanor
Flexnor sums up the consensus in 1938. "An Andersonian
play, [the audience knows] is the expression of the
author's ideas, uttered with candor and integrity; it
represents the best he is capable of."4 Flexnor was echoed
ten years later by Harold Clurman in a not entirely positive

estimate in The New Republic. Anderson, said Clurman, "is

 

one of our few authentic dramatists in the sense that for
twenty-five years he has supplied our stage with a steady
stream of plays that all-~good or bad--bear the stamp of his

personality, his reaction to the world."5

This universally
accepted sincerity may be important to remember as the
pacifistic EEEE.E££22.§$2EX7 is mentally juxtaposed to the
war-promoting plays and statements of the World War II

period.

 

 

Accordi
before the war
night's thougi
suffering from
response, some
realities pres:
necessary. Du:
'303, Anderson

about dramatic

591’

ved as a se

GEbate 0f 68th:

makes a Recess.
American draina
Anders

With an addres

BE EssenCe o;

\ \
addresses to J

l
.938 (IThe ESSI
Seventeenth A'

Shn
.rtly there I

ads. I
\‘eS

 

70

According to Anderson critics the period just
before the war appeared to be one of crisis for the play-
wright's thought. Anderson himself gave no indication of
suffering from a crisis of belief and philosophy. But some
response, some adjustment to the social and international
realities pressing upon every person's consciousness was
necessary. During the emerging world crisis of the late
'303, Anderson was active in stating formally his ideas
about dramatic theory. For Anderson that theory probably
served as a self sounding, a simultaneous statement and
debate of esthetic and philosophic beliefs. As such, it
makes a necessary study as we investigate the leading
American dramatist's response to the war.

Anderson's series of theoretical statements began
approximately with the 1935 Preface to Winterset, proceeded
with an address for the Founder's Day event at Carnegie
Institute in 1937 (published as "Whatever Hope We Have" in
The Essence of Tragedy in 1939), continued in the form of
addresses to the Modern Language Association meeting in
1938 ("The Essence of Tragedy") and to the Rutger's
Seventeenth Anniversary Celebration, 1941, which appeared
shortly thereafter in the New York Times. Often the
addresses were later included in his published plays as
prefaces. As Allan G. Halline suggests, however, the
theorizing came after the creative work rather than before
it, and was, to an extent, a description as well as a

6

theory. In using the descriptive/analytical approach, as

 

 

in certain of t‘:

 

to hristotle' s 1

the single law

 

lrderson in his
PuilOSOPhical s
miverse, man,
the destiny Of
Andersc
consistent in 1

Simple 0r Sin'

“meme is t

71

in certain of the basic ideas, Anderson's essays look often
to Aristotle's Poetics. He found in Aristotle's anagnorisis
the single law of play construction. But as important to
Anderson in his essays as the problems of construction, were
philosophical statements concerning the nature of the
universe, man, and the theatre's function in helping achieve
the destiny of man.

Anderson's vision of the universe is amazingly
consistent in both his discursive and creative work, thereby
giving grounds for various critics' comments that Ander-
sonian plays were cut to a formula. The vision is not a
simple or single one. The dominant characteristic of the
universe is that of utter mystery. In the Carnegie Founder's
Day Address ("Whatever Hope We Have"), he puts it this way:
”The human race . . . finds itself embarked on a curious
voyage among the stars, riding a planet which must have set
out from somewhere, but which was cut adrift so long ago
that its origin is a matter of speculation and its future
beyond prophecy."7 One notices first the similarity in
meaning to Esdras's final speech in Winterset, and in

meaning and language to d'Alcala's musings near the end of

33y Largo .

We're all alone
here on the surface of a turning sphere
Where this voyage started
we don't know, nor where it will end, nor whether
it has a meaning, nor whether there is good
or evil, whether man has a destiny
or happened here by chemical accident--
all this we never know.8

 

More in
expression are
auniverse that
universe has me
of hunan unders
aindiess, cosmi
man must exists

meaning and sit

 

huran emotion I
the universe' 5
recognition th
exist, the ind
heshins of his

5 lons . I

:1mm? and pe
at
maaracters' e:

83c
.gest a Par;

Sid
e of despa

read ‘
v Signifi

‘
l

3‘ r» .

But t

72

More important than the consistency of imagery and
expression are the concepts involved. Anderson is positing
a universe that is unknown and unknowable to man. If that
universe has meaning and patterns, they are beyond the ken
of human understanding. Man plays out his life before a
mindless, cosmic void. It is in the face of this void that
man must existentially create his life, originate possible
meaning and significance. Truth, or essence, occurs when
human emotion and intellect coalesce in a recognition of
the universe's apparent pointlessness, and in the further
recognition that because no external touchstones or rules
exist, the individual is responsible for the sum value and
meaning of his being. After the recognition comes the
decisions in which the individual now consciously creates
meaning and personal significance. Anderson's plays and
characters, especially King McCloud of 52y_22£gg seem to
suggest a paraphrase of Sartre's "life begins on the other
side of despair." In Anderson's work the sentence would
read, significant life begins on the other side of agonized
anagnorisis.

But the language of d'Alcala's passage suggests
qualifications and even apparent contradictions to its
view of a directionless universe. Man exists in a gigantic
mystery, yet he is "riding a planet,” and is on a "voyage."
The word "voyage" implies some kind of terminal at the end

of the journey, some planned destiny. And so, held in

‘.. .-

 

 

   
  
  
   
 
 
  

tension with th
inderson‘s visi
kind of cosmic
does not exist-
in the world vi
that it does.
insisted, deSp'

they had a des

73

tension with the meaningless blank that constitutes
Anderson's vision is the paradoxical possibility of some
kind of cosmic purpose, some cosmic destination. Maybe it
does not exist--but possibly it does. The important thing
in the world view presented is that man racially suspects
that it does. "From the beginning of our story, men have
insisted, despite the darkness and silence about them, that
they had a destiny to fulfill--that they were part of a
gigantic scheme which was understood somewhere, though they
themselves might never understand it. There were no proofs

of this."9

After he has said that there are no proofs, the
gigantic scheme or destiny seems accepted as an absolute
reality. The proofs of the possible pre-existent universal
significance lay in human faith.

Men racially suspect that the universe has a
beneficent tendency. The cosmic destiny is the triumph of

good.10

Candle i2.E§2.fli2§ ends with the heroine, Madeline
Guest, confronting Nazi Colonel Erfurt. "We shall expect
you and be ready for you," she tells him. "In the history
of the world, there have been many wars between men and
beasts. The beasts have always lost, and men have won."11
There can be no doubt that we are to accept this Statement
as more than the romantic, wishful thinking of a brave and
sorely tried woman. It is the affirmation of the play. In
figy'ggggg, d'Alcala, the raisoneur, old man figure who find

his way into several Anderson dramas, asserts a similar

faith in universal control and pattern.

 

 

it we
the other
who can e
and think

Ultim.
beneficent te;
racial faith a
to $1mpect aft
1935's Winter:
is “°t import:
finallY: Conce
quality of 1i!
honor, dignity
whethel. Or not
with its COrrc

expressed by c

5a;

961‘ to the

 

 

74

it won't end in the dark. Our destiny's
the other way. There'll be a race of men
who can even face the stars without despair,
and think without going mad (p. 114).

Ultimately one cannot be entirely sure whether the
beneficent tendency of the universe is actual or only a
racial faith and collective desire. And the reader begins
to suspect after reading the critical work and plays from
1935's Winterset through Sgggm Operation that the question
is not important. Anderson and his characters are not,
finally, concerned with truth; they are concerned with the
quality of life here and now. They want to live a life with
honor, dignity, and a sense or impression of meaning,
whether or not that meaning actually exists. Thus science,
with its corrosive materialism in which all truth must be
expressed by observable facts or proofs, is a potential
danger to the good human life. Life based upon a scientific/
materialistic vision is a life where decisions are based
upon non-human considerations like money, power, disinter-
ested scientific research and discoveries. Decisions so
based can lead to the abuse of human life and its energies.

In the Preface to Journey £2 Jerusalem, 1940,
Anderson equates Hitler with the scientific/materialistic
world view. In the piece finally appearing as Preface to
Candle i2_£§g Wigg he notes the inadequacy of science,
which denying the old faiths and affirming only what it can
see and hold, cannot deal with all the phenomena of the

world-~including the irrational and unseen but very real

 

 

  
   
  
  

evil that exiSf
eyes to snokinr}
hon nen would ‘
was no more be
short, inadequ:
recognize the <
deprativities

Anders
maior dilemma
contemporary
man must try
of meaning .

way': “BeCa.

lzieanimSless
reldtl‘va.

+ .

‘IALHEd hi
See the Ur

me
rely WQ]

7S

evil that exists. "We [of the scientific '205] closed our
eyes to smoking volcanoes of malignity, wondering foolishly
how men would adjust themselves to a world in which there
was no more hell fire" (p. v). The scientific view was, in
short, inadequate because it did not, despite Freud,
recognize the depths of the psychic needs and the psychic
deprativities and glories of the animal, man.

Anderson's work tries, then, to confront one of the
major dilemmas of modern man. Nearly all events and
contemporary attitudes point to a meaningless world, yet
man must try to survive and make a life with some semblance
of meaning. Joseph Wood Krutch defines the dilemma this
way: "Because man is man, he cannot comfortable inhabit a
meaningless universe in which good and evil are merely
relative. Because he is modern man, he has nevertheless
trained himself to think in ways which inevitably make him
see the universe as meaningless and 'right' and 'wrong' as

merely words."12 In the tragedies from Winterset on, and

 

in the three plays written during the war, the constant
theme is how one finds meaning, honor, and sustenance
through a Kierkegardian leap of faith or a Camus-like
commitment made after an experience of absurdity. The
faith Anderson calls for is not necessarily a religious
faith, though it may be, as the Preface to Journey to
Jerusalem makes clear. "The only sources of human dignity
and respect for the individual are the great arts, such as

poetry, and the great religious, such as Christianity.

 

 

These are the
despair."l3
something. “
stars of beli
we find that
Lessee er I";
neither man n
And in the re
lies the func
In An
creators of f
significance
Mtaphol. in h

Church and th

 

76

These are the only bulwarks the race has ever had against

13 The important thing is that a man, believe in

despair."
something. "Even in our disillusioned era, when the fixed
stars of belief fall from our sky like a rain of meteors,

we find that men cling to what central verities Ehgy_gan
rescue g£_manufacture, because without a core of belief
neither man nor nation has courage to go on"14 (my emphasis).
And in the rescuing or manufacturing of verities and faith
lies the function of the theatre for Anderson.

In Anderson's view the theatre was one of the
creators of faith and meaning and the human sense of
significance that derives from such faith. Anderson's
metaphor in his critical writings is that the theatre is a
church and the worship is the affirmation of human impor-
tance and meaning. He elaborates the function in the
Preface to Candle ig’ghg,fligd. "There is no doubt in my
mind," he writes, "that our theatre . . . is as much of a
worship as the theatre of the Greeks, and has exactly the
same meaning in our lives" (pp. x-xi). Like the Greek
theatre, the articles of faith in the Anderson church/
theatre are essentially humanistic. "The purpose of the
theatre is to find, and hold up to our regard, what is
admirable in the human race. . . . The theatre is a
religious institution devoted entirely to the exaltation
of the spirit of man. . . . It is an attempt to prove that

man has a dignity and a destiny, that his life is worth

 

 

living, that
(p. x).

More
as a divided
one sees the
learning and
0f play cons
nan rejeCts
Of his naturi
triumph in t}

spiritual sit

 

 

77

living, that he is not purely animal and without purpose"
(9. x) .

More specifically the articles of faith posit man
as a divided creature--part animal, part god. In tragedy
one sees the god in man struggling and suffering, but
learning and improving. Anderson felt the single essential
of play construction to be the recognition scene. In it
man rejects the fault, or possibly the materialistic side
of his nature, and the godlike triumphs, even though it may
triumph in the apparent defeat of tragic catastrophe. The
spiritual side of man is displayed to the audience. "From
the point of view of the playwright, the essence of a
tragedy, or even of a serious play, is the spiritual

15 The serious

awakening, or regeneration, of his hero."
drama, then, is a ritualistic presentation of man beset by
the world, and man's transcending of both the besetting
problems and his own nature. The image is of man evolving
toward a higher, better state. Indeed, such a higher,
better state is the promise the ritual-plays of Anderson's
religion/theatre hold out to its audience. "The theatre
is much older than the theory of evolution, but its one
faith, aseverated again and again for every age and every
year, is a faith in evolution, in the reaching and the
climb of man toward distant horizon."16
So the Andersonian conflict is defined. The
paradigm for the conflict is certainly found in Egy_§2£gg.

(1939). The play is, in the words of Edward Foster, "The

 

 

fullest emboc
tragedy and c
lization."17
options open
with Loyalis1
the apparent
Prologue he '-
forces in or:
is apparent .
advancing fa:
£8110" 1OYal.
1'10 differeno
i8 aSSUred.

Hadeline Cue:

the animals ]

deSpair an d I

 

78

‘

fullest embodiment of the dramatist's conception of poetic
tragedy and of his faith in the values of Western Civi-

17 In the play, King McCloud takes the two

lization."
options open to man. Leader of a band of men fighting

with Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, McCloud discovers
the apparent dominance of evil and treachery. In the
Prologue he and his band are to be left behind by loyalist
forces in order to cover them as they make a retreat. It
is apparent that all in the band will be killed by
advancing fascists, that the band is being betrayed by
fellow loyalists, and further that their heroism has made
no difference and will make no difference; Franco's victory
is assured. This is the war between men and beasts that
Madeline Guest mentions, but it seems here, at least, to

the animals belongs the victory. McCloud's reaction is

despair and cynicism:

Franco will win in Spain, they'll see to that--

but if he didn't, Stalin would win in Spain,

and it's one blood purge or the other, but never justice,
only the rat-men ratting on each other

in a kind of rat despair.--I tell you it was a dream,

all a dream we had, in a dream world,

of brother who put out a helping hand

to brother, and might save them (p. 22).

He will not sacrifice his life for a lost cause.

Victor d'Alcala provides the opposing view in the
Prologue, and so within the Prologue Anderson presents the
moral dilemma of the play. To McCloud's despair at men and

at universal amorality Victor answers.

then I kn
then I'll
of men, b
more than
Urnoved by Vi

ten to the dy

belief in rig

 

might call me
He joined, he

Would not ki]

Something

I was wi]

if I coo]
ate dig
Damnation in

war. Withou

tendenCies' ]
logo, in anx

'

 

79

If I die
then I know men will never give in;
then I'll know there's something in the race
of men, because even I had it, that hates injustice
more than it wants to live (p. 23).

Unmoved by Victor's speech, McCloud leaves the mountain and
men to the dying cause, and devoid now of purpose and of
belief in right or wrong, with no values but those Anderson
might call materialistic ones, he joins Franco's forces.
He joined, he later explains to Victor's sister, so they
would not kill him.

Something broke inside me. My nerve maybe.

I was willing to eat dirt and be damned.

if I could live.

I ate dirt, and I'm damned (p. 63).
Damnation in an Anderson play is being forced to live in
fear, without faith in any universal order and beneficent
tendencies, but even more importantly in Sartrian anguish,
i.g., in anxiety over the implications of one's action and
one's cowardice in facing up to the responsibility to self
and others. McCloud is forced to wander the earth,
visiting the families of each of the men he deserted,
telling the story of their deaths, and obviously seeking a
kind of confession and expiation which will bring him
peace. His final visit is to the father and sister of
Victor, the spokesman for the alternative position in the
play, that of Andersonian faith. It was from his father
that Victor got his faith and courage for self-sacrifice.

D'Alcala himself had earlier fought in Spain for freedom,

 

and had sac:
structurally
debate the r
The internat
<3 ogsters/q
the general
corrupt she]
0f QUilt, d;
dated by Mu:
Alcala's fa;

D'Alcala:

 

 

80

and had sacrificed his eyes to the unsuccessful cause. So
structurally the play proper mirrors in more detail and
debate the moral dilemmas and problems of the Prologue.
The international tyrants are transformed into a band of
gangsters/tyrants who have taken over d'Alcala's notel, and
the general corruption of the world is suggested by the
corrupt sherrif. The debate between McCloud's position
of guilt, despair, and acquiesence to evil (he is intimi-
dated by Murillo as he was by Franco's forces) and d'
Alcala's faith proceeds with d'Alcala as raisonneur.
D'Alcala:
Yet to take this dust

and water and our range of appetities

and build them toward some vision of a god

of beauty and unselfishness and truth--

could we ask better of the-mud we are

than to accept the challenge, and look up
and search for god-head? If its true we came

from the sin-water. . . .

we've come a long way:
so far there's no predicting what we'll be
before we end (p. 112).

McCloud is forced to hear the terms of his moral
and spiritual failure from this priest. First he hears of
his failure of faith and then is given a chance to save
himself. He must choose to let two Indians take the blame
for a murder Murillo committed, or take it upon himself.
It is another choice where the issue is self-sacrifice
without apparent significant issue. Whatever McCloud
chooses Murillo goes free and evil triumphs. His choice

then is to kill Murillo, knowing he will provoke one of the

 

>---——« ‘w———

gangsters to s

not quite Clea

and final exp:I

 

experienced ir

I
and for the m;
'0 die sitting
have been Sym‘:

0f liberty .

 

They
they bur“,
with his

erY SEnQ

MCCloud also

aPParently h .

d'Alcala and

'w
““983,

 

 

81

gangsters to shoot him. The necessity of his own death is

not quite clear, except that it provides ultimate penance
and final expiration. It is the death he should have
experienced in Spain. He provides a final image for himself
and for the man of faith and integrity in-general. He asks
to die sitting up, as an Indian, for Indians in the play
have been symbols of resistence to corruption and as lovers

of liberty.

They say when they bury an Indian
they bury him seated upright in his grave
with his weapons around him. That's very sensible.
Very sensible.. (p. 125).

McCloud also becomes a resistor of corruption, a combatant,
apparently having learned some of the faith of Victor
d'Alcala and his father. He has recognized his Spiritual
illness, made a decision and is ennobled and regenerated,

though only through death.

it's more enviable . . .
to fight where you can win, in a narrow room,
and to win, dying (p. 124).

In addition to providing a model of the moral
action and the thought of Anderson's dramas, Egy’gaggg is
also significant in being the playwright's first to deal
specifically with the fascist menace in Europe. It would
seem to suggest itself as the model for the war plays.
There are certain adjustments of perspective that must

occur before Anderson is ready to write these later plays,

 

'7'

7“.“

however.
the mount
Philippin
But K_ey_ E
malaise.
though brl
basically
faith and
Effective
Vague, thc
moved from
racial. I
Vanzetti a.
never reSo:
Clearing tr
from his 91.]
responsible
M E5 tn.

explohatioz

 

82

however. In some ways, Victor d'Alcala's speeches upon

the mountain in Spain are nearly those of Quizz West on a

Philippine Island in the 1942 play, EEE.§XE.2£.§E3 M235,
But §§y_§g£gg_quickly shifts to King McCloud's spiritual
malaise. The play is one of personal pilgrimage, and
though broader implications may be inferred,18 it remains
basically the story of the recovery of an individual's
faith and of how that recovered faith permits him to take
effective action. Social and political symbolism remains
vague, though suggestive. Anderson quite consistently
moved from social implication to personal and generic, or
racial. In Winterset, a play roughly based on the Sacco-
Vanzetti affair, questions of social justice are raised but
never resolved. Instead Mio, seeking justice by at least
clearing the name of his unjustly convicted father, turns
from his quest because of love. He forgives those
responsible for his father's conviction and death. In
£233.225 the protagonist is upset and perplexed by the
exploitation of the earth almost inherent in an industrial
society whose primary values are money, expansion, and
”progress." Yet this same Van Van Dorn can take no
effective action, and the play ends with his selling his
cherished land to developers and going to that haven of
individualism and freedom, the American West. He evasively

philosophizes:

When they wash over you, you either swim
or drown. We won't be here.

 

l
to conder
most Ande
tendency
Stickines
by moving
become ba
Block, "t;
out Of the
Escape the
rather the
inner Com;
defined in
his faith,
organizati‘

bEIOnged t(

83

Marxist critics, as one would expect, were quick
to condemn the evasions of social responsibility evident in

most Anderson plays. In her The Changing World in Plays

 

and Theatre leftist critic, Anita Block notes Anderson's
tendency through 1939 to recognize the reality and
stickiness of social problems, but to evade these problems
by moving from them to individuals. The social problems
become background. "We have in Ei32.22£1" writes Miss
Block, "the picture of a genuine personal dilemma arising
out of the social conflict, resolved in terms of individual
escape that is not only blind but spurious. Anything
rather than life as it is seems to the tune of Anderson's

20 For Anderson in 1938-39 life was not

inner compulsion."
defined in social terms, but in terms of the individual,
his faith, and his relation to ultimate destiny. Social
organizations and dysfunctions were secondary. They
belonged to that realm of journalistic comment play that
Anderson was seeking to transcend in his poetic tragedy.21
An Andersonian character does represent more than a unique
individual, but he is not a symbol for a class or a victim
of fascist aggression. The Andersonian hero is generic or
racial man--he is the free human ego confronting the
threats of an indifferent or hostile world. His victory
in defeat is man's.

Anderson's vision of an anarchic ego may have

seemed flippant in this time when the individual ego was

quite powerless to combat rampant, internationally

ii
. 1‘ - 1.1 “r

 

 

 

organized evi
based on this

Joseph Wood K

 

the very form
mPOrtance of
upon aSSumptj
importance 0‘.
below the an
for his CW“

The
Possible f0!
an approprie
demands See;
the indivim

SignifiCant.‘

 

 

84

organized evil. Anderson's entire dramatic theory was
based on this vision, however, as perhaps it must have been.

Joseph Wood Krutch notes in Modernism i2_Modern Drama that

 

the very form of tragedy demands recognition of the
importance of the individual. "Conventional tragedy rests
upon assumptions concerning the reality of ego, the supreme
importance of man in a universe where he is only a little
below the angels, and the responsibility of the individual
for his own conduct."22
The individual/cosmic focus might be the only one
possible for the construction of tragic drama, but was it
an appropriate one for drama in a war period when social
demands seemed so much more insistent, when the freedom of
the individual ego seemed irrelevant and its power in-
significant? Anderson had maintained his individualistic,
tragic hero throughout even the socially collectivizing
decade of the thirties. For Anderson and his heroes,
collectivized life degraded man by diminishing freedom and
range of choice. Collectivized life struck Anderson as
inherently sordid. Power and government were corrupt in
nature and corrupting in their influence. So his heroes
reject social responsibility and its dilemmas, to wit Van
Van Dorn. In the 1937 play, The Masque of Eiggg, Rudolph
of Hapsburg commits suicide rather than face the almost
certain frustration of trying to reform government. But,
though Anderson still focuses on the man King McCloud in

1939 as a universal pilgraim beset by doubts of personal

 

and cosmic va
social signif
cates a Subtl
The c
iUSt before 1
in T429. Sig-9,33
change in A1:
'thirties Vi:
insis'fient.
have bee“ i
dissent. .
win “0 do
3150 in '1‘}-
Change in
crudely A:

or Sell a:

the 'infi

85

and cosmic value and meaning, the fact that there is some
social significance in his killing of the gangster indi-
cates a subtle change in Anderson's direction.

The critics observing Anderson's work in the period
just before the war felt the shift. Vincent Wall predicted
in The Sewanee Review in summer, 1941, an as yet undefined
change in Anderson's work. "Anderson's theatre of the
'thirties was written before the European danger was so
insistent. . . . Some of Anderson's observations seem to
have been intended for a cycle of American life already far
distant. Certainly the Anderson theatre of the 'forties

will no doubt have a different note."23

Shortly thereafter,
also in The Sewanee Review, Edward Foster spoke of the
change in Anderson. "He has gradually moved beyond the
crudely American conception of freedom as license to buy

or sell anything at a profit to an Emersonian vision of

24 Wall felt that

the 'infinitude of the private man.'"
Anderson would move to an even more intense mysticism, as
apparently did Foster. From our more distant vantage point,
we see that Anderson did make adjustments to world facts

in his attitudes and dramas, but not in the direction of
deeper mystical faith (by which I assume is meant a greater
emphasis upon the individual character's emotional experi-
ence of faith in the potentiality of man and in the course
of universal progress).

Anderson was faced consciously or unconsciously

with two dilemmas in his attitudes and dramas as World War

 

dawned:
focus fr<
Anderson
he had l<
attending
students
an editor
his radic.
eJ'IPlicitll
is to rep:
tunit)" for
W.
tends to e‘

0r commit s

86

dawned: what to do with his pacifism, and how to alter
focus from personal to social or communal in his plays.
Anderson had been a militant pacifist. During World War I
he had lost his teaching post at Whittier College for
attending pacifist rallies and for outspokenly urging his
students to do the same. He shortly thereafter also lost
an editorial writing job on the San Franciso Chronicle for
his radical views. Though HEEE.E££ES.§$2£X? is not
explicitly a pacifist propaganda piece, its obvious intent
is to represent war as something other than a rich oppor-
tunity for excitement and honor. Even until Mio of
Winterset, Van Van Dorn, and Rudolph, the Andersonian hero
tends to evade violent confrontation, to forgive, to run,
or commit suicide rather than take up arms against a sea
of troubles.25
But a definite change was occurring, and 1938 seems
to have been the year of shift. In his radio play, "Second
Overture," performed over WEAP on January 29, 1938, the
apparent raisonneur speaks for rather mystical, pacifistic
change. The scene is the Russian revolution, and several
prisoners are awaiting execution. Gregor, a radical who
had been imprisoned by the Czar and is now held by the
Bolsheviks, feels despite his imprisonment that the
revolution is basically right and good and will end
arbitrary power and insure civil liberties. He fails to
recognize the virulent nature of violence, even of that

violence supposedly used in the service of good ends.

 

I
V

.
' ‘

 

Greg

K5
’“fl
r-O

rele

' l
0"
' .
O . ‘

87

Gregor knows the commissar who is to order the execution
of the prisons, and he urges the commissar, Charash, to
release them and bring social change through vague, non-

violent means.

Justice--
to attain justice you revoke all justice--
to attain mercy you repudiate
the principle of mercy.--Blood will breed murder,
murder breed blood--the evil means we use
for a good end, will bring down only more evil
and curses at the end.2

Later he tells Charash that it is

Better to lose
than to lose your faith (p. 21).

Such an underlying attitude permeates Winterset and is
still felt to lesser extent in Key Laggg. But by November
of 1938, Anderson's pacifism is in eclipse. During that
year he voiced his anti-fascist feeling in a curtain speech
after a special performance of Knickerbocker Holiday
benefitting German refugees. Anderson charged Hitler with
dragging his nation to a new low of depravity by inciting
mob violence against innocent minorities and by "loading
700,000 Jews with impossible penalties. . . ."27

In 1939 King McCloud keeps his faith, is spiritually
regenerated, but the regeneration has necessitated murder
of a gangster. In 1941 Anderson's son, Quentin, delivered
his father's paper, "The Basis of Artistic Creation in

Literature," at a symposium commemorating the 175th

anniversary of Rutgers University. In the comments

 

‘,v-r

rubh

art-Ii
ads-1'95! .
1s

:15

ic‘e

50:1

 

88

Anderson struck out against such isolationists as the
Lindberghs and Senator Burton K. Wheeler, and explicitly
condemned those who would not fight, in drama and in real
life. "Not only evil," he said, "but those who will not
fight evil are hated on the stage." And the one-time
pacifist went on to make what almost appeared to be a
threat. "That which is considered despicable on stage will
also be held despicable in real life."28
Anderson became so committed to the war effort that
he began to write radio plays that made no pretense of
being much more than propaganda. He joined that rather
distinguished group of American writers "devoted to the
ideals of American democracy," The Free Company. Ander-
son's contribution to the group's series of radio dramas
was a play starring Paul Muni and featuring Burgess
Meredith as narrator. It was titled The Miracle 2£_Ehg_
Danube, and it concerned a fascist officer torn between his
desire to serve the state and his impulses to compassion
and humanity. Anderson's other propaganda play, ”Your
Navy,” was written for a radio series produced in cooper-
ation with the U. 8. government and the four radio networks.
It was directed by the war's leading radio propagandist,
Norman Corwin, and its purpose was simply to reassure the
public that the American navy was still strong and on guard
for their freedom.29 The broadcasts took place starting in
February, 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor when such

reassurances seemed necessary.

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89

Finally, by 1942 the pacifist in Anderson was long
since dead and buried, and the new Anderson started appeal-
ing for militancy as stirringly as a Pentagon general.
Writing in the Sunday New York Times Magazine Anderson
employed the rhetoric of warning to spark resolution and
cooperation in the hearts of his readers.

It is now our grim business to pitch into this war as
if we were England or Poland, as if our streets had run
with blood and our countryside been plowed under by
tanks and shells. For if we don't pitch in in just
that fasion, it is not certain at all that this war can
be won. If we don't waive all civilian reluctances and
peace-time privileges and fight voluntarily as the
English must now fight, because they must, we may yet
have to watch invaders parading down our own streets. 0

This 1942 New York Times Magazine article and the
Norman Corwin radio play is apparently Anderson's last
direct efforts at propaganda for the duration. He became
active in civil defense, but most of his energies were
devoted to composing the three full-length plays written
between 1941-1945 (plus the post-war Truckline Cafe
composed probably during 1945). But that he had been
transformed from pacifist to dedicated war hawk was
obvious.

Mabel Driscoll Bailey in her study, Maxwell
Anderson, The Playwright gngrophet gives one explanation
for the transformation. "Of course, the playwright's
precipitous reversal of opinion was not an isolated

phenomenon. His plays reflect the attitude of the public

for which they were written. That there was some sense of

faill

perve

beinc

90

failure is apparent in the note of wistfulness which
pervades the war plays. We went sadly into war. But
being in it, the need to make life justify itself was once

31 There may be something to Miss Bailey's

more urgent."
remarks, but they do raise questions about the much touted
integrity of Maxwell Anderson, that champion of pacifism in
World War I, proponent of exalted, aloof drama. It will

be valuable to look more closely at some of the plays and
critical statements of 1937-1941. In them it is possible
to trace Anderson's growing recognition of a threat in
Hitler and his allies so terrible that he could with
philosophic integrity advocate war to combat it. The plays
show the playwright adjusting and subtly transforming the
premises and views of his pre-war plays in response to
historical realities.

Anderson's cynicism about government in general
derived from his view of its corruption, its corruption,
its service to those who could pay, its materialism and
lack of vision or faith. His feelings about totalitarian
government had, however, a more philosophic base. Anderson
posited a moral dialectic in man between the godlike and
the beast, "the ancient, belly-foot beast from which we
came, which is strong within us yet, and tries to drag us
down,” as d'Alcala puts it in 531.23532. Each man must
participate in this dialectic of forces within him. The
plays to and including Key Largo depict the dialectic

primarily in personal terms. The danger for the individual

91

is that he will lose faith in the god-like element and
potential within himself and the race, and being faithless
will have no will to fight against the beast. Thus the
beast assumes power and control by default. This is what
happens to King McCloud, and until his final resurgance of
faith he can be easily bossed by Murillo. The glory of man
is overcoming of the beast and having assurance in the god-
element. Man must be allowed to experience the struggle

and make the right choice in freedom. In Candle in the Wind

 

Anderson makes his ultimate indictment of Naziism. It does
not allow the individual ego the freedom to participate in
the moral dialectic that makes man man.

In Act 1, scene ii, Anderson presents a kind of
catechism between Lieutenant Schoen and Corporal Behrens,
Germans assigned to a prison in occupied France. Both are
representatives of a generation raised under totalitarian
doctrine and are supposedly immune to the moral dialectic.
The doubts and uncertainties that are to plague Lieutenant

Schoen are as yet not apparent.

Schoen: If you discovered that the state had made an
error, would you report it to the proper authorities?
Behrens: It is impossible, sir, that the state has
made an error. In any conflict between the state and
the individual, the state is right and the individual
is wrong.

Schoen: But suppose God whispers in a man's heart,
and tells him truth, so that he is right and the state
is mistaken?

Behrens: It is impossible, sir. There is no God
except the state, and the state carries out our
Fuehrer' s will.

 

 

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92

Schoen: But suppose, for example, that you are right,
and I am wrong?

Behrens: It is impossible, sir, because the state has
set you above me in authority (pp. 32-33).

The possibility of human grandeur and goodness lies
within the individual, and in the Nazi system the individual
is negated. Schoen, who is the only character in the play
who is not static, grows to realize this and to recognize
the safeguards the Nazi state has taken to prevent the
individual from ever being really alone and free. He
comments cautiously, in characteristic Andersonian imagery,
to the head of the prison who is the play's embodiment of
Nazism, Colonel Erfurt.

Schoen: It seems to be the heart of our system that
no man works alone. We hunt in pairs, or run in pack.
One man alone is dangerous.

Erfurt: You mean to say that no man is given complete
responsibility.

Schoen: I have not said that. I have said that two
men together are found more dependable than one alone
(p. 68).

The system has so carefully collectivized people
that even when the moral dialectic goes on in a man, he
stifles the impulses and remains a machine controlled by
the beasts inside and outside who have at least temporarily
seized power. Madeline Guest perceives a sympathy in
Schoen for her attempts to free from the prison her lover,
the anti-Nazi editorialist Raoul St. Cloud. She notes a

"look" on his face and tears in his eyes that signal a

repressed hatred for the Nazi world. But Schoen demands

 

 

‘- “ ‘w—ODe-ru- Wm r- .

93

that Madeline not deceive herself. She must recognize the
power of totalitarian conditioning to effectively negate
the power of sympathy and compassion. "I have seen tears
in [Col.] Erfurt's eyes when a man lay dying," he tells
her. "And he let the man die. You must not depend on our
tears" (p. 93).

This, then, was the basis for Anderson's movement
from pacifism to a call for actual armed struggle against
the enemy. The enemy threatened to destroy the very
source of goodness in the world, the personal moral dia-
lectic. Such a threat, Anderson became convinced, must be
met straight on. The more or less mystical pacifism of
Gregor in ”Second Overture" was rejected. Force must meet
force- The shift to militancy did not obscure other
Andersonian precepts that remain even after the playwright
adjusted his attitude concerning the combatting of evil.
Theatre was still not to become a mere propaganda organ:
it still had a religious function to fulfil. It still must
present the dialectic at work and the good ultimately
triumphing. In Candle $2.EES.EEBQ Lieutenant Schoen
displays the dialectic at work and the victory of good.

It is perhaps a weakness of the play that this significant
character's psychological turmoil which is the only element
to raise the play above melodrama, occurs offstage.//We do
not see Schoen's dialectic as we do King McCloud's. We
have only his statement that the beast and man in him have

struggled and the good has begun to dictate his actions.

94

He helps Raoul St. Cloud to escape from the prison at great
danger to his own position. He will fight the Nazi system.
"You must not worry about me," he tells Madeline after he
had effected the escape, "I have my own private war to
fight. But, however it goes, not everything is lost. For
I am a soldier against what I hate, and it's good to fight
alone" (p. 104).

Significant in this speech is Schoen's acceptance
of his internal and external struggle, his faith that
enables him to fight though defeat is a real possibility,
and his sense that fighting as an individual is a good
thing. The Andersonian individualism is apparent. This
individualism in the 1941 play Candle in EEE.§£2§.13 a
little surprising for it seemed that Anderson had been
working to find an acceptable formula for making individual
faith communal, and personal sacrifice communally effective.
The search for such a pattern is hinted crudely in Key.
Laggg.where McCloud's death buys his own regeneration but
also helps the society by ridding it of Murillo and keeping
the innocent Indians from being punished. It was in the
unsuccessful Journey Eg’Jerusalem, 1940, that Anderson
seemed to find the pattern that made personal faith and
sacrifice communal. The play opened on October S, 1940 at
the National Theatre and lasted only seven performances;
apparently audiences and critics were not moved by the
rather static story of Jesus's experience with the elders

in the Jerusalem temple and his discovery of messianic

 

 

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mission. But for an investigation of Anderson's philosophic
and esthetic adjustments to war, the play is crucial. Its
Preface attempts to state explicitly the requisites for
defeating Hitler, and in the play he is able to forge a
synthesis between the anarchic ego, individual sacrifice,
and communal salvation.

In order to combat a Hitler,ythe Preface declares,
faith in man's ability to overcome human brutality is
needed. Without such belief there is despair and acqui-
escence to might makes right morality. Each man develops
his assurance from "his own flashes of revelation, and
Christianity has been the strongest influence supporting
individual dignity and freedom to respond to revelation"
(p. vi). Somehow these individual faiths must add up to a
national faith--a kind of collective sense that good will
certainly triumph. "A Hitler is only possible in a
despairing nation, a nation of men who have lost faith in
their dignity and destiny. . . . Opposition to Hitler is
only possible in a nation which retains or can recapture a
belief that there are values beyond those of a materialist"
(p. v). All this is vague enough and no real advance from
earlier statements. The play itself, however, provides
both restatement of and dramatic symbols for the ideas.

The manner in which individual faiths in combi-
nation somehow endow a social unit with strength is given
poetic declaration when, near the end of the play, Jeshuah

reads from the book of Enoch.

the

 

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96

A city is but the outer hull, or garment,
of the faith which dwells within. . . .
When they cease to believe

only a little while, the high roofs take rain,
and the walls sink to the moat. There once was a city
whose walls were destroyed by music blown against them,
but the walls of every city are held foursquare in the

sun
by a people's secret singing (pp. 105-106).

Metaphorical and mystical, the statement does little to
clarify the content of belief. Instead it calls for a
faith in faith. It is in the character of Jeshuah (Jesus)
that there appears a somewhat clearer picture of what a
person must do to save his city.

The play concerns Joseph and Mary's trip with
Jesus to Jerusalem for a census called by Herod. The World
War II political situation is suggested by the presence of
Roman tyrants and the guerillas in the hills who oppose
them. Ishmael is spokesman for the guerilla-robbers and
represents the man who is enabled by a passionately held
vision to oppose tyranny. His faith is in a messiah who
is to conquer the Romans. He recognizes Joshuah as that
messiah. In an interview in Jerusalem, Ishmael confirms
to Jeshuah the identity and mission that Jeshuah has
already suspected and dreamed about. Ishmael tries to make
it clear that the mission of the messiah is a bitter one
that entails suffering, but from the suffering that Jeshuah
endures, men will be turned toward the right. The messiah
is to allow the moral dialectic to arise within him, then
by exemplifying the triumph of good, guide men to good and

to fighting what is evil.

out

97

Ishmael: The Messiah is sent to hunt out wisdom and
truth,

to speak this wisdom and truth in love to those

who need his love, and in bitterness to those

who have earned bitterness. And in the end

for this love and bitterness with which he speaks

he will become a symbol of those who are guiltless--

and those who are guilty, seeing in him this symbol,

will turn and destroy him. He will suffer for them

and conquer them in their hearts (p. 81).

What Anderson finally suggests in the figure of
Jeshuah is a symbol of man, not superman. In the Preface
he declares that "This story of the child of God in the
court of the Sanhedrin, finding His way to the meaning of
the universe as He walks alone among the columns--this
appeared to me the perfect symbol of the soul of man
searching for its own meaning" (pp. vii-viii). In playing
out its own meaning, the soul can be socially effective.
When Jeshuah tells Miriam (Mary) of the messiah's sacrifice,
he emphasizes the instructive and converting value it will
have and its ultimate power to alter evil.
Yes
Mother, it [the personal sacrifice] has a meaning. Its
meaning is
that the death of the innocent will work in the hearts
of those who murder them, till the murderers

are sorry, and have changed, and never again
take life unjustly! (p. 103).

The statement suggests a lingering pacifism, but
that pacifistic element is cancelled out a moment later

when he calls for a faith that leads to militancy.

98

Our help must come
from within, from our hearts, from those who are
willing to die
rather than accept injustice (p. 103).
The most important thing in the speech, however, is

Jeshuah's acceptance of his own sacrifice and its effective-

ness against evil.

What Anderson is trying to do is to combine all his

earlier thought in a single dramatic symbol of a communally
effective savior. Christ fits his purposes, traditional
Christian theology giving Jesus's death the weight of
saving the entire community of men. Things do not always
rest perfectly together; the pacifist elements and the
militancy make uneasy bedmates. But his uneasiness is
inherent in the symbol as well as in Anderson's thinking.
Christianity has always encompassed both Christ as lamb and
as stormer of the temple. At any rate, the attempted
synthesis created in Journey £2 Jerusalem is carried
through in at least some of the later war plays. As will
be seen the heroes of the war plays become Christ figures
making personal sacrifices against evil and tyranny,
growing ever surer, as a play progresses, of their mission,
and effecting, however incompletely communal salvation by
their act of sacrifice.32
The most obvious use of Christ figures occurs in
"The Miracle of the Danube," a play appearing only a few

months after Journey Etherusalem. In it, Christ is used

as a potent inspirer of faith and good works. German

99

officer Cassell is assigned to kill the intelligent, the
writers and artists, the leaders of enemies of the state.
So eager is he to serve the state and the beast within him
that he becomes known as the "Grim Reaper." Nevertheless,
as later in Schoen, the god-impulse and faith lingers and
brings to him at various times visions of the Giotti
Christ. Under the influence of this vision he sets several
prisoners loose, finally setting free an entire shipload

on the Rumanian frontier after seeing Christ walk on the
water. But in responding to the Christ, or god impulse,
Cassell becomes himself a kind of Christ, a man who lets
the good in him triumph, who tries to combat evil, and in
so doing meets certain death. Yet in that death there is
mystical triumph. The universe of benefience and right
becomes real and the world of evil an illusion. "In some
horrible way . . ." Cassell explains to his jailer, "he
[Christ] had become real--and he and I were real together
in a country of ghosts. . . . The armies, the men of
government, the men of the secret police, all the forces of
our nation were shadows that could not stop a wind!"

(pp. 15-16). The narrator comments at the end of the play:
”So Captain Cassell went to his death because his inner
spirit would not be denied. That death was one of triumph
and of comfort" (p. 18). The death is not radically
different from that of King McCloud except for the stronger
suggestions of Christ and the greater communal relevance

of Cassell's action.

100

The mode of the play, certainly a very minor play
in Anderson's canon, might be called sentimental, mystical

fantasy. The same strain recurs in The Eve of St. Mark

 

where the Christ figure, Quizz, appears in a vision dream
on the Eve of St. Mark to his mother and fiancé roughly
according to an old legend. He asks them if he should
remain voluntarily on a Philippine island to resist
Japanese advances even though staying will mean certain
death. He does remain, of course, after seeing in the
persons of his mother and loved one values worth dying for.
His sacrifice is for something Anderson leaves unstated, a
vague racial salvation, a sacrifice for the preservation of
gentle goodness and love.

In Mio, and to some extent in McCloud, sacrifice
brought personal regeneration. In Journey £2 Jerusalem
and the plays following, Anderson gives his heroes a
broader context and greater social relation. Though he
continues to exalt the individual faith and inner struggle,
the individual has now become a meaningful part of a
larger body and his personal sacrifice has greater signifi—
cance. The rather clear adoption of the Christ-figure in
the war period plays, the move toward mythic patterns of
sacrifice and communal regeneration was obviously a product
of Anderson's trying to forge a personal and dramaturgical
philosophy adequate to the emerging world situation.
Through adjustment he was able to reshape his ideas into

forms that sought to encompass and deal with the evils of

101

the Axis aggression, the death of men in battle, the seeming
triumph of the beast in the world. How good the plays were

that contained his new thought is another consideration.
Anderson's War Plays

Critics reviewing Anderson's career and achievement

seldom mention the three plays of World War II, Candle in

33

Operation, 1944. Anderson himself fails to mention them

in a review of his career appearing in the New York Times

in 1954.34

The critics, however, who do discuss the plays
find them to be generally inferior to those that came
before. It seems possible that Anderson simply had passed
beyond his creative zenith. No play after Key Laggg was
to be considered truly up to the standards of the plays of
the thirties. The decline may have demonstrated the
problems discussed by Atkinson and other relating to the
writing of drama during wartime. George Jean Nathan,
writing soon after the war, notes Anderson's falling off.
He attributes it to the impossibility of rendering satis-
factorily a war so gigantic and horrible in scope and
intensity. "In his bout with the late war, [Anderson] has
come out a bad second. . . . Like other of his buddies who
have put on the gloves in an attempt to subdue it to their

35 Nathan's

dramatic ends, he has not been equal to it."
remarks grow more acid as he comments on the individual

plays, for his failure was perhaps inevitable given the

102

task, but equally the result of personal short-comings of
craft.
Mabel Driscoll Bailey sees a failure of conception.
She suggesta that Anderson was unable to render with
adequate imaginative power his shifted focus, i.e., from
personal moral dialectic to the broader social, historical
context.
[Anderson] sees clearly, as few in our century have
seen, that "no man is fit to live who has not found
something for which he will gladly die." But he sees
this only as it applies to the moral crises of persons
in what are ordinarily thought of as their private
concerns. Either he does not perceive or is unwilling
to face its bearings upon the choice and actions of
men in their group desires and endeavors. Hence the
dramas of democracy [the war plays] lack the moral
grandeur of the great personal tragedies.36
On the other hand, Philip Stevenson, writing in
the New York Times in 1944 called Anderson America's most

37 Of course

successful projector of warfare on the stage."
the piece was a pre-opening herald for Sgggm.Qperation and
may have had elements of boosterism. Also on the credit
side was Anderson's continuing interest in dramaturgical
experimentation. He was the playwright who worked seriously
to bring poetry and poetic tragedy, historical and
contemporary, to the modern American stage. In the war
plays he continued to use different if not entirely new
modes. In Candle $2.E§E.E£2§.he tried to combine Ander-

sonian philosophy with melodrama. In Storm Operation he

attempted to write what he once scorned--journalistic

103

drama. And in his only really popular and critical success
topical drama and dominant cultural motifs. A brief
investigation of these wartime plays by the period's
foremost dramatist is in order. It should provide a view
both of difficulties of creating war drama and the potential
richness war playwrights saw in culturally recognized study
patterns, such as the Christ mythos. It should also
demonstrate the inadequacy of such patterns and motifs to

create of themselves successful and satisfying plays.

Candle in Ehg_fling opened on a warm September 15,
1941 in Boston at the Colonial Theatre. From Boston it
moved to New York's Sam Shubert Theatre where it was staged
by Alfred Lunt in his first venture into directing. Helen
Hayes starred as the American actress, Madeline Guest, who
attempts to free her lover, the anti-fascist editorialist
and naval officer, Raoul St. Cloud. Austrian actor,
Wengraf, played the Nazi prison camp director, Colonel
Erfurt, and Lieutenant Schoen, who suffers from the only
moral struggle in the play, was portrayed by Tonio Selwart.
In terms of number of performances, ninety-five, the play
was almost a success. The critics liked the sets: they
found Helen Hayes capable of giving charm and warmth to
the part of Madeline, and indeed, the large opening night
audience in Boston had given her a great ovation. The

Catholic critic, Euphemia Van Renssalaer Wyatt loved the

 

 

104

play. "Candle possesses a nobility of purpose and execution

38 But the few raves

that is rare in the modern theatre."
came mostly, it seems, from critics who were moved by the
spirit of the moment and hatred for Nazis rather than by
cold critical insight.39
Most critics could not share in the enthusiasm.
The general reaction was "grave disappointment," said the

Herald Tribune's Richard Watt's Jr.4o

"All things con-
sidered, said John O'Hara unable to be explicit, the play
is "lacking in something. . . . It is a bit of a bore.
. . . It is inept, amateurish, and unworthy of all con-
cerned."41 Stark Young was embarrassed. "One does net
know just what line to take with a thing that means so
well, muddles into the most passionate urgency of our epoch
and remains so medicore, overexplicit, banal, and in its
approach so entirely bourgeois."42
That critics like Euphemis Wyatt and Stark Young
could disagree so violently is not unusual. But now the
distance of years and absence of a current Nazi menace may
make a more detached evaluation possible. The play is a
melodrama using a rather worn plot-~that of the faithful
woman trying to save her heroic lover from the hands of
evil jailers. The moral sides are obvious; the good are
very good and the bad are blackly bad. Madeline Guest has
no inner moral dialectic in process, a fact that does not

add to her dramatic interest. She acts by faith, sacri-

ficing if not her life, at least her wealth and possibly

105

her looks and career as she remains in Paris trying to get
Raoul freed. Raoul St. Cloud also has arrived at goodness;
all inner struggle is completed. On the other side,
Colonel Erfurt is evil. He is the Nazi incarnate, without
personal honor, without compassion. He is cruel and
exploitive.

The play thus has a simplicity, a "banality" of
conflict found in crude melodramas. The only dynamic
character is Schoen, who undergoes an inner moral struggle
and finally decides to go against his Nazi colleagues. The
struggle of this character is, however, not shown, and we
must accept on faith his moment of crisis and spiritual
regeneration (the anagnorisis Anderson felt essential in
the construction of every significant play). Because of
the hidden nature of Schoen's struggle, little of real
interest is dramatically established. The process of
dynamic character change is only reported. The play does
not try to convince; it expects belief from the audience
and critics before they sit down in the theatre. The play,
in short, presents Andersonian philosophy without deep or
painful dramatic struggle. Evil is present, but the good
seems more powerful because the struggle is all backstage
and given only lip service in front of the lights. Thus
Madeline's final speech, "there have been many wars between
men and beasts, and the beasts have always lost and men

have won," seems unproven tenet of faith--it seems a

106

decadent affirmation, powerless to move those who do not
already subscribe.

What is puzzling about Anderson's handling of the
theme of faith and personal sacrifice is his failure to use
even the techniques he had employed in earlier p1ays--King
McCloud's self-revelation and debates, and the Christ-
figure motif of Journey Eg_Jersualem and ”Miracle of the
Danube." Perhaps profoundly effective craft could not be
expected from the playwright, Anderson, as he saw the
world moving inexorably into worldwide war. In a review of
Candle in_£hg.fligd in The Nation Joseph Wood Krutch urged
lesser expectation of dramatists in periods of crisis. "In
so far as a dramatist is compelled to deal not only with an
action of which he is a part but with one which inevitable
overwhelms him, just to that extent he must be content to
relinquish the poet's hope that he may reveal hidden
greatness, for he must be content instead to play a part
even less important, perhaps, than that of the mere
journalist or historian."43 And one notes that Anderson
signalled to his audience that he was trying for less. His
exclusive use of prose in the war plays, except for the
and finance in dream-vision, indicates, at least to a reader
of the plays, that in his own mind Anderson was not
attempting to compose drama of the scope or even the
seriousness of his earlier work. To call Candle melodrama

is fair for he wanted to do no more than create melodrama.

 

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107

To assume that his audience shared a common set of attitudes
about Nazis and their relation to good and evil may have
been no more unreasonable than it had been to asume a

common cluster of assumptions about war in the audience of
What Price Glory? The play's failure lay not in its
positions but in its awkward and unconvincing attempts to
graft certain articles of Andersonian philOSOphy onto
characters too shallow in their conception and development

to give those ideas adequate expression and nuance.

cal and popular success during the war. The play opened

at the Cort Theatre in New York on October 7, 1942, and
starred William Prince as Quizz West and Aline Mac Mahon

as his mother. The play ran for 291 performances, was
selected by Burns Mantle as one of the best plays of 1942-
1943, had a London production sponsored by the U. S. Army
and cast by U. S. servicement, WACs and Red Cross girls,
and was purchased by Twentieth-Century-Fox for $300,000, a
sum equalled only by Fox's purchase of Steinbeck's The_§ggg

44 The play had its detractors. Wolcott Gibbs in

45

3.2%...-
222.§EE Yorker called it a "superb recruiting poster."
More representative of the critical reactions, however, was
Howard Barnes comment in the Herald Tribune. "Maxwell
Anderson has written stright from the heart in 222.§XE.2£
SE, £35k. The result is a war drama of emotional tension,

46

humor and poetic splendor." And Joseph Wood Krutch

108

called it "the most effective and . . . satisfying play
about the war yet to reach our stage."47
The story is a very simple one--as most critics
noted. It is of young Quizz West leaving his home farm,
mother, and new fiance to go into training and then into
battle. He proves his courage and capacity for sacrifice
to protect what he loves by staying and persuading his
comrades to voluntarily stay and defend a Philippine
island against a Japanese advance. The many scenes depict
stages of Quizz's journey from upstate New York to a
foreign island where he must make the Andersonian decision,
the same one King McCloud faced, to stay and fight despite
apparent immediate uselessness of the act, or to give up
faith and run. Quizz makes the ”right" decision and is not
forced into the psychological purgatory that McCloud endures.
He sacrifices himself--almost too easily--for the saving of
the community and loved ones. He is Christ-like in his
innocence, in his capacity for compassion and self
sacrifice. Further, Quizz is cast in certain traditional
Christ-images. Trying to get home on a short furlough he
accepts a role as shepherd, feeding and watering the sheep
of a heavy drinker who has offered him a ride.
Anderson's comparatively subtle use of such a
figure and pattern, an employment not weighed down by
debate and philosophical exposition as in Journey E2

reasons for the success of the play. It is a play that

109

taps such archetypal patterns as the Christ-sacrifice
pattern, and the youth initiation pattern. Further, and
more importantly, it bases its motifs and effects on
certain cultural images, expectations, and patterns. Such
pattern, characters, images are almost intuitively recog-
nized and understood by the American audience. Their use
almost obviates the need for extensive character deline-
ation--indeed, too full and unique a character would
destroy any recognizable cultural identity Anderson might
wish to create in Quizz. So Quizz becomes an American

Everyman; the plot, ”a kind of Everyman in khaki."48 Quizz

 

is every American youth called upon by the world war to
leave home and face dangers. The cultural images, then,
that surround the idealized American youth are employed in
creating the character of Quizz. He is spirited and lively;
he falls in love with the neighbor girl. He is chaste but
not a prude. Anderson works carefully to create the
balance that will make Quizz neither profligate nor goody-
goody. Thus he shows Quizz and a barracks friend being kind
to a pair of tough-tender prostitutes without falling into
fornication. With Janet, his finance, he is human enough
and almost ends up in bed with her--except for an opportune
phone call that saves the purity of both.

Quizz is a typical and refined image of American
manhood. His home is a farm, and his name, we note, is
West. Anderson seems to be evoking subtly the potent

cultural image discussed by Henry Nash Smith in his Virgin

110

Land, i.e., the images of the family farm, the agrarian life
which breeds individualism, independence, healthy mind and
body, rich family life, proper innocence, will and strength,

and love of country.49

There was nothing wrong in 1942
with being from Brooklyn, but in the movies and on the
stage the boy from Brooklyn was usually Italian and
Catholic and slightly reminiscent of a street urchin. He
was not the cultural stereotype of the American boy. That
boy was the waspish, ”western" farm lad from Ohio, or upper
New York State as the case may be.

of mythic expression stripped of all excrescences and
reduced to primary cultural symbols, to those culturally
evocative and meaningful motifs and patterns.50 Though no
critic explicitly perceived the mythic qualities of the
play, Joseph Wood Krutch came very close. "It gives
clarity and coherence and logic to our emotional reaction
to certain great events; it provides an occasion upon
which a group may feel in an orderly and clear fasion what
the individual members of the group have been feeling

"51 Only at the end of the

fragmentarily and in confusion.
play does Anderson, unfortunately, step forward and speak
in didactic Andersonian fashion. Janet, Quizz's fiance,

says, "Every man has to follow his own vision. That's the

52 Except for this, Anderson has

way new worlds are made."
transmuted his own standard reflections and philosophic

dictums into artistic, cultural, and dramatic ritual

111

wherein one sees and feels because of culturally defined
ways of perceiving. In this transmuting process Anderson
seemed on the way to discovering the apparent secret for
significance and success in wartime expression--the subtle
use of the cultural symbols that make what seems to be
unique and discrete action become for a member of the

American cultural experience universal and true.

Storm Operation was Anderson's last play to appear

 

during the war, opening on January 11, 1944 at the Belasco
Theatre. It was the one in which Anderson most clearly
abandoned his role as poet and mythmaker, or myth-user, and
switched dramatic modes. The play is of that type Anderson
had long scorned, the journalistic play. Its conception
and purpose from the start was pure journalism. Shortly
announced that he was going to Africa (by way of London in
order to help there with the London production of Eye).

His purpose in Africa originally was to do some research

53 This intent

for a play about American negro soldiers.
was sidetracked apparently, for when he arrived in Africa
in late May, 1943, he was more vague about the prospective
play's substance. He would say only that he wanted to

"54 The

"collect some war atmosphere for another war play.
subject was set, it seems, in the much publicized meeting
between Anderson and Eisenhower in Algiers on June 1.

Anderson suggested a play about Anglo-American military

112

cooperation, and Eisenhower grew enthusiastic. The General
in turn suggested a play about such cooperation in the
North African campaign, and he urged that the code name
for the Allied efforts, "Storm Operation," be used as the
play's title. So it was.55
The play took shape along the same lines as flhat
EEEESHElQEX? §22£E Operation was to be a realistic picture
of what war was like. The results were similar to but less
successful than those of 1924, perhaps because Anderson's
craft was wanting, perhaps because EEEE.E£$ES.§$2£X? had a
stronger sense of purpose. §EBEE Operation had no strong
center and seems a sort of aimless newsreel with some
obviously theatrical gimmicks thrown in. Howard Barnes of
the New York Herald Tribune put it this way: "It is almost
as factual as a screen documentary; it is not particularly

good theatre."56

Burns Mantle agreed that it was very
uneven drama but selected it as one of the best plays of
1943-44 because it happened to be ”the one play of the year
that, in its better moments, did bring a particular phase
of this war home to the American public, which needed to be
told‘about it."57
The play concerns a rather inexperienced first
sergeant, Peter Moldau, played by Myron McCormick, and his
attempts to lead an Allied force in North Africa. His
command is challenged by a snobbish British officer, Captain

Sutton, who is sceptical of American manners and military

abilities. Sutton is a stereotype of the British

113

aristocratic officer, as are the American soldiers examples
of the irreverent, seemingly anything-but-business G. 1.5
stereotype still current in the '70s in such movies as
M*A*S*H. After making a serious error in leadership, Sgt.
Moldau does surrender his leadership to Sutton, even as

Sutton grows more respectful of American proficiency. The

play consists mostly of the interaction of soldiers, their
talk, their attempts to deal with the very alien environ-
ment of desert, Arab Africa. The dialogue, a la HEEE.E££EE
ElEEX? is salty, the situations often comic.

Into this simple and direct content is thrown an
improbable love affair. Lieutenant Thomasina Grey helped
in Peter Moldau's therapy following an earlier wound. They
loved each other, but he feared permanent attachment,
especially in wartime, and they became separated. They
meet here in North Africa accidentally. The problem is
that Lieutenant Gray has been seeing British Captain
Sutton. This theatrical triangle threatens to misshapen
and confuse the simple and vigorous reportorial play that
Anderson had been creating. Finally, Peter is ready to
commit himself to the Lieutenant if she will have him. She
will, finally, and they are married by none other than
Sutton as a strafing attack takes place around their heads.

Most critics found this mixture of melodrama,
spectacle, and reportage a little too varied to create a
unified and satisfactory play, and though the play is

amusing (Stark Young found it "truly comic") the play was

 

 

114

rejected by both critics and the public. It ran only
twenty-three performances.

It is interesting to note what has happened to the
Andersonian philosophy in this third attempt at a war play.
It has largely disappeared. The anagnorisis is gone.

What remains is not a discovery that one must sacrifice
one's life for good and the furtherance of the cosmic
evolution toward justice and right. There does persist an
unphilosophical doggedness--an unspiritual desire to fight
the damn war, because the Nazis are a menance to freedom,

and then to get home. In this third year of war the
spiritual and universal concepts seems less relevant.

Sgt. Moldau expresses the new "faith" in the Prologue to
the play. He has made no grand decisions of self-sacrifice.
"I got drafted," he says, "the same as the rest of you. I
didn't want to be a soldier. Nobody did, only we knew the
job had to be done, and we had to do it. And the only way
to fight a war is to make the other fellow so Goddam sorry

58 The

he picked on us that he'll never do it again."
elevated sentiment and rhetoric is gone. The concept of
death as a noble and mystically effective act is absent.
The idealistic faith is replaced by more common war
rhetoric. After atath Operation has been successful and
the forces are ready to land again somewhere in the
Mediterranean, Peter speaks to his men in the language of

American resolution rather than idealism, and though the

idea of tragic sacrifice for communal salvation is present,

115

has been stripped of mystical, Christ parallels. "Do you
suppose we'd be allowed to keep a place like that [home] if
we weren't willing to fight for it? Hell no! The year we
go soft enough to say we won't fight for it there won't be
any United States. Only we haven't gone soft yet. . . .
We're going to take this town so damn fast they won't know
what hit it" (pp. 126-126).

Andersonian philosophy is certainly not incompatible
with Moldau's speeches, largely because Anderson's faith
in the individual, and in the beneficent tendencies of the
universe and man, are so basically American, springing from
Emerson and the entire pattern of American thought. But
the philosophy has been simplified, stripped of its poetic
expression and its mystical trappings. This occurred
because the war did make a difference in the thinking and
expression of Anderson.

As Anderson became increasingly involved, by working
in the Free Company, civil defense, traveling to Africa,
the realities of war seemed too pressing to allow for the
luxury of rather academic speculation and contemplation.

So the poetry of 521.22592 and the attempts at synthesis of
thought trends in Journey ta Jerusalem become first the
idealism and mysticism grafted onto contemporary subjects,
as in "The Miracle of the Danube" and Candle th_tha_haha,

then the specifics of tenet and dogma are simplified to

 

116

finally they become distant but recognizable echoes in the

journalism of Storm Operation.
Rdbert Sherwood's Rugged Path

I feel that life is too fragile and fine a thing

to be treated as butcher's meat. . . .
Irwin Shaw, 1936

I have believed in reason. I convince you, you

convince me. Can you convince airplanes with bombs and

men with guns in their pockets?

Jonah in Irwin Shaw's The Gentle People, 1939

"We are conquering bestiality, not with our muscles and
our swords, but with the power of the light that is in

 

our minds." To deny the ultimate truth of that faith
would be to commit a philosophical Munich now. . . .
The hope of the future lies in action today.

Brooks Atkinson, New York Times,

September 22, 1940

And where's "our sacred honor" today if we submit
meekly and timorously to evil . . . where?
Lovejoy, "An American Crusader"

The intellectual and expressive transformation that

Anderson underwent as he tried to grapple with the war
supply us with a kind of paradigm for the agonies and
transformations certain other artists experienced. The
increasingly clear ruthlessness and barbarity of the
fascists' actions, and the Allies timidity at Munich,
evoked similar gut reactions, categories of thought, and
personal commitments in at least three other major World
War II playwrights, Irwin Shaw, Robert E. Sherwood, and

Lillian Hellman. Each felt it necessary to adjust his

 

 

117

views and transform his dramatic expression in order to
face the problem of the individual's role and responsibi-
lity in a world where evil no longer was a metaphysical
abstraction. Sherwood and Hellman arrived at intellectual
conclusions and images strikingly like Anderson's in
Journey 2 Jerusalem and in _'I_‘ha Eng -o_f_ St. Mart.

But it is in Shaw and Sherwood that a similar
pattern of transformation is especially evident because
they, like Anderson, moved away from pacifistic or anti-war
stances.59 Probably the strongest threatre image of 1936
was created by Irwin Shaw in his first play, an anti-war
piece called EEEX.EEE.EEEQ° In the play six cadaver-
casualties of the war "that is to begin tomorrow," as Shaw
put it, rise and refuse to be buried despite pleas from
their commanders and their women.60 Cheated of life for
no good reason by foolish governments, the corpses refuse
to acquiesce to being put away and forgotten. Instead they
march off at play's end to spread their protest against the
senseless and murderous brutality of war. In a New York
gthaa article following the Broadway opening (the play
first began as a production of the Actor's Repertory Co.
for benefit of the New Theatre League and New Theatre
magazine) Shaw declared his non-interventionist, anti-war,
pro-life intention. "This first play," he wrote, ”has been
written by a young man who does not want to die. He hopes
that there are many young men who do not want to die, and

that they will be moved by the play, for the time is

 

118

coming, and not so far away, when young men will be asked
to put their lives on precarious firing steps. . . . I
would regard it as a criminal plot against my life if the
United States involved itself in a war and dragged me into
its army to fight for it against some other young man just

as eager as I to stay alive in the bright and pleasant

By 1939, after Munich and events in Spain, Shaw had
apparently changed his position. In, gha Gentle People
significantly subtitled "A Brooklyn Fable," Shaw draws two
old men, Saroyan-like in their gentle simplicity and their
lyrical, genial speech. Jew and Greek, they are the
oppressed of the world. Wanting only to fish in peace,
they are terrorized by a two-bit gangster demanding money
for protection. When the gangster, Goff, tries to extort
the money the two men have saved for a new boat, the gentle
men react by carefully planning and murdering him. The
1936 pacificist playwright suggests that there is a point
when peace in our time is not peace at all, a point when
life must not be the ultimate value. This moral is given
to Jonah in the play: "If you want peace and gentleness,
you got to take violence out of the hands of the people
like Goff and you got to take it in your own hands and use
it like a club. Then maybe, on the other side of violence,

there will be peace and gentleness."62

Shaw's process of change remains undocumented.

The events in Europe are obviously responsible for his

 

 

119

his acceptance of war and for what amounts to a veiled
argument for resistance to evil, but a chart or timetable

of his personal intellectual transformation is not available.
Sherwood, however, provides us with a fairly complete

record of the trials, mental and other, that such "incon-
sistency" of principle can provoke. After serving in the
Canadian Black Watch in World War I, Sherwood became
convinced of the correctness of both internationalism and
pacifism. "I believed that war was a hideous injustice

and that no man had the right to call himself civilized as
long as he admitted that another world war could conceivably

be justifiable."63

In the Preface to 1% gig}; ha ha
Eight he points to anti-war messages in nearly every one of
his plays from the 1926-27 3229.32.§222.t° the clearest and
most insistent of such statements appearing ten years later
in Idiot's Delight. Then the change. In 1940 Sherwood
wrote what was by general critical agreement the first play
really about the European war, _Thara M PE _N_o_ 15229.4 and
which was, according to Raymond Clapper, Washington
columnist, a "rank inflamatory job, pleading for inter-
vention."64
The play's portrayal of very decent people defending
the Finnish democracy from a very indecent Russian army
moved audiences to tears, httareported,65 and moved nearly
everyone else aware of the play's existence to some kind

of reactions. After the Washington performance, M.

Procopé, the Finnish minister, embraced Sherwood, thanked

 

120

him for what he was doing for Finland, and underlined his
thanks by celebrating the play with a party at the Finnish
embassy. Sherwood received support from the President and
Mrs. Roosevelt, from Harry Hopkins, and from three Supreme
Court Justices.66
But many in the still largely isolationist United
States agreed with columnist Clapper. Hate mail came in
the post; Zha_2atly Worker called Sherwood a stooge of
imperialist warmongers.67 In late May, 1940, the Theatre
Arts Committee, a group labelled communistic by Actors'
Equity, picketed the Alvin, where EEEEE.§EE£$.EE.E2.E$2§E
was playing, passed out pamphlets saying warmongers had
captured the Alvin, and urged those going in to sign peace

68 Strangely enough,

petitions to send President Roosevel.
however, not all felt that bitterness toward the Russians.
Jack Gould, in a brief survey of reactions to the play,
noted that the Christian Frontists were accusing Sherwood
not of attacking, but of following the communist line.69
Whatever else one could say about the play, surely Sherwood
was, in Gould's words, "the man who made the war an issue
in the Broadway theatre”.7O
Though there is no doubt from the play's text that
Sherwood has moved from a stance of pacifism to one
demanding active struggle against aggressive forces, there
is some ambiguity as to his specific recommendation con—

cerning the degree of American involvement in the war.

The playwright's sympathies and philosophical position lie

 

121

clearly with Dr. Kaarlo Valkonen when that character throws
off his passivity and hatred of war to go to the Finnish
lines and fight the Russians. But did Sherwood mean to
imply that the United States must take up arms and rush
also to the front? In a May 12 New York Ethaa interview
with Jack Gould, Sherwood denied saying in the play or
anywhere else that the United States "should plunge into
this war with full force. I would not have," he said, "the
faintest idea where such force could be directed."71 But
certainly some American action is implied when Sherwood has
Dr. Valkonen's new daughter-in-law and unborn child sent to
Massachusetts. America becomes responsible for that child's
future and by implication responsible for the future
generations' hopes for justice and freedom in the world.

To clarify the implications, Sherwood personally took
action.

He follows Anderson's pattern of involvement, i.e.,
of moving from practicing playwright to practicing propa—
gandist. Like Anderson, he joined the Free Company,
writing a radio play on freedom of press and speech and
using as subject abolitionist journalist, Elijah Parish
Lovejoy and that man's martyrdom in Illinois in the 18303.22
But Sherwood goes beyond Anderson in the range of his
activities and in the devotion of his time to the war
effort. No other playwright became so involved both

unofficially and officially from 1940 onward. After the

production of There Shall ha ha Night, Sherwood clarified

 

122

what he felt to be the proper United States involvement in
world affairs by joining William Allen White's Committee to
Defend America by Aiding the Allies (a more aggressive group
than the Non-Partisan Committee for Peace through Revision
of the Neutrality Law, which White lead and Sherwood had
joined in 1939). In June, 1940, he composed for the
Committee the full page ad that appeared in the New York
gthaa and numerous other papers around the country. It was
titled "Stop Hitler Now!" and it urged the sending of
letters to Roosevelt calling for aid to the Allies.73
As the year progressed he became a prolific speech-
maker and essayist. He espoused and championed Clarence
Streit's idea of‘a federal union of English speaking
nations in a speech telephoned to the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation in late August and subsequently broadcast to
other British Empire countries.74 Sherwood had long urged
international union, but he felt that now especially such
a union would be advantageous, serving notice to Hitler
and the world of the power of the democracies to be dynamic
and to organize their collective energies to combat
totalitarianism. This conviction he stated to the mass
'American public in a penned defense of the plan in the
October 7, 1940 issue of Etta, a defense reprinted in the
Reader's Digest's December number.75
His speeches were often notable for their candor,
and he did not shy away from attacking the "apostles of

appeasement" as a group or from attacking individually such

 

123

men as Henry Ford and Colonel Lindbergh. Before a rally
of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies in
New Haven, Connecticutt, Sherwood explicitly suggested
Lindbergh's Nazism. ”I am not accusing Colonel Lindbergh
with being pro-Nazi," he said. "He unquestionably is pro-
American--aggressively so. He is simply a Nazi with a
Nazi's Olympian contempt for all democratic processes--the
rights of freedom of speech and worship, the right to
select and criticize our own government, and the right of
labor to strike."76
From a private citizen condemning isolationists
and urging substantial aid to the Allies, Sherwood became
an official person. He was appointed a special assistant
to the Secretary of the Navy in 1940, went to England on a
fact finding mission in 1941 as an assistant to the
Coordinator of Information for the United States govern-
ment, Colonel William Donovan. In 1942 he was appointed by
his friend, President Franklin Roosevelt, as director of
the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information—-a
post he held even while serving as correspondent for Ziggy
and a post he held until 1944 when he resigned. In 1945,
as special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy again,
he made a 37,000 mile tour of the Pacific. The four
afforded a first-hand view of the Filipino guerillas he
later drew so lovingly in his only wartime play, Zha_Rugged
hath, and resulted in his urging the United States to

retain its military bases in the Pacific.77

124

All this from a man who had been a professed
pacifist. The distance between the assumptions of Idiot's
Delight and EESES.§E§$$.EE.E2.E£SEE is as great as the
distance between those of EEEE.E££ES.§$2£X? and Stagh
Operation, and the distance was covered by both playwrights
with some agony of intellect and emotion. But Anderson had
a philosophical framework into which, with a bit of adjust-
ment, he could fit his militancy. Sherwood lacked such an
overall framework, though he obviously had strong pre-
dilections, and thus he suffered the pains of a sincere man
whose evolving emotional sympathies run counter to his
public professions. Between the pacifism of 1936's Idiot's
Delight and 1940's EEEES fifléil.22.fi2.§lflflEl Sherwood was a
man in turmoil. His turmoil seemed to render him
creatively impotent, as he testifies in his Preface to
EEEES.§EE$$.E§.§2.E$2§E° "After aha Lincoln ifl Illinois,
[1937] two years passed during which I had many doubts that
I should ever write another play. I wanted to write about
that which was uppermost in my own mind and in the minds of
most other men who were still free to speak. But how could
any play hope to compete or even keep up with the daily
headlines and the shrieks of increasing horror heard over
the radio" (PP. xxv-xxvi)? Sherwood wanted to evade
dealing with the world situation as much as he wanted to
write about it. "I said to my friend, Alexander Korda,

'I wish I could write a sparkling drawing-room comedy

 

125

without a suggestion of the international calamity or
social significance . . ." (p. xxvi).

The creative dilemma continued into the summer and
fall of 1939 (though he worked on the screenplay for aha
Lincoln ah Illinois). In July, 1939, a New York Eahaa
reporter met Sherwood and his wife as they returned on the
Queen Mary from a three month vacation in Europe. The
playwright said he hoped to write a play for Broadway in
the fall, but he had not begun and was having difficulty
doing so, an apparent difficulty in sorting out his
perceptions of the situation in Europe and in finding an
emotionally satisfying position on those perceptions. This
seems, at least, to be the difficulty suggested by
Sherwood's laconic, puzzling comment to the Ethaa reporter:
"With all the things happening in the world today, it is
almost impossible to select one [a subject] to write
about."78

The process of Sherwood's movement from confusion
to statement and commitment is best documented in John
Mason Brown's gha_0rdeal at a_Playwright, Robert a, Sherwood
229.322 Challenge 22.223! Brown notes that in October,
1939, Sherwood joined the Non-Partisan Committee for Peace
through Revision of the Neutrality Law, a group that seemed
through its compromise stand of calling for aid to the
allies but no United States participation in fighting to

serve well the playwright's division of impulses. But

events grew more grave. By December Russia was preparing

 

126

to invade Finland. The compromise stand of the Non—
Partisan Committee no longer seemed morally acceptable.
Sherwood felt America should intervene somehow in
Scandanavia. At any rate, he knew that he was shifting
positions and would be, as later proved the case, called a
warmonger. In deep perplexity he sought counsel and
emotional support from William Allen White. "I can only
say," he wrote in a letter, "that as a writer and as an
embittered veteran of the previous World War, I have
consistently tried to plead the course of pacifism. . . .
War is still to me as I tried to describe it in such plays
as Idiot's Delight [a product of chauvinism, government
stupidity, and armament makers]. But the terrible truth
is that when war comes home to you, you have to fight it;
and this war has come home to me. . . . The essential fact
is that I can now no longer stand the sight of the present

and future world."79

There is no apology for his incon-
sistency or the length of time it has taken him to come to
his present conviction. He had reached the point where
apology was unnecessary. Deeply felt judgments were
enough. Now he needed only a spark to spur him into
embodying his convictions in dramatic form. The Finnish
defense in general, the United States refusal to give aid
to Finland, and the Christmas broadcast from Helsinki by

William L. White (William Allen White's son) specifically

provided that spark. By December 28, 1939, Sherwood the

 

 

127

pacifist was writing Broadway's first war play, and three
and a half months later it was being produced.

In some ways .T_h_e_r_e_ Shah}: b_e ha N_i_g_l'_i_t_ was quite
different from the plays of Sherwood's Playwrights Company
associate, Anderson. Sherwood underwrites his characters.
The dialogue, though sometimes eloquent, is naturalistic
rather than elevated into poetic statement. Only Ander-
quiet sincerity so evident in Sherwood's play. But in most
ways the play shows striking similarities to Anderson's in
movement, imagery, and ideas. EEE£S.§EEll.EE.E2.§i2EE
involves the Valkonens, a humane, civilized Finnish family,
distinguished because of Dr. Valkonen's neurological
research and winning of the Nobel Prize. The doctor is
suggestive of Sherwood in being internationally minded,
finding narrow patriotism "one of the most virulent mani-
festations of evil," in being reluctant to admit the
necessity of fighting, and in being ultimately convinced,
by his son's commitment to stand against the Russian invaders
and by the human degeneration evident in Russian actions,
that it is right and necessary to defend his democratic
country. The play is, then, the picture of aggression's
effect on quiet,.peaceful persons, and like Anderson's
plays is a forum for ideas.

The similarity of the ideas is often striking.

Both men diagnose the source of the evil that has resulted

in the actions of war, and their diagnoses make it sound

128

as if Sherwood and Anderson graduated from the same medical
school. Anderson saw human moral malaise and Hitlerism as
products of a form of materialism. McCloud is lost because
he values his body more than his ideals. In him, and more
so in Hitlerism, spirit has been replaced by faith in
mechanics, forces. Closely similar are Dr. Valkonen's views
in scene I, supposedly broadcast to America. Men, he says,
have put their faith in mechanical, material defense, and
have let the spiritual resistances wither. "We have
counted too heavily upon pills and serums to protect us
from our enemies, just as we count too heavily upon vast
systems of concrete fortifications and big navies to guard
our frontiers. Of what avail are those artificial pro-
tections if each man lacks the power of resistance within

himself?" 8°

Like Anderson, Sherwood locates man's strength
and dignity in his individual spiritual makeup and in his
ability to endure trouble and sacrifice. He sees modern
man having tried to evade trouble and pain by means of
science. Such evasion leaves the man weakened, for,
Valkonen quotes St. Paul, "'We glory in tribulation;
knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience,
experience, and experience, hope" (p. 21). Man has now
been weakened because of his attempts to evade the harsh
moral and physical tribulations by mechanical means, and
the result is moral and mental degeneration, the clearest

manifestation being fascist and communist reliance on

mechanical, armed might and aggression. "Today the

129

spiritual resistance of [the German peOple] has been lowered
to such an extent that they are willing to discard all their
moral sense, all the essential principles of justice and
civilization. They glorify a theory of government which is
no more than coordinated barbarism, under the leadership of
megalomaniac who belongs in a psychopathic ward rather than
a Chancellery" (p. 20).

In both Anderson and Sherwood, then, we find
similar views of evil's origins—-they lie in the neglect of
the spiritual in favor of the physical. And both see the
need for personal commitment and sacrifice if spirit and
dignity are to be fed and to emerge triumphant. Obviously
Dr. Valkonen never is as lost and without faith as King
McCloud, but his movement from sceptical inaction through an
anagnorsis to commitment and personal sacrifice parallels
that of both McCloud and of German Lieutenant Schoen in
Candle $2.EBE.EEBQ° Indeed, the pattern in both playwright's
wartime plays, with the exceptions of Storm Operation, is
the gradual coming to consciousness that is the hope of man
and the world. Only in recognizing man's dual nature and
helping to defeat the baser part can man evolve to a higher
level of being. Curiously the animal imagery in Sherwood
and Anderson echoes each other. Anderson is especially fond
of rats as images for man's spiritual atavism; Sherwood of
rats and apes. The evolution theme and imagery were
emerging as Sherwood unconsciously approached the writing

of There Shall ha ha Nigh . In his December letter to

 

   

130

William A. White he declares, "if the Soviet Union gets
away with victory in this outburst of gang warfare, then we
must admit that civilization is ended and the red hand of

the ape rules the world."81

In the play itself the imagery
appears several times, as in Uncle Waldemar's description of
man's state in 1939-40 to Dr. Valkonen's son, Erik: "Men
are groping their way through the night. The lights are
out in Berlin, Paris, London. And in Warsaw, they crawl
through the ruins like rats. . . . This is war in the jungle
and the winner will be crowned 'King of Beast'" (pp. 49-50).
But withal, neither playwright will abandon man to
violence and hopelessness. For both, the St. Paul passage
that Dr. Valkonen quotes in his broadcast to America may
serve as text. Hope comes ultimately from testing and
tribulation. Just how such suffering and sacrifice will
lead to the beneficent destiny of man remains vague, though
Sherwood attempts to deal with the problem a bit more fully
than does Anderson. Just before Kaarlo goes to face the
Russian forces in a last and obviously futile stand, he
gives to his fellow defenders, significantly including
Americans, a last "lecture." In it he declares that men
are coming to a consciousness about their worst and best
impulses, and are questioning why the worst impulses are
so powerful. "And for the first time in history, conscious-
ness is not just the privilege of a few secluded phi-
losophers. . . . For the first time, individual men are

fighting to know themselves . . . (p. 153). And with the

 

131

anagnorisistic grasping of self-knowledge, men can overcome
the beast in themselves. "We have within ourselves the
power to conquer bestiality, not with our muscles and
swords, but with the power of the light that is in our
minds. What a thrilling challenge this is to all Science!
To play its part in the ultimate triumph of evolution. To
help speed the day when man becomes genuinely human,
instead of the synthetic creature--part bogus angel, part
actual brute--that he has imagined himself in the past"
(pp. 153-154). In the Preface to the play, Sherwood admits
that Kaarlo Valkonen is indeed his raisonneur. "I believe
every word that Dr. Valkonen utters in the sixth scene.

. . . I believe that man, in his new found consciounsess,
can find the means of his redemption" (p. xxix).

The diction in both Dr. Valkonen's speech and in
Sherwood's prefatory comments is significant. The prefatory
remarks are, indeed, credo, and the word "redemption"
underscores the religious and specifically Christian frame-
work of the playwright's conception. The play's title as
well as the doctor's ”light that is in our minds" is
suggested by a passage in Revelations with which he had
ended his book. "And they shall see his face and his name
shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night
there . . . for the Lord giveth them light; and they shall
reign forever and ever" (p. 150). In this mystical faith

with strong Christian overtones, Sherwood is running a

course parallel to Anderson's. Both are drawn to

 

 

 

132

Christian imagery in the 1940s; both are seeking to deal
with the individual's sacrifice in war in terms of Christ's
sacrifice and the subsequent communal salvation.

The years 1939-40 saw Shaw, Anderson, and Sherwood
all finally reject the primacy of the anarchic individual
and move toward a more communally oriented vision. Up to
this time the individual had been the significant integer
of cosmic arithmetic. The protest against war in hhty_tha
Oaag had been rationalized on an almost entirely personal
and individual basis. Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt called
the play itself "a personal selfish protest against war"
because the rationale was that each person's sensuous
enjoyment of earth and life justified his living and his
life's continuance.82 Causes were empty excuses for war
and murder, and only an individual's own cause would
justify his giving up life. "A man can die happy and he
contentedly buried," says the first corpse, "only when he
dies for himself or for a cause that is his own and not
Pharaoh's or Caesar's or Rome's... . .83

In Idiot's Delight, too, Sherwood had created a
play in which the individual destiny and dignity ultimately
remained quite separate from the convulsions of a war
threatened society. Brooks Atkinson's opening night
review noted that the play drew "that grotesque distinction
between the personal, casual lives people want to live and

the roar and thunder that crackbrain governments foment."84

133

The play, because it does make so clear the distinction
between individual and society, is worth dwelling on for
a moment.

Many critics found it hard to take Idiot's Delight
seriously. They were perplexed by its combination of
hijinks and serious purpose. Atkinson could call it a
"robust theatre Charade,"85 Stark Young complain that
"the tone does not convey, or create, anything very signifi-

86 while Joseph Wood Krutch note

cant on a large theme,"
that in it "the folly and the horror of war has been
conveyed about as effectively as it has ever been conveyed

87 Part of the critical and tonal confusion

upon the stage."
may have been caused by the apparently inspiredly spirited
performances of Alfred Lunt as Harry Van, a salty, seedy
vandevillian who is in charge of a troupe of blond dancers
touring the Balkans, and Lynn Fontanne as Irene, sporting
a straight blond wig and portraying a cynical lady of
elusive identity. Krutch notes that Lunt's hoofing and
Fontanne's wig took on the aura of a family joke with the

audience in on the fun.88

But the fun of the production
tended to overshadow the seriousness of the message. This
had been the case with Harold Clurman's production of
Shaw's gha Gentle People, also. Appearing in January,
1939, before Poland and Finland, the implications of the
fable could still easily be evaded.89 How much more so

with Idiot's Delight in 1936, a point in time just after

the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and before the Spanish

134

Civil War. The war, though actually imminent, still seemed
far away and rather an academic topic to the American
audience, and even so to Sherwood, who needed the events of
Munich and Poland and Finland to bring him to full coherence
in conviction, expression, and action. For even though the
play's anti-war burden comes through quite clearly and
effectively when it ‘5 read and not subject to the
distracting graces of Lunt and Fontanne, one feels that the
subject has not been seriously dealt with.

Sherwood provides nearly all vieWpoints on the war
in the collection of guests forced to spend time at a hotel
in the Italian Alps after the frontier has been closed due
to the start of a European war. The viewpoints include
Quillery's Marxist-Leninist interpretation of war, Captain
Locicero's view that wars are needlessly provoked by
governments, the internationalist German scientist, Dr.
Waldersee's view that war is caused by chauvinistic
nationalism, and the play's view which adds to those of
the Captain's and Dr. Waldersee's the condemnation of
international armament makers and salesmen, represented in

90 But all the serious

the play by Achilles Weber.
discussion, and even the noise of a bombing attack in the

last scene cannot compete with the romantic story of Harry
Van and Irene and with the implication of their words and

deeds.

Though Irene claims to be a White Russian emigree,

Harry recognizes her as a woman with whom he spent a night

135

in the Governor Bryan Hotel in Omaha. He finally gets her
to admit that she is indeed this woman, and to admit that
she has become involved with Achilles Weber. Because the
Italian government will no longer honor her League of
Nations passport, she will not be allowed to cross the
frontier. She will be kept in the hotel though it is
likely to be bombed when French planes attack the adjoining
Italian air base. In an act of devotion, Harry gives up
his chance to escape into Switzerland with his troupe and
returns to Irene. His return is an act of personal
devotion; it has none but romantic and vaguely moral
implications. His sacrifice is for love and has no
political value. In the final moments of the play, Irene
and Harry rather self-pityingly see themselves as powerless
individuals and martyrs to the idiot forces of the universe.
The war is "just for the purpose of killing us . . . you
and me,” Irene says, "because we are the little people--
and for us the deadliest weapons are the most merciful.

."91 The play ends with Harry and Irene singing

futilely if satirically "Onward Christian Soldiers" as the
bombs fall about them. The implications of the scene, and
of Irene's speech to Harry a few moments earlier ("Let
them [the nations at war] be idiotic if they wish. We are
sane") are several. We see the individual's destiny
separated from the communal. The forces of society

manipulate and kill the individual easily and thoughtlessly,

but the individual's real destiny and worth are determined

136

by his personal choice. "We are sane." The individual's
state of mind and course of action are all that are
important. If one makes a righteous choice, he is morally
square and right with the universe. He may, therefore,
assume a superior, satiric stance and laugh at the world
as it falls into chaos. Even in the speech in which Irene
urges Italian Captain Locicero to follow his impulses
rather than to follow unquestioningly his orders to fight
("What else can you do? I'll tell you what else you can do
in these tragic circumstances. You can refuse to fight!
Have you ever thought of that possibility? You can refuse
to use those weapons that they have sold you!” (p. 290),
even here the implication is that the individual makes a
moral choice--a choice of refusal to engage in evil or
insane activities, and if this choice is made, all is well.
More than even in Anderson, the play celebrates the
anarchic individual and his moral health. Americans could
welcome the play for it legitimized their contempt for
European intrigues and violence and implied a moral
superiority in passivity and isolationism. And from this
stance and vision of the individual in the world had
Sherwood to move.

There was one intermediate step for Sherwood before
he was able in 1940 to make the identification of individual
and communal destiny in IESEE.§ES$$.EE.E2.§£2§E¢ This step
occurred in hha_Lincoln tthllinois. Abe here tries to

evade, to remain at peace, but is forced to make a stand

137

for war. The interest of the play rests in the character
of Lincoln and his choice, however, more than in the social
implications of the choice. In Eha5a_§hatl ha ha_htght.
Sherwood moves for the first time to deal with the relation-
ship between an individual's moral choice and its communal
significance, and here he seeks the prototype for the man
who sacrifices himself for communal and racial salvation.
He suggests the prototype to be Christ, as did Anderson in
Journey ta_Jerusalem. In a farewell letter to his American
wife, Miranda, Kaarlo Volkonen states his faith in the
mystic effectiveness of sacrifice and implicitly identifies
the personal sacrifice of Erik and himself with that of

Socrates, Christ, and even Lincoln.

I have always believed in the mystic truth of
resurrection. The great leaders of the mind and the
spirit--Socrates, Christ, Lincoln--were all done to
death that the full measure of their contribution to
human experience might never be lost. Now--the death
of our son is only a fragment in the death of our
country. But Erik and others who gave their lives
are also giving to mankind a symbol--a little symbol
to be sure, but a clear one--of man's unconquerable
aspiration to dignity and freedom and purity in sight
of God (p. 176).

One cannot help but compare the concept of the role of the
individual fighter against totalitarianism with Anderson's
explanation of Christ's sacrifice. In Journey ta.
Jerusalem Ishmael tells Jeshuah that the messiah figure
”will become a symbol for those who are guiltless," and

Jeshuah tells his mother of the efficacy of the symbol.

138

Its meaning is
that the death of the innocent will work in the hearts
of those who murder them, till the murderers
are sorry, and have changed. . . .

Probably Anderson is presenting a more specific program
than Sherwood would care to, but both begin to suggest in
1940 the Christ figure as appropriate for the soldier
because of that figure's innocence, his decision to accept
the role of sacrifice, and because of the cosmic and
communal significance of the sacrifice.

After forging his statement of faith, Sherwood
shifted, as noted, from the realm of dramatic statement to
that of persuasive, discursive writing. He moved into the
role of lecturer and propagandist, spending two years in
the O. W. I. From his experience there and his trips to
the Pacific as director of the Overseas Branch of the
O. W. I. and as assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, he
wrote his only play to deal with Americans at war, gha
Rugged hath. The play's history again reminds us of
Anderson, who after finishing the highly successful and
cultural motif-rich EEE.§Z§.2£.§E° hath, devoted his efforts
to the war itself in his work with civilian defense and in
his research journey to North Africa. The plays resulting
from Anderson and Sherwood's first hand experiences with
the real war are strikingly similar in mode, in weaknesses,
and in their critical and popular failures. Both attempt a
naturalistic look at the war. Both suffer from faulty

structure. Critics complained that The Rugged Path was

139

actually two plays--one about a journalist frustrated in
1940 by the power of the paper's financial interests to
influence editorial policy and make it innocuous when it
should crusade for the good guys (in this case the unpopular
communists), and the second about the journalist, who joins
the Navy and begins looking for a personal faith. In this
part of the play the journalist, Morey Vinion by name and
played on Broadway by Spencer Tracy, declares, "I want to
find out whether there is really anything in this world

"92 The question brings to mind. 0f

worth fighting for.
course, the questions of King McCloud, but more importantly,
it also makes the bearer question the unity of this
character's conception. Was not this puzzled seeker the
crusading journalist of the first act who believed
passionately in freedom and the struggle against total-
itarianism?

The character is not consistent; the structure is

not intelligible because it relies on the divided character.

The play is not integrated just as Storm Qperation is not

 

because it fails to pull together its reportorial and

romantic strands. In short, it is, like Storm Qperation,

a journalistic play, a product of immediate war experi-
ences, and not an expression marked by cultural or religious
motifs or figures. Morey Vinion may be seen to some extent
as a sacrificial figure--he is the liberal sacrificed, the
play suggests, for the purpose of teaching something to

those moved by motives of money and selfish interests

140

rather than by concern for justice and freedom. The theme
becomes clear as his wife echoes a verse from Paul, a

verse read at Morey's funeral after he has died fighting
with Filipino guerillas. "For the trumpet shall sound,

and the dead shall be raised incoruptible, and we shall be
changed." She questions her brother, George, the editor of
the paper Morey resigned from in protest. "'We shall be
changed.‘ . . . Are you changed, George, because of what
Morey did? Am I changed? Has his death had any effect on
all the things he fought against and hated in his life?"
(p. 343). The scope is narrowed from the Quizz West every-
man to the liberal, but the instructive communal sacrifice
remains, unable though its present is to unify and make

significant a badly bifurcated play.
Abstract and Practical Morality

I am a moral writer, often too moral a writer, and I
can't avoid, it seems, that last summing up.
Lillian Hellman, Preface to Four Plays by
Li an Hellman

There are people who eat the earth and eat all the
people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. . . .
It ain't right to stand and watch them do it.

Addie, The Little Foxes

As a belligerent moralist, what Miss Hellman most wants
or her audience is undoubtedly that they should go out
and act more generously, more socially, more nobly
because of what her plays set forth. But with her
experience she should know that you cannot drive a
theatre audience to shoulder a gun for a cause or even
to sign on the dotted line as they leave the house just
because you have dinned your moral into their ears.
Edith J. R. Isaacs

141

The paradigm suggested by Anderson's and now
Sherwood's adjustments during the war period applies to
Lillian Hellman and her pre-war and wartime activities. But
not exactly. She demonstrated greater concern and personal
involvement in the European conflict earlier than either of
her male colleagues, and she was never a professed pacifist.
Stopping over in Paris after a visit to a 1937 theatre
festival in Moscow, Hellman was persuaded by communist
journalist Otto Simon to go to Spain. The persuading was
easily accomplished reports Miss Hellman in §g_Unfinished
Woman: "I had strong convictions about the Spanish war,
about Fascism-Nazism, strong enough to push just below the

surface my fear of the danger of war."93

Her convictions
deepened as events unfolded.

After the United States entered the big war, she
wrote a high quality propaganda movie, and like Sherwood
and Anderson, this scrappy, diminutive woman toured a
distant front. Though Miss Hellman's tour of the Russian
front in late 1944 and early 1945 did not lead to a play as
had Anderson's tour of North Africa and Sherwood's numerous
tours of the Pacific, it did result in much publicity. She
was, after all, a woman, a widely known and highly
successful playwright, and the first civilian foreigner to
visit the Red Army front. She spoke with high ranking
Russian officers, and though she missed seeing Stalin, he
sent her his apologies pleading that he was too busy with

94

the Poles to get away. It was all quite newsworthy,

142

and her favorable reports of the Russian people and army
received circulation as news items and a long article in
Colliers' March 31, 1945 issue.95 In effect she was working
to keep public opinion favorably inclined toward the
.Russian allies. This had been the goal of her only major
effort at propaganda, her writing of the screenplay for
EEE.§2£EE.§EEE° The movie was one of several appearing in
1943 which highlighted Russian resistance to the Nazi
invasion and paid tribute to Russian peasant and guerilla
actions. The results of Hellman's combining of her screen—
writing experience and propagandisic techniques was a story
similar to Steinbeck's play of a Norwegian village's
resistance in The_§ggg is 2933, and, though somewhat
disappointing to the playwright, a highly popular movie.96
The credits were almost formidable: the screenplay was by

Hellman, music by Aaron Copland, lyrics by Ira Gershwin,

and the cast included Walter Brennan, Anne Baxter, Walter

Huston, Dana Andrews, Erich Von Stroheim, Dean Jagger, Ann

Harding, and introduced Farley Granger.

She had become a war servant, though her service
did not draw her far from the activities of play and
screenwriting as they had Sherwood, and to some extent,
Anderson. But Hellman had not always been interested in
using her craft to speak of the world struggle. Indeed,
though she became more personally concerned and involved
with the European war earlier than Anderson, Shaw, or

Sherwood, her plays before Watch on the Rhine, 1941

 

 

 

143

probably reflect less concern with the world than do those
of her colleagues. She, like them, was to undergo a
transformation, not from pacifist to interventionist and
war supporter, but from abstract moralist to social or
practical moralist.

Critics see Hellman's early plays following the
Ibsen pattern of carefully constructed psychological
motivation and clear social content. The plays, in fact,
are carefully crafted; each character's particular driving
or paralyzing force is laid bare for the audience, and each
character and force is usually given a counter force or
foil. But on closer examination, one wonders if the
supposed social content is not after all somewhat illusory
and superficial. Her works are, to use a phrase of
Northrup Frye's "distortions of realism in the interests

of structure.”97

Her pre-war plays, for instance are
actually morality plays written as melodramas in which the
forces of evil meet forces of good with some theatrical
pyrotechnics as the result. Hellman's vision is of such
strong evil, however, that the plays become inverted
morality plays. As Joseph Wood Krutch notes about The
Little EBEEE' "Virtue never triumphs, and neither does
wickedness get it in the neck. The curtain always goes

98 Her vision

down upon wrong in the saddle riding hard."
does not try to account for evil as Anderson and Sherwood's
had metaphorically tried to do by using the traditional

chain of being image of man as half beast and half angel.

 

 

 

 

144

For Hellman evil is an unexplained force that seems to
inhabit wholly and relentlessly motivate certain charac-
ters. In her dramatic world the good individual is weak,
ineffectual, and often as not, simply silly.

The clearest example of this world vision, so
different from the tragic but somehow more hopeful ones of
Sherwood and Anderson, is the popular and critical failure,
2212.22.92E2' 1936. The plot of this mid-depression play
concerns a strike at an Ohio town's only important factory.
The factory has long been owned by the Rodman family, and a
close relationship of cooperation has developed between
workers and the family. Hence the strike is called reluc-
tantly only after Andrew Rodman has, also reluctantly, cut
wages due to falling sales and rigorous competition.
Andrew is a good man, torn between an almost nostalgic
devotion to the town and his workers and the demands of
being a capitalist. But he is also a weak man and is
easily manipulated by his ruthless lawyer, Ellicott, who
loves, in a tepid subplot, Rodman's unhappy, unfaithful
wife. Under Ellicott's influence, Andrew orders strike
breakers into town. They turn out to be lead by gangsters
who foment trouble that not even the strong labor leader,
Leo Whaen, can prevent. The result is a riot and killings.

The story seems to promise a social message about
labor's right to strike and about distorted capitalist
values and the effect of such values on the town. But the

message finally fails to be delivered because it is

145

absorbed in the concern for both the personal and abstract
moral values of the characters. Andrew is weakness
personified. In a description of himself he admits his
unsuitedness for combat. "The delicate prince in his ivory
tower--," he says, "was carefully protected from the dust
and din of battle."99 Being unsuited and cowardly, he
abdicates his authority, refuses to face up to his
responsibility. When villainous Ellicott and the gangsters,
Wilkie, step into the vacuum created by Andrew's abdication,
chaos results. The implication of individual responsibility
is clear, but seems negated by the sympathy Hellman allows
us to feel for the weak Andrew and by the mood of futile
idespair that pervades the final moments of the play. The
roar of absolute negation overpowers any suggestion of
possible reform or recovery. No possibility of action that
can alter the situation is allowed. More than a social
commentary, then, the play seems one of characters who
represent abstract moral forces, or types, who, in Frye's
words, "become assimilated to their functions in the

100 What we see is well-intentioned but ineffectual

plot."
goodness vs. cruelly clear-minded evil. As Andrew's wife,
Julie, tells him near the end of the play, "we've been
dealing with people shrewder than we are" (p. 147). In

the early Hellman plays, the evil of the universe is always
shrewder and stronger. So the good, weakness a given, are

destroyed. Andrew loses the respect of his workers; his

wife is to leave him. He is broken. His punishment is

 

146

the rest of his life. He sees no hope, no power that can
alter and mend.

An evasion is implied in both the very mode of
melodrama and in the giving way to a tone of despair.
Absorbed in the crafting of an internally perfected
structure, one can avoid looking outside that structure.
Relevance to external conditions may be passed over in
favor of the tight working of plot machinery and character
consistency, even though external problems are supposedly
dealt with by the play. Hellman notes that The Little
nggg, another finely honed melodrama, was first conceived
as she was leaving Spain, and the very conception of the
play was in part an act designed to evade the bitter
Iberian situation. "I knew that I only thought about the
play to keep from thinking about the plane ride and to keep
from admitting to myself that in a few hours I would be
having a fine dinner in Toulouse and would be so hungry
that I would forget my friends in Spain who would not have

so much that night or the next one."101

And in many ways
the play remained an evasion-~an abstract melodrama
showing the rapacious machinations of evil. Brooks
Atkinson noted this in his opening night review: "The
Little ngg§.is so cleverly contrived that it lacks
spontaneity. It is easier to accept as an adroitly
designed theatre piece than as a document in the study of

"102

humanity. The only connection to social reality that

Joseph Wood Krutch could find was that evil was connected

147

to acquisitiveness.103

Certainly one might suggest that
Hellman is creating a social history of the decline of the
old South and its way of life and values before the forces
Faulkner was to represent in Flem Snopes and family. But
the effect of the play, judging from critic's reactions and
from a reading of it, seems to be that of a theatre
spectacle, finely polished but socially superficial.

But when all this is said, one noted in the final
speeches a new element which begins to work against the
evasion implicit in the mode of melodrama. The luxury of
despair and futility so evident in 2225.52.92EE.15 missing
here. In this and subsequent plays, Hellman is harder on
the good people in that she expects more of them, and
though such characters as Birdie Hubbard and the weak-minded
Lavinia Hubbard do get sympathetic treatment, generally her
sympathy for weakness is transformed more clearly into
implied condemnation. In her world, where evil is so
cunning and violent, weakness, like despair, is a luxury
that cannot be afforded. So, if The Little nggg remains
in the tradition of 2212.22.9222 and shows a morally
bankrupt universe where evil triumphs and the good succumbs,
it also admits the possibility of good putting up a fight.
Such fighting implies facing the evil and working for some
kind of amelioration, basically a social concept. We can
hardly imagine Andrew actively resisting Ellicott or Wilkie,
and unless he can resist them there can be no hope of

ameliorating social ills. Social problems in the play are,

148

therefore, buried beneath absolute weakness and despair.

In 223 Little nggg Alexandra commits herself to fighting
and the active relationship between character and conditions
in the outside world is at least suggested.

This new attitude may very well stem from Miss
Helman's contact with the real, shrewd, and virulent evil
of the Spanish Civil War. Though it is dangerous to assign
so specific a source for the new element in Hellman's play,
one wonders if the idea of goodness's possible resolution
and strength did not also spring from her often ugly
experiences in Spain. She describes the foreign loyalists
as "noble" in an article appearing in The New Republic in
1938, and notes that she had had difficulty ever perceiving
such nobility before. "I had never used the word noble
before, and it came hard. . . . They had come a long way to
Spain, most of them making the cruel sixteen hour walk
across the Pyrenees. When it was over, if they came out
alive . . . there would be no glory and no reward. They
had come because they thought that if a man believed in
democracy he ought to do something about it. . . . Lying
there, I prayed, for the first time in many years, that

they would get what they wanted."104

Miss Helman saw good
waging a struggle and began to be personally committed to
that struggle.

Hence the dual quality of The Little figxgg, In

most respects it remains like Days 32 Come, a carefully

constructed but abstract melodrama. It is certainly less

149

topically related than 2223.22.2922' But it calls for new
strength and resolution in combatting evil. The terms of
the call, issued by the Hubbard's maid, Addie, suggest the
European as well as the universal aspects of struggle
against evil. Addie says, ”well, there are people who eat
the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible
with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around
and watch them eat it. Sometimes I think it ain't right to

stand and watch them do it."105

Connecting this call to
the callous manipulation she sees in her family, Alexandra
resolves to fight. She confronts Regina, played by Tallulah
Bankhead, whom she holds responsible for her father's
death. "Addie said there were people who ate the earth and
other people who stood around and watched them do it. And
just now Uncle Ben said the same thing. . . . Well, tell
him for me, Mama, I'm not going to stand around and watch
you do it. Tell him I'll be fighting as hard as he'll be
fighting some place where people don't stand around and
watch" (p. 247).

Whether or not the speech and commitment is very
convincing, whether or not it is an obscure call for some
kind of individual or national intervention in Europe106
is less important than the movement we note in Hellman's
thought. In 221§.EQ.EEEE there is individual weakness; in
Th3 Little EQEEE individual resolution; in her next play,

Watch 2h the Rhine, 1941, Kurt Muller's active fight in

the German underground. Hellman has moved both from a

150

perspective in which the personal and cosmic are the
dominant categories increasingly to a perspective in which
the theme of good and evil and one's response to them is
set in terms inescapably connected to the world situation.
There is a shift in focus from Andrew's personal disaster
because of his abdication of responsibility to the social
or communal implications of such abdications. Sara Muller,
Kurt's wife, quotes her father, an ambassador and statesman:
Sara: Do you remember, Mama? "For every man who lives
without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt."

Fanny: Yes. "We are liable in the conscience—balance

for thiogailor in Lodz, the black man in our South.

In preparing to write EEEEE.EE.E§E.§EEEEJ Miss
Hellman read no fewer than twenty-five books on political
argument, recent German history and memoirs, and had
compiled a notebook of some 100,000 words.108 She wanted
to steep herself and her play in the Europe and America of
1941 and give it the flavor of the real world. The play,
then, is a parable of America's coming to the consciounsess
of evil in general and the Nazi evil in particular.
America is Fanny Farrelly, and is, in Fanny's words,
"shaken out of the magnolias" (p. 330). But the play
combines with this theme the developing conviction of the
possible power and efficacy of good persons. In a
questionably necessary sub-plot, Fanny's hitherto aimless

son, David, is shown to have developed some strength of

conviction by persisting in an affair with the wife of the

151

play's villain, Tech. The play ends with Kurt killing Tech,
and with the once flippant and whimsical Fanny sobered and
having resolved to bear responsibility for helping Kurt in
his return to the resistance. In a less vehement but more
convincing statement than Alexandra's, Fanny declares her
resolution to do battle. "We will manage [to David]. You
and I. I'm not put together with flour paste. And neither
are you-~I'm happy to learn" (p. 300).

The play was intended obviously to demonstrate the
viciousness of fascists and their sympathizers, in Tech,
and to engage one's sympathies and aid for men like Kurt
Muller, who are willing to give up their families and
possibly their very lives for what they believe in. The
play was enthusiastically greeted by the critics, though
they disagreed as to how much inciting to action Hellman
was attempting. Brooks Atkinson found little. "Miss
Hellman does not beat the drum in favor of any cause. She
does not incite to action. . . . An intangible political
idea from abroad hovers over an American living-room and
brings a feeling of sadness, apprehension and restlessness

109 On the other side, Wolcott Gibbs, in a review

here."
titled ”This is It," called the play both "the best serious
play of the year" and a "necessary" play, implying its
immediate usefulness in inciting Americans to sympathy and,
maybe, to action. It is hard to accept Atkinson's evalu-

ation when one notes that the foreign idea not only hovers

over the living room; it enters and threatens Kurt Muller

 

 

 

152

with blackmail and the end of his usefulness. To continue
to fight for his cause, Muller must kill Tech. The action
is hardly intangible, and though the mood may ultimately
be one of sadness and regret that such action is necessary,
the point is just that--good men may have to commit murder.
It is a play justifying action, a more loosely constructed
play than is usual for Hellman, an outward looking play.
What distinguishes it in quality is Hellman's

attempt and success in integrating the social message with
realized characters. Fanny Farrelly the flightly Washing-
ton matron is charming but slightly irrelevant and unaware
of the modern world. But she is capable of believably
developing into a serious-minded person. She is rounder,
more intelligent, and more believable than the weak-minded,
decadent rich women of the earlier plays (Cora Rodman,
Lavinia, and Birdie Hubbard). Kurt and Sara are also full
characters, combining decency with a necessary ruthlessness,
longing for peace with a determination to wage war. They
have the depth of character that permits for contradictory
impulses and surprising action. And because the characters
are recognizably people rather than counters in an abstract
cosmic drama, the audience mustdeal with them and what
they immediately demonstrate about the world. Jordan Y.
Miller notes this in his essay on war dramas.

The impact of the audience's realization that the

tolerant, honest, and respectable father is, when

necessary, a coolly efficient killer who acts in order
that his kind of honesty and respectiability can endure,

153

is devastating. Like Sherwood's Finns, these repre—
sentatives of humane decencies who must function as
savages in a world gone wildly awry are superb charac-
terizations. War's ultimate meaning is stronger here
than any amount of noise of battle or slime of simulated
trenches.110

To this successful integration of modes Hellman was
not to return during the war. Her only other Broadway play
produced during the war, Th3 Searching Wihh, opened at the
Fulton Theatre on April 22, 1944, and showed a movement
opposite that of Sherwood and Anderson's use of the
journalistic mode late in the war. Thg_Searching Ei22.is
more clearly and precisely allegorical than any of her
previous works, and the allegory is more intensely social

111

and political than even in Watch gh_the Rhine. And

though Stark Young found the triangle plot line "pseudo-

analytical-psychological, head-in-the-box-office-feet-in-

112

the-clouds, feministic, novelistic rubbish," Life

 

found its "profound and disturbing truths" impressive
enough to make it one of the playwright's "most conse-

quential" works.113

Lewis Nichols agreed, finding Hellman
"exploring the current state of the world and the causes
which brought about its miserable condition. She pays her
sharp respects to the appeasers, who were wrong, to the
lackadaisical and to those who when the battle first
started against them withdrew and would fight no more."114
The play is, indeed, a parable of responsibility,

or rather, of the irresponsibility of a generation. If

responsibility is abdicated and evil ignored or toyed with,

154

it grows stronger and finally wounds the descendants of
those who shirked. Emily toys, Cassie tries to ignore, and
Alexander and Moses Taney, that outspoken liberal journalist
who quits his paper in disgust as Mussolini takes power,
both abdicate. Given the play's assumptions it seems
inevitable that Alexander and Emily's son be wounded and
about to lose his leg. The pattern is much the same as
that in 2222.22.99E23 Both plays have their weak or
wavering characters, both have children killed or wounded
because the forces of violence have not been checked by
responsibile, decisive action. But in Th2 Searching H129
Hellman makes her story a social-political allegory by
presenting private failure against a backdrop of European
history, from Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922 to
spring, 1944 when the Hazen's son, Samuel, returns home
ultimately to have his leg amputated.

On the personal level, the story deals with the
triangular relationship of Emily, Cassie, and Alexander.
Though Cassie and Alexander love each other, Alexander
marries Emily, for no very clear reason. Cassie and
Alexander meet periodically for relatively innocent re-
unions; Emily knows about the meetings but tries to ignore
and evade their implications. Structure and social impli—
cations are provided by Hellman's juxtaposing each personal
evasion with the evasion of dealing decisively with the
fascists. Cassie and Alexander evade the responsibility

of their love and make foolish choices as Victor Emmanuel

155

asks Mussolini to form a govenment. They evade making
correct commitments in their own lives, and they evade
the ominous implications of what is going on outside their
hotel in Rome. Cassie sees this. "We're an ignorant
generation. We see so much and know so little. Maybe
because we think about ourselves so much."115
The clearest evasion on both personal and political
levels comes as Chamberlain and Daladier prepared to give
Hitler his demands at Munich, and Alex must compose a cable
giving the United States government his judgment whether or
not the United States should silently allow appeasement.
At this point Emily has become involved with a gay,
fashionable set in Paris, where Alexander is serving. The
set includes bankers doing business with the Nazis and
Japanese, and in one of whose banks Emily has her money.
She is easily swayed by these men's soft line on fascism.
Responding to Emily's influence and her suggestion that if
war comes their son might have to fight, and to an unsubtle
hint by German envoy Von Stammer that if Washington would
not interfere at Munich perhaps Germany will destroy the
Russian communist menace, Alex ignores his own sense of the
fascist danger and sends a cable urging Washington not to
interfere with appeasement. He tries to rationalize his
action by saying that the individual is not important,
that his actions have no communal significance. "What the
hell has one man got to do with history? There's something

crazy about sitting here and thinking that what I say makes

156

any difference" (p. 84). So his cable reads, "I am con-
vinced that Mr. Chamberlain is working in the interests of
peace and his actions must not be judged too sharply"

(pp. 84-85).

The play suggests that individual men do have
significance in history, both personal and world history.
If a person refuses to see things straight and make the
hard choices, the personal and communal life is poisoned.
Cassie's life has become embittered and twisted because she
refused to face her loss of Alexander. Alex and Emily's
lives are half-fulfilled because of the triangular relation-
ship that has never been dealt with. The world war has
broken out and taken a resentful Samuel's leg because
"frivolous people" attempted to evade evil by appeasement.

Like the other major playwrights of the period,
Hellman was forced by the increasingly ominous world crisis
to make certain adjustments in her drama. By Thg_Searching
Eiflg she has moved a good distance from the tone and
content of 2222.22.92223 Though she never incorporates the
cultural and Christian motifs to the extent of her
colleagues, Anderson and Sherwood, she has moved in the
same general direction as they. She has moved from a
world in which the individual stands alone against a cosmic
background to one wherein the individual stands against a
social background, linked to other men, responsible to

other men for the implications of his action. The focus

 

 

 

 

 

 

157

has shifted from abstract to practical and from individual

to community.

III. EPIC THEATRE: THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

The Wedding of Form and Content

When the breath of creative imagination blows through
the theatre, what exhilaration to the lungs, what

refreshment to the spirit!
Rosamond Gilder, Theatre Arts

'Relax your predilections for the accustomed, the
received, and be ready to accept an extreme example of
idiosyncratic writing.‘
Thorton Wilder, Introduction to Gertrude Stein's
Four ih_America
Like Sherwood's There Shall he he Night, The Skin
2: Our Teeth is a statement of faith that man and civili-
zation will survive the Second World War. Unlike the
through numerous revivals. It is certainly of historical
importance, illustrating as it does the tendencies of World
War II dramas, already discussed in Anderson's The Eve g£
Sh. Mark, to use cultural image patterns. It is an impor-
tant play to this study because of the transformation of
these image patterns into a structure both topical and

universal, consistently popular and yet intrinsically

artistic. Probably no non-musical play represents as well

158

159

to make use of cultural motifs and myths. Probably no play
uses them so consciously or creates the complex texture of
reference and allusion that makes rewarding the kind of
literary analysis this chapter will try to provide. The
play as'a literary work and as a document of literary
cultural history, then, demands attention.

Because of its complexity and peculiar fusion of
motifs and mythic patterns, the play won for itself the
scepticism and outrage usually reserved for the avant-garde.
In the beginning, thirty-seven prospective investors
refused to put any money into the play because it was
obviously too incoherent and outrageous for Broadway. But
a few people believed it was good fun and good theatre,
including the future George Antrobus himself, Frederick
March, who acquired 5 percent interest in the show and gave
up $200,000 in movie contracts so he and his wife, Florence
Eldridge, could play the leads.1 The show went on and was
getting by, but at first only by the skin of its proverbial
title. Out-of-town audiences were as perplexed as the
thirty-seven reluctant investors. What was this thing on
the stage? During a preview performance on the eve of the
official New York opening, audience members talked back to
the cast and refused to applaud.2 After opening on
November 18, 1942 the critics tried to discuss and interpret
the eccentric play for their readers. But the audience
reaction remained sharply divided between incensed

bewilderment and genuine delight. Frederick March told a

160

lNew York EEEEE interviewer that the play "either makes
jpeople so mad they want to throw bricks at it, or they
love it. There isn't any middle point of view."3 Most of
the angry people just left--often demanding their money
‘back from box office and ticket broker. March reported

a taxi driver telling him that he had never picked up so

4 A few of the

many people at intermission time before.
incensed took pen in hand, e.g., the man so angered by
Brooks Atkinson's favorable review that he sent the critic
a letter ending with the words, "Watch out!"5
No play produced during the war years caused so

Steinbeck's The Moon ingown. Here was a play that played

 

havoc with the expectations of the casual theatre goer.
Vaudeville and drama and chaos were all mixed up in it;
nothing was as it should be. The props flew away when
Tallulah Bankhead dusted them. Miss Bankhead was supposedly
a maid, but she also seemed to play an actress playing a
maid, an actress who was so confused by the meaning of the
play that she stepped forward to confide her confusion to
the audience. It is in the third act, however,that the
ultimate confusion occurs. The stage manager stops the
action to rehearse a portion of the play that is yet to
come. It seems that part of the regular cast had dinner

together and had been made ill by the fish or lemon pie, the

cast cannot decide which. Some volunteer stand-ins need

to run through the ailing cast members' lines. So the

161

during-the-play rehearsal. Had the perplexed audience
'member seen the same thing happen at an Olsen and Johnson
revue, he would have likely laughed and enjoyed the fun.

But this play was by a serious if eccentric playwright who
had a reputation for writing of sublime and solemn subjects.
Hence, confusion.

Critics were more aware of the integration of
styles that Wilder was attempting. John Anderson of the
New York Journal American labeled the show a "cosmic
vaudeville." Richard Lockridge in the New York §EE called
it a "fresh and delightful jest." But, though the critics
were generally able to correctly identify the revue,
burlesque, Hellzapopin tradition that informed the play,
they were divided as to what use Wilder had put the
tradition. Lockridge seemed to sense little really serious
intent. "It is not profound nor does it pretend to be,"
he said. It is comedy, outrageous and unexpected and full

of tricks."6

The New York Eggh's Wilella Waldorf was more
cynical. "Mr. Wilder must simply have decided one night
that if Olsen and Johnson can get away with what they've
been doing in the theatre all these years, there is no good
reason why Thorton Wilder shouldn't turn out something of
the kind with a dash of philosophy tossed in here and there
to remind us that he has, after all, a reputation for pro-

found and lofty thinking."7 And so, the critical contro~

versy took shape around the question of how seriously and

162

creatively Wilder had used the revue style--how serious
'was the play.

Years later, in the 1957 Preface to Th£g§_§lgy§J
Wilder claimed a sincere and serious impulse behind the
play's composition. It was a response to the world situ-
ation: The Skin of Our Egghh_"was written on the eve of

our entrance into the war and under strong emotion and I
think it mostly comes alive under conditions of crisis."8
Whatever it was for a spectator, the play was for Wilder
obviously a statement of faith. It was not as positive as
Anderson's faith in cosmic evolution toward greater uni—
versal justice and goodness. Evil is not conquered in The.
§E$2.2£.QEE.E§EEE.33 Madeline Guest suggests that it will
be in Candle _ih 213 M. In _'I_'h_e_ §_k_i_h o_f_ 92E. T_e_et_;_h Wilder
envisions survival and continued human striving as the
future of mankind--foolish and noble, futile and dignified
as that survival and striving might be. Many found the
vision reassuring. Burton Rasco of the Whhlg Telegram:
"In my opinion this is the best play the war is likely to
produce. Certainly it is the most comforting."9
Some critics found this vision of man's future not
idealistic enough to be really affirmative. John Gassner
saw a kind of evasion in Wilder's use of stage tricks to
obscure a vision of man unable to break the cycles of

disaster. ”This skittishness is something more than willful

theatricalization; it is rooted in hesitancy, negativism,

10

and conservatism." And those who fight accept the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

163

tragic implications of Wilder's image of a man heir to
continual catastrophe, felt that the power of the theme was
lost in Wilder's integration of serious intent with
Hellzapgppin's hi-jinks. Harrison Smith of Thngaturday

Review 2E Literature identified Wilder's use of the revue

 

genre as many average patrons did not, but he felt it
subverted the source of the play's power. "Here is a
morality play . . . a morality play without that moral ardor
which could have captured the imagination of the audience
with its recital of mankind's long agony, his indomitable
hope. It substituted stage tricks and the charming antics

of Tullulah [sic] Bankhead."11

The critical question to
Harrison and others, then, was not whether the play was
intelligible, but whether its form could carry the play's
idea, whether this particular fusion of form and idea could
be successful.

It is hardly fair to say that Wilder "substituted"
tricks for a serious consideration of his theme. Actually
the "tricks" often embody the theme. When Tallulah Bankhead-
Miss Somerset-Sabina refuses to speak a particular speech
in Act II because it may hurt a friend who is in the
audience, and when the regular actors get sick in Act III
and must be replaced by employees of the theatre, the play
becomes analogous to mankind. It too is surviving only by
the skin of its teeth. The form suggests the message in

what is really a brilliantly original stage metaphor. And

it would be dangerous to stress too heavily the tragic

164

implications of the play. EEE.§E£E.2£.92£.22232.wa3
obviously conceived in the comic mode. It does not deal
with an ultimate catastrophe, though it deals with ultimate
catastrophes. It deals with man in the continuing process
of confrontation with himself and the universe rather than
with one final confrontation. The play's tragic impli-
cations are certainly there but are buried beneath the
weight of a different perspective.

Wilder's Sources: Joyce, Brecht,
and the Human Race

The right-and-wrong of "Finn" and "Skin"
Has raised a din of angry voices,
While, blissfully exempt of sin,
Wilder, withal, re-Joyces.
Melville Cane in The Saturda
Review 22 Literature‘
The Pulitzer judges felt the play to be neither so
confused nor confusing as many spectators and critics, and
on May 3, 1943 awarded it the Pulitzer Prize for the best
original American play of 1942. Wilder, a captain with
the 328th Fighter Squadron of the Army Air Corps during the
play's production and at the time of the award, had
received a Pulitzer for Our Town, 1938, and The Bridge 2:
San Luis Rey, 1928. But the controversy about the play
had not ended in triumphant recognition of Wilder's
creative originality. Enjoying now both a long run and

the prestige of a Pulitzer, and with Miss Bankhead soon to

be named best actress by the Variety critics' poll, the play

165

remained the center of controversy. Almost simultaneously
lost the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award because of
an intense controversy that had sprung to life in the
December 19, 1942 issue of The Saturday Review 22.2lEEEJ
21:22-

In that issue Joseph Campbell and Henry Robinson,
both working on 5 Skeleton Egy.hg Finnegan's Whhg, charged
that the play was actually a plagiarized version of
Joyce's work. They found that "important plot elements,
characters, devices of presentation, as well as major
themes and many of the speeches, [were] directly and frankly
imitated, with but the flimsiest veneer to lend an American

12 Campbell and Robinson

touch to the original features.”
suggested as coming from Joyce the play's circular form
with a female character opening and closing the play, the
play's divisions ending with catastrophe (as Finnegan's
£252.had ended with cosmic dissolutions), a central every-
man figure (Joyce's H. C. Earwicker is a man "who has
endured throughout all the ages, though periodically over—

whelmed by floods, wars, and other catastrophes")13 Sabina

(Finnegan's Wake's garrulous housekeeper), Mrs. Antrobus's

 

letter on the secret of women and of life, the Cain/Abel
theme, and other elements. Campbell and Robinson's
attitude was slightly ambiguous. They did not exactly
condemn Wilder as a surreptitious scoundrel. "On the one

hand, he gives no credit to his source, masking it with an

166

Olsen and Johnson technique. On the other hand, he makes
no attempt to conceal his borrowings, emphasizing them
rather, sometimes even stressing details which with a
minimum of ingenuity he could have suppressed or altered."14
Their most intense scorn was reserved for critics, and
seemed to stem from scholars who have seen the object of
their greatest intellectual passion mistreated. If they
were puzzled by Wilder's open use of Joyce, they were more
puzzled when they considered the critics, "those literary
advisors who four years ago dismissed Finnegan's Whhg as a
literary abortion not worth the modern reader's time, yet
today hail with rave notices its Broadway reaction. The
banquet was rejected but the Hellzapoppin's scrap that fall
from the table they clutch to their bosom."15
Campbell and Robinson's charges sparked a lively
debate in the serious journals; the more popular magazines,
such as gigs and Newsweek, looked on, reporting this
academic controversy with slightly amused detachment.16
The accusing scholars had support for their charges from
such respected critics as Edmund Wilson, who noted that
Wilder had thoroughly studied Finnegan's Wake's text and
had even written and lectured on the book. The play was
indebted to Joyce in its very conception and plan, and
Wilder must have been aware of it, Wilson concluded.17
Nevertheless, even those who agreed that Wilder had used

Finnegan's Wake in one way or another did not feel that a

serious plagiarism had been committed. "Joyce is a

167

great quarry . . ." said Wilson, "out of which a variety of
writers have been getting and will continue to get a variety
of different things; and Wilder is a poet with a form and
imagination of his own who may find his themes where he
pleases without incurring the charge of imitation."18
Harrison Smith saw the problem not as plagiarism, after all,
but that Wilder had "pulled a fast one on the public and

"19 Smith does not

especially . . . dramatic critics.
precisely define what the fast one was; presumably it is
garbing serious Joycean themes in vaudeville's clothes.
The people associated with the play reacted to the
controversy with combined amusement and playfulness.
Producer, Michael Myerberg told reporters that Wilder got
the idea for the play when a chicken landed in his lap at
Hellzapoppin'.20

la fille du regiment asked drily, "Who the hell am I
21

Tallulah Bankhead-Somerset-Sabina-Lillith-
supposed to be anyhow?" Her transformations were
confusing enough without adding an overlay of Joyce's
protean characters. Though in his 1957 Preface to Thggg
indebted" to Joyce's work, in 1942 Wilder reacted brusquely
to the controversy. His only comment to reporters was

"let everyone interested read Finnegan's W353 and decide
for himself."22 Perhaps this seemed a wise answer at the
time, retaining as it did both the interest in the
controversy and suggesting that he had nothing to fear.

But his refusal to respond at length to Campbell and

168

Robinson's charges had its repercussions. Even those

critics who took a rather sceptical view of the charges and
their importance were upset by Wilder's silence, and when it
came time to make the Drama Critics' Circle Award selection,

they could not bring themselves to vote for The Skin 2E Our

 

Egghh even though it seemed to be the most original and
entertaining play of the season. In December, 1942 Wolcott
Gibbs had parodied the controversy in Thg_Ngw Yorker,
claiming, tongue in cheek, that the play had actually been
lifted from one of Gibb's own supposed works, Nabisco.23
In May he admitted being intimidated by cultured companions
during the Critics' Award voting, and consequently casting
his ballot for Thg_Patriots by Sidney Kingsley, a play

Gibbs felt inferior to The Skin of Our Teeth.24 He was

not alone persuaded to change his vote, and the history
play won.25
Except for costing Wilder the Critic's Award, the
Finnegan's W252 controversy was probably useful to the
appreciation of the play, for it suggested the serious
creative and philosophical intent that lay behind what
some critics called a mere stunt show. If the controversy
was unfair to Wilder, it was so in not suggesting the depth
of Wilder's indebtedness to others, and in not crediting
his accomplishment in fusing elements from such diverse
sources as the Bible and Brecht, Homer via Joyce, and

Olsen and Johnson. Probably no play during the war, and

possibly none since, tried to include so much that was

169

culturally and mythologically significant to Western man—-
tried to be, that is, what Northrup Frye would call
encyclopedic. And the inclusion was not a cold blooded
intellectual exercise. Wilder claimed his statement of
faith in man's ability to endure and to preserve humanistic
values was written under great emotion. He felt so strongly
about the war as a struggle to preserve civilized values
that he enlisted in the Air Corps in May, 1942. It is
possible and perhaps likely that the living models for the
image of a preserving and persevering humanity were the
British, for Wilder toured factories and countryside and
talked with Britons in 1941. He was impressed by their
calmness and resolution in the face of the disastrous

26 In the Britons he saw, if not the

German attacks.
inspiration, then the corroboration for this vision of man
standing up to threatened catastrophe and somehow pulling
through.

It was a powerful theme, an epic theme, and yet

threatened to be fatuous unless it found adequate creative

embodiment. Wilder had faced the same problem in Our Town

 

of trying to suggest the relationship of man's daily life
to universal truths. He solved the problem by creating
characters who were both individuals and types, defined
mainly by their life roles. Wilder avoided that flat,
static quality that might seem endemic in characters
defined by roles (misanthrope, hypochondriac, etc.) by

allowing the roles to alter slightly as the play progresses.

170

Emily is transformed from a rather vain and romantic young
girl to a shy but receptive sweetheart to a practical farm
wife (glimpsed in the graveyard scene). A character defined
by his role may seem a flat, stereotyped creature if shown
only at one point in time. By showing characters and roles
transformed by time and circumstance, a roundness and
dynamism is suggested; we see men and man in the process

of living. Yet we are never allowed to quite believe in

the individuality of any of the characters. The stage
manager is there to remind us that the characters are, in

fact, types or symbols and that he is in charge of
presenting them to us. They do not quite live a dramatic
life of their own.

The stage manager is in effect a kind of narrator.
He directs the proceedings and even establishes the tone
for 92;.ngh, allowing us neither to feel too superior to
these small town, almost local color types, nor too
sentimental about their loves and deaths. It may seem
strange that Wilder used such a figure. In 1935, after the
negative critical and popular reaction to Heaven's My_
Destination, Wilder announced prematurely that he would
write no more fiction. He felt that he would move to drama
where he could write without being an editoral presence.
Yet the presence certainly remains in 92£.22!Br In Thg_
§§ifl.2£.92£.222£§.it is also felt--in the tricks used to

destroy illusion, in Sabina's references to "the author"

and to the play's obscurity, in the Act III stand-ins'

171

discussion about the author's purpose in having the hours

march across the stage. In both Our Town and The Skin 9:

 

Egghh, then, the epic events are not so much presented
dramatically as they are narrated, presented by a figure or
presence that is apparent to the spectator. The goings on
are given meaning through form and through the suggestions
of the narrator, be he the stage manager or the playwright
that Miss Somerset rails against. Wilder is fusing, to
some extent, Aristotle's two methods of presenting material
--the dramatic and the epic, or narrative. In fact, it is
probable that Wilder was actually creating a theatre that
can be called epic in both of that word's senses--a
narrative theatre like Brecht's and a theatre tapping the
content, theme, and forms of those chronicles of great
human events and cycles, the epics and myths.

From 1928 to 1930 Wilder studied the Continental
European theatre. Observors note the influences of
Strindberg and the German expressionists on Wilder's one
act and subsequent plays. A figure only occasionally
mentioned as an influence is Bertholt Brecht.27 It would
seem, however, that Wilder was actually greatly influenced
by this man's theory of drama. Though I can find no record
that Wilder met or read Brecht, or saw any of his work, it
seems likely that he somehow knew of the German's work.

The opera, Mahagonny, was presented in 1927 and again in
1930 in Berlin. It was for the 1930 production that

appeared Brecht's important notes on that opera and his

172

statement of epic theatre theory, "The Modern Theatre is
Epic Theatre." Whether Wilder saw the opera or read the
notes is, however, unimportant. Even if he did not, his
theatre in EEE.§§EE.2£.QEE.EESE§.can best be described in
the same terms Brecht used to describe his own narrative,
didactic, episodic dramas.

The central fact of epic theatre as Brecht describes
it in "The Modern Theatre is Epic Theatre“ is its use of
techniques aimed at distancing the spectator from the
events and characters. The goal is for the spectator to
contemplate the spectacle on a rational level rather than
to have judgment swamped by emotional involvement. The
chief means for reducing emotional involvement is to
reduce the continuous plot wherein we are introduced to a
set of characters' problems, and we watch them work those
problems out in a series of organically related scenes.
Brecht proposes a series of scenes independent of one
another presented with a highly theatrical use of the

narrative mode; the characters become pawns for the

editorial presence to manipulate. Our Town and The Skin 2E

 

Teeth feature such a narrative, episodic plot line. The

Skin 2£_Our Teeth's first act concerns Antrobuses and the

 

group of refugees, who represent the civilized values and
achievements or man, all confronting an advancing wall of
ice. The second act takes the same family to the 600,000th
annual convention of mammals at Atlantic City and confronts

those mammals, and their slackening moral standards, with

173

the Biblical Flood. The second act, except in using the
same characters and suggesting the same catastrophic theme,
has no organic relation to Act I. Each could stand as a
dramatic entity. Even the perspectives of time are changed,
as numerous critics have pointed out. The first act sees
man in relation to geological time; the seond act sees him
in terms of Biblical or Judeao-Christian mythic time. The
third act has a new system of action again and a new time
perspective. Here Antrobus is a general home from the wars
and is in no realistic way related to the Adam-inventor
figure of Act I or the wandering husband-Noah figure of

Act II. The time perspective is historical, possibly
contemporary. All this jumping about (an effect Brecht
suggested in "The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre" with
the term "montage") destroys any personal emotional involve-
ment a spectator could feel. To some extent the spectator,

28

in Brecht's words "stands outside, studies." In Brecht's

epic theatre and in Wilder's work "the human being is the

29 And man is seen not as a fixed point

object of study."
with a single though perhaps complex personality, but as a
person working and adjusting and changing in relation to
the larger social and cosmic systems. Brecht and Wilder,

in Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, present man as a

 

process.

In addition to the basic conceptual similarities

Wilder can be seen using some of the same stage techniques

174

as the German playwright. Brecht, for instance, called
attention to his using elements of "unreality, irration—
ality, and lack of seriousness," at the right moment for a

“30 Wilder's use of Olsen and Johnson

"double meaning.
tricks is suggested here. The collapsing, flying sets, the
ushers bringing up broken chairs to build the fire to save
mankind--these jokes destroy any illusion of reality that
may have crept into the proceedings. They are amusing, yet
they suggest the unpredictability of the universe and the
need for cooperative human effort if man is to survive.
Brecht and Wilder are both insisting that the
spectator recognize the stage to be a stage and not a room
with the fourth wall removed. In the 1941 essay, "Some
Thoughts on Playwrighting," Wilder declared that "the
stage is a fundamental pretense and it thrives on the
acceptance of that fact in the multiplication of additional

31 Both playwrights used pr0ps, then, only as

pretenses."
they seemed necessary to suggest locale or suggest some
aspect of theme, such as Wilder's collapsing walls in Act I
and Act III. Brecht, via Piscator, was one of the first
users of slide projections; slides open the first two acts
of IEE.§E£2.2£.QEE.EEEE§' Brecht used the slides as one
means of furthering his alienating, distancing effect
(”they do not set out to help the spectator but to block
him: they prevent his complete empathy"),32 and also to

comment on the action. A character mouthing capitalist

claims might be exposed by projected documents which belie

175

those claims. Again the appeal is to be to reason and
judgment. Wilder's use of slide projections seems less
theoretically purposeful than Brecht's. The first act
opens with a slide of the sunrise and a supposed news
reporter noting that mankind has been granted one more day.
The effect, coming as it does before the curtain goes up
and the play begins, is to startle and to suggest that the
spectator must not get comfortable in his seat expecting

a conventional play. In this sense it serves to introduce
theme and distance the observor, and it does suggest a
narrative presence and point of view. But in general,
Wilder does not rely on slides to make his point.

Another stage technique Wilder shared with Brecht's
epic theatre was what Brecht called "moral tableau."33 An
example occurs in the final scene when the hours of the
night march across the stage speaking passages from
Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, and the Bible. As they go
across, a tableau forms. George Antrobus, stands watching
them; Mrs. Antrobus, the eternal mother and homemaker, sits
sewing; Gladys, the young female figure who promises a
continuing life force, moves toward her mother's chair; and
Henry, unreconciled evil but still a member of the racial
family broods on the edge of the scene. The tableau
embodies the vision and nearly all the values present in
the play--the humanistic values of great philosophy and
literature, the value of the family, and the image of evil

present in the midst of it all.

 

 

176

This moral tableau suggests Brecht, but it also
illuminates some of the differences in the playwrights.
Brecht used his theatre for proposing to the spectator a
relatively specific Marxist program. Wilder's theatre is
more vague, more a presentation of universal than purely
social or class man. Indeed, the Marxist reviewer of Th3
hgngasses, Alvah Bessie, complained that the main weakness
in Wilder's allegory was that it did not particularize the
evil (in this case Naziism) and did not instruct the
spectator in how to combat it. "You cannot deal with such
a problem in broad allegorical terms," Bessie said, "and
hope to contribute to your audience's understanding of a
particular evil you are fighting."34

It is here that Wilder and Brecht and other
Marxists part. For Brecht and the Marxists, theatre was
to promote immediate and quite clearly determined action.
For Wilder theatre was to tap what might be called the
general racial, communal memory. The principle of great
literature, Wilder said in his Preface to EEEEE.£lEX§J was
what he called "recollection." "The response we make when
we 'believe' a work of the imagination is that of saying,
'This is the way things are. I have always known it with-
out being fully aware that I knew it. Now in the presence
of this play or novel or poem . . . I know that I know
it."'35 The process of recollection is suggested in Act I

of The Skin 22 Our Teeth. Moses and Homer, taken in by

Antrobus to be sheltered from the advancing ice, start to

177

sing their culturally seminal works. After a few lines
"Homer's face shows he is lost in thought and memory and
the words die away on his lips. The [other] refugees
likewise nod in dreamy recollection." As Moses recites
"the same dying away of the words takes place, and on the
part of the REFUGEES the same retreat into recollection.
Some of them murmur, 'Yes, yes."'36
The scene suggests that though the novel may deal
with individual fates and evoke individual identification,
the theatre is a group activity fostering communal memory
and communal activity. When the spectacle uses culturally
significant motifs and allusions it focuses the individual's
imagination upon the experiences and wisdom of the com-
munity. Thus, the action on stage becomes significant not
only for an individual spectator, but for the group or
community assembled. In "Some Thoughts on Playwrighting,"
Wilder declared that "the excitement induced by pretending
a fragment of life is such that it partakes of ritual and

festival, and requires a throng."37

The play, in addition
to suggesting contemporary times and problems suggests the
patterns that the audience has almost unconsciously

accepted from their religious, philosophical, in short,
their general cultural milieu, and in fact the play collects
people to engage in a celebration of those patterns.

Theatre deals, then, in myth. In the 1941 essay Wilder

claimed that myth is central to creative expression. "The

myth, the parable, the fable are the fountainhead of all

178

fiction and in them is seen most clearly the didactic,
moralizing employment of a story. Modern taste shrinks
from emphasizing the central ideal that hides behind the
fiction, but it exists there nevertheless, supplying the

unity to fantasizing. . . ."38

Makinngyth Fun

When the pre-flood frivolities of mankind are equated
with "Fun at the Beach" at Atlantic City we admire the
skill with which Wilder infuses contemporary comedy
with mythic apprehension.
Gerald Rabkin, "Th2 Skin of Our Teeth and The Theatre
— EThortonWld-e?“

232.§§i£.2£.92£.222£§ is Wilder's most complex and
creative attempt to present myth in the theatre and to
stir the spectators' racial recollection and hope that man
has survived catastrophe in the past and will again in the
present. He was influenced and indebted to Joyce for that
author's example of creative fusion of myths, but his own
achievement was significant. When before had such an act
of mythic fusion and expression been attempted in American
theatre? Never, certainly, had mythic expression been
given in American idiom with techniques from diverse
quarters as Brecht and Olsen and Johnson so smoothly
combined. It was a remarkable accomplishment of transfor-

mation and fusion hopefully tapping racial and mythic

179

recollection and yet not ignoring the local and national
characteristics.39
Myth, more precisely defined than has yet been done,
deals with human, natural, and supernatural cycles--
creation and apocalypse. According to Northrup Frye in
Anatomy 2E Criticism, there has been in every age a
particular encyclopedic work, i.e., a work or related body
of works that becomes the sacred and revered source of that
culture's mythic explanations and belief. For Western man
the encyclopedic form, the one that includes all the basic
mythic patterns, has been the Bible, and it is to this
central encyclopedic document that Wilder naturally turned
in the creation of his own rather encyclopedic play. But
like Eliot and Joyce, Wilder recognized that our cultural
sources and traditions are broader than the Judaeo-
Christian background, The identities of his characters
reflect this recognition. Thus George Antrobus is a
respectable, New Jersey citizen; the apocyphal Adam who
has (almost) carnal relations with Lilith; the Genesis
Adam, father of mankind, husband to Eve, subject to
temptation, and source of evil for mankind; Noah; protector
of the community laws and welfare. He is also one of the
Roman soldiers who ravished one of the Sabine women,
Odysseus, warrier and protector of the community.and
figure eternally being separated from home while Penelope
awaits keeping the home fires burning. The other charac—

ters also partake of simultaneous mythic identities.

180

Mrs. Antrobus is Eve, life force and mother; Penelope,
protector of family values and received morality, protector
of the home, not against the suiters but against that more
potent danger in 1942 of despair and discouragement.

Sabina is the Sabine woman, the apocryphal Lilith, the
Homeric Calypso. She is also the more contemporary camp
follower and feather duster, exposition-giving maid from
realistic drama's conventions. Apparently in this maid
role she is to stir the spectator's theatrical recollection.
Henry is obviously Cain, and Gladys a young, vaguely life—
force female.

Having fused characters with identities that should
suggest to the member of the Western-Christian-American
audience certain patterns and stories, Wilder had to
dramatize somehow those cycles that are the patterns of
myth. Every act and nearly every page suggests opposites
held in tension, cycles continually in process. The
opening moments of the play suggest one of the three
cyclic movements Frye notes in myth--the birth-death,
creation-apocalypse movement. The "News Events of the
World" slide shows the sun rising in the continuing
creation and continuing cycle of day. The announcement of
the new day has an addendum, however. "The society for
affirming the end of the world at once went into a special
session and postponed the arrival of that event for TWENTY-
FOUR HOURS" (p. 69). The apocalypse. Next the newscaster

announces a wedding ring found with the inscription "To

181

Eva from Adam. Genesis 11:18" (p. 70). Creation. Then

an announcement of the first act's catastrophe, the glacial
wall moving across New England. Apocalypse. The play ends
at the beginning, in a sense, with the midnight hour
figure's reading the opening of Genesis. Wilder has
carefully given circular, cyclical movement to the play (as-
Joyce gave to Finnegan's 2252) with creation and apocalypse
occurring regularly. There appears to be no resting point
for man, as there would be in tragic catastrophe or in the
final banishment of evil and vanity in the formation of a
comedy's revitalized society. There is only the continuing
process that is at once reassuring in the autumn of 1942,
and frightening and wearying to contemplate. "The end of
this play isn't written yet," Sabina tells the audience.
"We have to go on for ages and ages yet" (p. 137).

The creation-apocalypse cycle is complemented in
the play by the Judeao-Christian cycle of fall and forgive-
ness. As the Genesis Adam, Antrobus figures as the source
of human guilt and evil. Sabine declares that "every
muscle goes tight every time he passes a policeman"

(p. 71). He is the father of Cain, and as such is the
ultimate source of Cain's weaknesses. In Act II when
Henry-Cain throws a stone at a negro, he justifies his act
with his father's philosophy in that act, ”Enjoy yourselves."
”All I wanted to do," says Henry, "was--have some fun"

(p. 102). It is in Act II that the nature of Antrobus's

182

fall into sin is portrayed, and this portrayal corresponds
to the Biblical account of man's fall. Antrobus, now
elected president of the Ancient and Honorable Order of
Mammals, Subdivision Humans, begins to suffer what the
fortune teller, an oracular prophet's presence, calls the
"Great Man dizziness." Great Man dizziness is essentially
no more than pride, sin's Biblically ascribed basis.
Because of his dizziness, George is vulnerable to Lily
Sabina's temptations, feels superior to his commitments
and is ultimately ready to divorce Mrs. Antrobus. Suddenly
Mrs. Antrobus becomes the basis and secret of all life;

she speaks not only for the family but for God. In this
role she tells George that she selected him, not because he
was worthy, but because together they made something like
the Jehovah-Hebrew covenant, which indeed is usually
expressed in the Old Testament in terms of a marriage pact.
"I married you because you gave me a promise. The promise
made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made
up for mine" (p. 113). Because of his dizziness—pride and
breaking of the marriage covenant, Antrobus-Adam has
brought corruption into his world and family, corruption
symbolized in the play by his Gladys' scarlet stockings.

He is shocked by signs of his daughter's corruption and is
ready to return to wife (God) and the straight and narrow.
The action has become a parable for man's fall from grace
due to pride and his free readmittance to grace when he

somewhat contritely calls upon God. Readmitted to grace,

183

Antrobus continues his mythic transformation by becoming
Noah, second father of mankind.

In Act III, the problem of evil reappears, this
time having psychological overtones. Henry, as son and one
more dimension of George Antrobus's encompassing identity,
returns to the family home after acting the part of the
enemy in war. He cannot be evaded; his presence must be
confronted. In the play the confrontation is physical, and
father and son come to blows.‘ Such continual confrontation
between aspects of man's nature is reminiscent of Anderson's
image of divided man in continual dialectical struggle
between his lower and more angelic elements. But in
Act III the theological/mythological and metaphorical
explanations of evil are given an overlay of psychology.
The actor who plays Henry finds himself identifying with
and becoming the character--eager to kill the actor who
plays George. The reason for this identification and urge
to violence is a personal sense of emptiness and a self-
hatred that is projected onto others. The actor who plays
Henry:

In this scene it's as though I were back in High School
again. It's like I had some big emptiness inside me,--
the emptiness of being hated and blocked at every turn.
And the emptiness fills up with the one thought that
you have to strike and fight and kill. Listen, it's

as though you have to kill somebody else so as not to
end up killing yourself.

184

Sabina: That's not true. I knew your father and your

uncle and your mother. You imagined all that. Why,

they did everything they could for you. . . . They

didn't lock you up.

Henry: They did. They did. They wished I hadn't been

born (p. 132).
Henry's anti—social, destructive behavior is an attempt to
still the nagging self-doubt and make assertion, even though
that assertion be murder.

The struggling characters/actors are broken up by

Miss Somerset/Sabina, who in Act III shows a compassionate
strain not so clearly present in her earlier identities.
She seems to be ubiquitous in the play and bears her own
suggestions of cyclic process. Sabina's opening and closing
of the play drew charges from Campbell and Robinson of
plagiarism, for a female figure in Finnegan's W252 does the
same. Actually in this both play and novel tap an ancient
convention of classical epics. "To the extent that the
encyClopedic form concerns itself with the cycle of human
life," says Northrup Frye, "an ambivalent female archetype
appears in it, sometimes benevolent [as when Sabine breaks
up the Henry-George struggle in Act III], sometimes
sinister [Sabina as Lilith and voice of despair], but
usually presiding over and confirming the cyclic movement."40
Sabina shares this opening and closing function with
Athene in Thg_0dyssey, and shares the eternal presiding
function with Penelope of Thg_Odyssey and the Penelope of

The Skin 2E Our Teeth, Mrs. Antrobus, to whom is given the

185

unambiguous statement of affirmation: "I could live for

seventy years in a cellar and make soup out of grass and

bark, without ever doubting that this world has a work to
do and will do it" (p. 129).

Yet with all the use of allusions, mythic cycles,
character transformations, most members of the audience
were able to discern the theme and message. The audience
confusion about the play came from the bizarre antics and
integration of styles rather than obscure content. There
is nothing difficult about the theme itself, after all,
and it is stated explicitly in Act III by Sabina and Mrs.
Antrobus if it had been missed before. Further, the values
and ideas expressed were what Wilder considered common
cultural possession. They were what other observors
considered to be the received and reassuring values of the
middle-class theatre audience. The values of family life,
a none too fastidious piety, perseverance, confidence in
God and work (Antrobus says, "All I ask is the chance to
build new worlds and God has always given us that" P. 136),
and a respect for learning--all these make an easy appeal
to the kind of person who can afford to attend the theatre.
This at least was the view of M. Mc Grath in a letter
appearing in Thg_Nation. "Mr Wilder is preeminently
philistine. He is George F. Babbitt turned poet. He has
left the real-estate business and taken to the lyre, but

his songs are only long nostalgias for those happy

186

real-estate days. This is the true and hitherto secret
of Mr. Wilder's success with the philistine populace."41
Years later critics continued the complaint.
Gerald Rabkin suggests that Wilder may have "been overly
conscious of his role as mediator between highbrow sensibi-
lity and middlebrow taste. . . ."42 And Dwight Macdonald
in his rather scathing appraisal of Wilder's work says of
the author's ability to transmute into Midcult [diluted and
unoriginal esthetic culture] such an inpenetrably avant-
garde work [as Finnegan's £252]. There seems to be no
limit to this kind of alchemy in reverse, given a certain

amount of brass."43

Certainly these critics correctly
identify the middle class values of Wilder's work. They
probably are also correct in seeing the mythic and allusive
elements all somehow reduced in vitality from their
original sources and expressions. George Antrobus is not
as grandly austere as the Hebrew Adam or Noah, not as
impressive as Odysseus, and despite his multiple identities,
not as complex as Joyce's Earwicker. Wilder's flood is as
awesome as an Olsen and Johnson seltzer bottle.

But whatever the final critical evaluation may be,
the play's process of transmuting and popularizing cultural
myth (Western, American, bourgeois) represents the dominant
trend in World War II drama. Many of the most important

plays of the period were actually spectables politely

projecting the cherished images of cultural heritage and

187

identity. The wartime audience seemed to desire and
implicitly demand such projections. At times the theatre
responded to the demands in respectably creative and
Oklahoma! These pieces were not sublime, but they were
solid. And they were affirmations of a kind that satisfied
a deeper, even unconscious, wartime need. They were, in

the final analysis, midcult rituals of reassurance.

IV. ON NATIVE GROUNDS: LOCAL COLOR

AND THE UNIVERSAL HERO
The Local Imagg

Plays of the home and the native soil have always had
a tremendous hold on the American people.
New York Times editorial, June 3, 1941

The next great dramatic renaissance in America will come
when the theatre is recaptured from the producers by the
people, when we become active enough in mind and rich
enough in spirit to begin the creation of a folk-drama
and a folk-theatre in America.
Glenn Frank
The Skin 2E Our Teeth consisted of a fusion of
primarily literary elements; the play might be called
popular cultural pedantry. As with the Christ figures of
Anderson and Sherwood, the mythic identities were culturally
meaningful for Americans, but they were not specifically
American. Whatever bourgeois values may have been implicit
in the play probably appealed to a middle-class American
theatre audience, but again, those values were not
specifically American. The general impetus in the American
theatre as the United States moved into war, however, was

toward increasingly specific or literal images of America

and American folk. The movement obviously did not mean a

188

189

rejection or neglect of the motifs and patterns shared with
the broader western culture or, indeed, with the race as a
while. Wilder's play belies such rejection, and the Lincoln
plays show a fascinating union of the purely local and

the universal. But the purely local image became increas-
ingly dominant as a building block for World War II dramas.
The image had had to be acquired, taken possession of by
the American theatre before such a union of local and
universal could occur. Basically this local America was
discovered for dramatic use during the thirties and
transformed into art during the war period.

During the middle years of the 19308 Woody Guthrie
and Burl Ives trudged the dusty roads of a depression
plagued America. They went into the mountains and lonely
plains to listen to, sing, and record what the common folk
sang, the traditional time-out-of-mind songs that were the
communally shared experience and possession of the Peoples
of those regions. The same partly nostalgic impulse to
uncover and remember American regional and general cultural
heritage was also alive in the other arts. The historical
novel became extremely popular during the decade. Arthur
Bernon Tourtellot found the popularity an artistic and
culturally significant sign. In a 1940 Saturday Review 9£_
Literature article he commented that the "historical novel
may be evidence of the present discovering its own past--
an indication of a people's maturity in the art of

"1

expression. In the theatre of the thirties, the impulse

190

to give expression to regional identities and experiences
was second only to the impulse for socially concerned
plays. It is almost fair to say that the W. P. A. Federal
Theatre project was characterized by its constant search
for folk materials. Hallie Flanagan declared the Theatre's
artistic policy was to be "a theatre which should reflect
our country, its history, its present problems, its diverse
regions and populations."2 In reviewing the achievements
of the project, Miss Flanagan emphasized the Theatre's
accomplishments and its leadership in the area of regional
theatres and use of regional material. "The Federal
Theatre at its best was working toward an art in which each
region and eventually each state would have its unique,
indigenous dramatic expression, its company . . . producing
plays of its own past and present in its own rhythm of
speech and its native design in an essentially American
pattern."3

The policy probably reflected the regional-folk
interest already abroad in the land and marked by such men
as Guthrie, but it also was responsible for organizing that
impulse and interest in the theatre community and making
it probably the basic impulse behind the most significant
World War II dramas. The Federal Theatre's widely
dispersed regional centers spurred research and discovery
of local history and expression and began to transmute that
history and collection of songs, sayings, dialect peculiari-

ties into dramatic form. For the first time, what was

191

uniquely regional and American was extensively seen as
potentially dramatic and usable--a fact that may seem sur-
prising when we recall how long local color writers had been
turning regional materials into fiction. There had been some
gestures toward picturing regional types and attitudes in

the plays of the West, including Moody's EES.§£EEE Divide,
and in O'Neill's Desire 22§2£.E§S.§lflfil Paul Green's Ih

Abraham's Bosom, and Sidney Howard's They Knew What They

 

 

Wanted. But honest and detailed American experience
outside a New York or generalized American setting remained
largely absent from the American stage.

Even in so fertile and untilled a field, much work
needed to be done before a rich harvest could be enjoyed.
Here the Federal Theatre made an especially valuable
contribution to the development of American theatre.
Initial efforts of project workers were to uncover usuable
material. Sometimes this involved work and activities
vaguely reminiscent of anthropologist's activities among
primitive tribes or communities. Herbert Price, actor-
director, and Mary Dirkberger, for instance were sent to
rural and poor urban areas of the South to help serve
recreational needs. ‘Their efforts began mainly in finding
assembly halls and arranging for performances of ballads,
recitations, folk songs and dances. They organized communal
story telling sessions in which the old people of the
locality told about their experiences in the mines, fields,

or whatever.4 The project provided recreation, but it also

192

uncovered subjects for dramatic treatment, uncovered for
the community its shared experience and shared expression
and images--in short disclosed to the village or locality
its communal identity. The identity of Pennsylvania's
plain Dutch settlers, the Dunkards, for instance, was
portrayed in a play composed by the director of the Reading
company, H. A. Archibald. The play, {ssh 22.322 Ground was
so successful it toured the area by truck in the summer of
1936.5
Regional history, with or without depiction of
local mores, proved an even more fertile field for the
Theatre projects. No region of the country was without its
Federal Theatre pageant. The most famous was Paul Green's
Thg_hggh Colony, an outgrowth of an annual North Carolina
festival commemorating Virginia Dare's birthday. The
pageant depicted the founding and history of the Roanoke
Island colony, including its founding, Virginia Dare's
birth, and the mysterious disappearance of the settlers.
In 1937, to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the
colony's founding, the state commissioned Paul Green to
provide a script and professor Frederick Koch to direct
that script. Koch sought Federal project aid in casting,
acting, and especially in teaching so that the annual
pageant could be turned over to local folk. By 1939, local
persons took 118 of the 130 roles.6 In that year more than
100,000 spectators at one dollar each were expected to come

to the natural amphitheatre at the northern end of Roanoke

193

Island to watch local and national history and legend
performed on the spot where the history had been made.
In Little Rock, Arkansas audiences crowded an amphitheatre
to watch a folk-song studded production depicting the

7

history of the Southwest under five flags. In California,

Virginia Farmer worked with young playwrights on a cycle of
plays about the history of that state's gold rush days.8
Non-regional history was also used as a subject for Federal
Theatre presentation. In the case of American Exodus

experimentation of form was attempted. A dance drama,

American Exodus tried to give graphic dance images of the

 

American pioneers' advance across the continent, and
prdbably may be seen as a forbearer of Agnes De Mille's

ballet segments in Oklahoma!, Carousal, and other World

 

War II musicals.

The Federal Theatre's efforts made new material
available and allowed for experimental expression of that
material. These accomplishments were not lost when the
project was cancelled. Some regional pageants continued,
including Thgghggtholony in North Carolina and Robert
Nail's "poetic historical epics" of southwest Texas called
"fandangles."9 The regional playwright and his dramatic
portraits began to receive nationwide hearing when Frederick
Koch's playwrighting group at the University of North
Carolina was given a chance to broadcast its plays over
NBC's "Carolina Playmakers of the Air." That the Federal

Theatre's emphasis and the Carolina Playmakers influence

194

was felt is demonstrated in Edith J. R. Isaac's 1939
Theatre EEEE Monthly report that the current playwriting
groups and university classes had broken with G. P. Baker's
teachings. Craft and form was to bow before authentic folk
values. "'Write what you know' and 'write the lore of the
folk among whom you live,‘ have become the stock phrase,"

10 In 1939-40 Isaacs and Brooks Atkinson

Isaacs reported.
strongly advocated a new national theatre to replace the
defunct W. P. A. project, and both felt it should be
decentralized in organization and subject matter. In other
words, it should continue to develop the storehouse of
material and forms disclosed and initially employed in the
spectacles of the Federal Theatre. "A country rich in
folklore . . . should yield an abundant harvest of drama,
. . ." declared Atkinson in 1940.11
The columnists justified their emphasis on local
color and historical material on grounds other than the
simple abundance of untreated subjects, the dramatic impact
implicit in certain historical events and persons, and the
novelty of some local character types. They suggested that
regional and history plays would serve to tighten and
strengthen the American community in several ways. Though
local color plays would seem to highlight the differences
among American regions, ethnic and religious groups,
actually the dramas would serve to lessen those differences.

Supposedly, they would educate their audiences about other

Americans' ways and, thus, would pave the way for mutual

195

respect.12 Further, though the local color plays emphasized

differences, they also suggested the Americanness of the
characters. Few if any local color plays portrayed their
region's characters or pecularities as despicable or

13 Eccentricities in local color fiction and

malignant.
drama had a way of losing their saltiness and becoming
rather bland and quaint. The plays tend to make differ-
ences understandable and even, perhaps, lovable. Thus such
plays were seen to draw Americans together rather than to
divide. Finally, diversity displayed on stage could perhaps
lead to a broader sense of identification in the spectator.
History plays were defended as having even more
value to the American community at that point in its life.
In addition to numerous regional plays and pageants, the
Federal Theatre produced several plays with historical
subjects, including Created £3231, a chronicle play tracing
the principle of freedom and equality in America from
Columbus on, and Prologue £2.§l2£y, E. P. Conkle's play
about Abraham Lincoln. "Such historical spectaCles,
celebrating faith and achievement which have helped to build
our country, cannot but draw out of audiences and partici-
pants alike renewed devotion to the American way of life,"

claimed Hallie Flangan.14

Not everyone agreed, at least
not on every play. In 53222 Miss Flanagan quotes
Republican member of the Dies Committee, J. Parnell Thomas
on Prolggue Eg_§lg£y. "'The play Prologue Eg_§lg£y_deals

with Lincoln in his youth,” said Parnell, "' and portrays

 

 

 

196

him battling with the politicians. This is simply a
propaganda play to prove that all politicians are

15 Though Parnell's comment is incredibly

crooked.'"
insensitive, or politically motivated, or both, such
comment and motivations put an end to the Federal Theatre.
They did not put an end to Conkle's play nor other
local color and history plays, however. The impulse that
had been given rein in the mid-thirties continued to live
and develop in the 1938-45 period. Though the locally
presented regional pageant declined after the Federal
Theatre organization and money evaporated, the genre made
the necessary changes and appeared on Broadway. In fact,
by 1942 William Peery was able to announce the arrival of
the regional play as an established force in the American
professional theatre. "In the past twenty years," he said
in ghg_American Scholar, "the Playmakers [Koch's group] have
seen their kind of drama take root throughout America until
today plays of the American people are common on Broadway."16
Peery was surely referring to the wealth of local color
appearing in Manhattan during the 1940-42 seasons. It was
evident in Patterson Greene's rather strange comedy of
Pennsylvania Dutch folk, £222.i2.5ll.(1942)' Arnold
Sundgaard's comedy of Minnesota's Scandanavians, Thg_§££§h
Crocus (1942), in Sophie Treadwell's story of pastoral
California, hgpg_£2£_g Harvest (1941), the revival of

Porgy and Bess (1942), Lynn Root's play about negroes,

Cabin £h_the Sky (1940), and Lynn Rigg's Oklahoma tragedy,

 

 

 

 

197

EEE.E£EEE.£2.EES.ES$$ (1941). These plays are not
spectacles or pageants on thecarder of Th3 Egg; Colony;
they are focused looks of varying depth and seriousness at
regional or ethnic types with some little attention paid at
times to regional landscapes.

In the March, 1942 American Mercury, George Jean
Nathan defined the content and appeal of local color plays;
he also measured their usual depth and found it shallow.
”Most such plays,” he commented, "are little more than
forced talkie versions of the silent pictures in eccentric
family albums and rely for their audience interest upon
mere strange accents, outlandish clothes, absence of razors,
and basically familiar plots. . . ."17 A good example of
the more or less typical local color play Nathan is
describing is the almost popular £222.i§.§ll.bY Patterson
Greene. This play, set on a Mennonite farm north of
Lancaster, Pennsylvania ran sixty-three performances and
provided Celeste Holme with one of her first major parts
before she played Annie in Okalhoma! and starred as Evelina
in Bloomer Gigi.

As in most local color plays before E Remember
hang (1944-45) , £222 i_s_ _A_]_._]; employs a completely naturalis-
tic mode. The farm kitchen set includes those objects
essential to any real, old-fashioned Mennonite kitchen--the
shaded kerosene lamp, the Windsor chair, the hooded dresser.

The acting edition contains a list of properties covering

more than six pages. The set, obviously, is meant to

198

suggest the Mennonite life style will photographic detail.
Greene, again working in the local color tradition,
exploits the quaint Pennsylvania Dutch dialect pecularities
of syntax and diction for much of his illusion of authenti-
city and for humor. To his daughter who has appeared in
her best dress, Papa says, "A devil is in you for really,
Emma Aukamp! (£2_MAMA). Devils you bear me for children.
Devils, still! (Eg_EMMA 22212); I'd have right to lay a
whip on your back, like the lying' shussle you are. A
jezabel, even, wearing grand on Thursday."18
An essential problem of the local color playwright
was one shared by the local color fiction writer.
Providing a superficially realistic image of the physical
and verbal universe was relatively simple; providing a
narrative or dramatic structure to mirror the ordinary
lives of supposedly ordinary people was not so simple.
The writer trying to picture accurately the actual life of
ordinary persons would be naturally attracted to the slice
of life presentation. Its free form does not demand the
conventional formal plotting of drama. No crisis, climax,
resolution is supposedly necessary. The basic character-
istics is untampered projection of apparently unstructure
experience. Sarah Orne Jewett's stories often seem close
to this. But the slice of life presentation, however
honest and in keeping with its impulse toward fidelity to
experience, is not as effective in theatre as in short

fiction. The theatrical event demands movement, tension.

199

Thus it is that the local color plays, with BEES.£§.§1£
as a prime example, do, as Nathan suggests, turn to the
conventionally structured plot.

In £222H$§.Ail.the plot follows the essential
comedic structure of Menanderian New Comedy as described by
Northrup Frye. As in a Menanderian play, and most comedies
thereafter, the erotic intrigue between daughter, Emma, and
her surveyor boyfriend is blocked by the authority, senex,
figure, Papa. Papa, stretching already strict Mennonite
doctrines, makes his family virtual captives of the farm,
keeping them from distracting outside contacts and forcing
them to work the farm without such simple, modern con-
veniences as lights and a telephone. He plays a vengeful,
watchful God, and our sympathies lie with the brow-beaten
Mama and the rebellious children, Emma and Jake. Following
the traditional pattern, the play traces the senex's fall
and the triumph of the love pair, who sugggest also in
their union the younger, new social order. Angered that
Emma has sneaked off to a movie in Lancaster with her
surveyor friend, Papa takes a gun and orders Jake to help
him find the man. Jake hits his father over the head with
a monkey wrench before the surveyor is found, however, and
hides him in the coal car of a stopped train. He then
places the old Ford on the track, and the train destroys
it. By so doing he is able to say that his father was
killed when the train hit the car and the body was

apparently obliterated.

 

200

Three days later Papa returns to the farm announcing
that despite the treachery he has completed his mission,
for on the way home he met the surveyor and shot him. The
police arrive shortly thereafter, and it is discovered that
Papa has shot the wrong man--and only in the shoulder.
Emma's lover is safe. In a departure from the conventional
comedic structure, the E2225 figure is not to be reconciled
and integrated into the new order, represented by the
loving couple and the new telephone that the family
installed during Papa's three day absence. Instead the
play ends with the family at peace after Papa is taken off
to jail saying, "May the lightning of God strike down your
souls all!" (p. 117).

The unreconciled father and the failure of old and
new orders to merge is the only deviation, albeit a major
one, from conventional form. It makes the play strangely
bitter-sweet. Perhaps the deviation was an attempt by
Greene to be true to what he felt essential in Papa's
character. Whatever the reason, the deviation upsets the
expectations engendered in the form and probably confuses
the effect of the play upon spectators. It is perhaps the
frustrated expectations and confusions that prevented the
play, despite several very funny scenes, from becoming a
real success. And the problems of this play suggest the
problems almost inherent in attempting local color within
the confines of the ordinary play. There may well be an

incompatibility between the naturalistic demands of local

 

 

201

color representation and the structural demands of most
"good” dramas. Form and content are at odds.

This apparently became clear to playwrights, for
after 1942, the local color impulse in straight dramas
seemed to diminish. In 1943 Jack Kirkland's Tobacco 522g
ran for sixty-six performances in one of the nearly annual
revivals of the play, and the negro, 522! Little Children
was revived for a short run. But the only major local
color, ethnic success after 1942 was John Van Druten's g
Remember hhhh, and it showed a merging of the local color
genre with the domestic period piece that was so popular
during the war years. Plays projecting a benign image of
family life, ethnic or not, had many examples during the
war, including Junior high (1941), which ran to 710 per-
formances, and 222$.BEEEJ which lasted for 683 performances.
The probable originators of the trend were, first, Thorton
Wilder's 1938 play, QE£.$2!21 which combined an affectionate
local color portrait of a new Hampshire town with a kind of
universal pastoral idyll. Howard Lindsay and Russel
Crouse's hifg_hi£h Father was the other seminal play; it
was the most successful of all the domestic sagas. It
opened on November 8, 1939 and closed on July 12, 1947
after running continuously through the war and chalking up
3,216 performances, finally surpassing even Tobacco 522g
in longevity. Brooks Atkinson, in his Introduction to the
printed version of the play declared that "almost anybody

would like to live in a family as wholesome, healthy, and

202

alive as the one [Crouse and Lindsay] have conjured into

19 And apparently the wholesome,

being on the stage."
healthy, and happy family image gave rise to a comforting
nostalgic fantasy for the American theatregoer. To see the
Day family performing the ritual of family breakfast, to
see a life where the outside world was a distant, pleasant
New York of the 1880's and the major problem of life was
getting father baptized--these images evoked a secure,
nostalgic past. The local color element is minimal, though
the mention of horse cars and the elaborately decorated
dining room set clearly place the action in well-to-do
nineteenth century New York.

I_Remember £222.03“ be seen to combine the appeals
and techniques of the local color plays with the domestic,
nostalgic strain seen in 925.3222 and 2322 high Father.
Taken from Kathryn Forbe's Mama's hhhh Account, the
imaginatively staged play quietly pictures the life of a
Norwegian family living on San Francisco's Steiner Street
around 1910. Though the purely ethnic touches such as
dialect are there, they are toned down and the appeal has
become almost that of a generalized nostalgia for innocence
and the secure domestic, mother-dominated past seen in EiES
high Father. The structure is not conventional; it is
episodic but given unity through character and such themes
as Katrin's attempts to write. The settings for the play
have switched from the naturalistic detail of the dining

room of Life With Father and the kitchen of Papa £2 All

203

to a collection of sparely furnished, revolving acting
areas on stage somewhat reminiscent of 92E Town's staging.

In I_Remember hhhh_the local color play had
obviously undergone a change. It compromised its natural-
istic demands and found a form both more spectacular and
structurally more fluid. In its new form it found its
greatest popular acceptance between 1943-45. With h
Remember £222.a3 an exception, the straight play largely
ceased to be the vehicle for local color and nostalgia
during those years. The content had been appropriated by
a different theatrical genre of form, both more spectacular
and in some ways more fluid, the musical.

In April, 1943 Rodger's and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!
opened, and in the wealth of innovations it worked on the
old musical comedy conventions, set the style for subsequent
World War II musical dramas. One of its major influences
was its setting and subject--the opening of the Oklahoma
territory. After Oklahoma! came theatrical images of
Appalachian folk tales in 22EE.2£.EES.§222J of nineteenth
century Maine in Carousel, of upstate New York in Bloomer
Gigi, old New York City in 22.12 Central 2255, and
contemporary New York City in 92.2E2.$2!23 Here was
regional history and customs served up in what appeared to
be the logical Broadway genre for such descendents of the
outdoor, regional pageants. In the musical, more than in
the straight drama, the sense of spectacle could be

created. Music and dance added non-verbal appeals. In

204

based on the Appalachian version of Barbara Allen, the
music was of authentic folk origin. So the regional play
had been transformed from relatively crude pageant-like
spectacles in local fields and amphitheatres across the
country to the small local color play on Broadway, and
transformed once more to the synthetic but once again fluid
and spectacle-like musical form.

In the musical, the local color play no doubt lost
some of the authenticity and bite that it may have had.
As in £_Remember E222! the appeal is to a vague Americana
and nostalgia. Oklahoma! loses some of the darker tones of
its parent play, Lynn Rigg's §£222.§£2!.EEE.L11305- The
local color of Carousel and gp.ih_Central £2£5.and Bloomer
ElEl is a basically stereotyped local color. The New
Englanders and upstate New Yorkers are not closely observed
individual characters; they are characters partaking of the
hazily conceived quirks conventionally ascribed to people
of that region. The form loses the true heart of its
impulse as defined by the local colorists of the nineteenth
century and Hallie Flanagan, i.e., to represent almost
photographically the locale and actual life of a people.
But what it loses in realism and authenthicity, the new
local color-Americana form gains in innovative energy and
originality. It is fair to say that the Americana musical

drama after 1943 was the greatest achievement of American

205

theatre during the war. The nature of the achievement,

must wait to be defined, however, until the next chapter.
The Wedding of Local and Universal

Chroniclers: When the high heart we magnify,
And the sure vision celebrate,
And worship greatness passing by,
Ourselves are great.
John Drinkwater, Abraham Lincoln

The ready-made effect that was once implicit in Mother,
Baby, and the Flag, remains as invincibly implicit in
Lincoln as in Cinderella, the Saviour. . . .
George Jean Nathan
The awakened interest in American roots during the
thirties expressed itself in a deep interest not only in
regional folk pecularities and expression, but also in
regional and national history. We have noted the signifi-
cant increase in the incidence and popularity of the
historical novel during the decade; this popularity
continued and perhaps increased as America entered the war.
Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts was on the best seller
list for both 1940 and 1941. In 1943 five of the ten best
sellers had local color elements, such as §.$£22.§£2!E.12.
Brooklyn, religious elements, Th§_Apostle, history, Th2
Forest 229.222.52EE! or combinations thereof, Thg_Valley 9;
Decision, a novel about a Pennsylvania mine owning family,
and 222.5222; In drama the interest in American history
and historical figures was widespread and the history plays

on Broadway nearly always seemed to critics to be important

206

events if not successful ones. In late December, 1941,
Howard Koch and John Huston's portrait of Woodrow Wilson,

(£2 Time 32 Come, appeared on Broadway. Lewis Nichols

 

noted in his review of the 1943 play, Harriet, that during
the previous year or so there had been "a good many plays

written about Mrs. Stowe, possibly because the nation once
again [was] facing dangers of as great a degree if not the
same kind as those which brought forth the Civil War."20

In his review of Sidney Kingsley's play about Jefferson

and Hamilton, The Patriots, also 1943, John Gassner noted

 

several plays recently composed about these two historical
figures. Fortunately or unfortunately the plays, like
those about Harriet Beecher Stowe, remained unproduced.21
"No figures in our national history, except Lincoln,"
Gassner went on," can illuminate the nature and problems
of our evolving democracy to the same dramatic degree."22
Apparently the New York Drama Critics approved of the
illumination. On Jefferson Day, 1943, they awarded
Kingsley's play the Circle Award for its "dignity of
material, its thoughtful projection of a great American

23

theme." The Patriots had received thirteen votes; so

 

formidable a contender as Thg_Skin 2£.QE£ Egghh could
muster only four against this history play, in part due to
the Finnegan's Wghg controversy.

The play treating American historical figures with
some degree of accuracy had a real appeal to critical and

popular tastes of the 1938-1945 period. The appeal had

207

first been demonstrated when Sherwood's hhg Lincoln £2
Illinois won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. To give the
prize to this play legally, the judges had to rescind an
earlier rule that a dramatist could receive only one
award; Sherwood had been awarded a Pulitzer in 1936 for
Idiot's Delight. The critics, it seemed, had a particular
weakness for plays centering around historical characters.
The appeals of the history play genre to playwright
and audience were numerous as well, especially during this
period of increasing crisis. The Federal Theatre project
had created an interest in regional and national history,
had shown that there was an audience for history served up
on stage. In short, the project had shown the viability of
regionalism and history as dramatic subjects. Further, the
reverberations between past history and current events
seemed to heighten the effect and importance of historical
plays. Rosamond Gilder noted in Theatre EEEE Monthly that
"the impact of [$2.ZEEE.EE.ESESJI which opens with Wilson's
speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war, was
incalculably intensified by the fact that Roosevelt had
spoken in the same place and for the same cause so short a
time before."24
An advantage apparent to playwrights was history's
oblique effect. If a playwright wished to comment on or
plead a contemporary cause, he could do so without resorting

to explicit propaganda. He could present his case in

208

historical clothes. Nearly all the critics comment on the
obvious lessons contained in the history plays, but they
note at the same time that the prOpaganda is not objection-

ably obtrusive. Lewis Nichols on The Patriots: "Mr.

 

Kingsley . . . does not wave a flag, blow trumpets or
shout about democracy; he does not have to since his subject
matter is enough. . . . All Mr. Kingsley has done is to
point out that democracy never has been easily held, that
even at the beginning it was necessary to fight to retain
it. Thus a moral for this day of a desperate war."25
Joseph Wood Krutch pointed out the lesson to playwrights
if they had not perceived it already on their own. "In
several of its more serious passages, Harriet is . . . as
good a patriotic preachment for the moment as anything
I've seen. Perhaps that is another illustration of the
fact that, at least except in the case of the very best
writers at their own very best, an oblique or tangential
approach to the most important topic of the moment is more
likely to be effective on the stage than direct.state-
ment."26
Candle ih.ghguflihgfs heroine, Madeline Guest can
state her faith: "In the history of the world, there have
been many wars between men and beasts. The beasts have
always lost, and men have won." The speech sounds flat
and false, partially because it has been dramatically

unsupported. But playwrights using historical figures as

mouthpieces are able to make approximately the same speech

209

with much greater effect, even when the language is
rhetorically less neat. After Harriot Beecher Stowe

returns from seeing President Lincoln, she speaks to a
recruiting rally and nearly echoes Madeline Guest's
sentiments. "There have always been tyrants. . . . Equally
always, there have been noble souls who bravely and gladly
gave their lives for the eternal right of man to liberty."27
In Th3 Patriots' climax, when Jefferson awaits results of
Congress's vote as to whether he, who won the popular vote,
or Burr shall win the presidency, Kingsley allows Jefferson

a statement of faith in democracy. "You'll not make these
people hold their breath at the caprice or submit to the rods
and hatchet of a dictator. You cannot fix fear in their
hearts, or make them fear their principle of government.

I know them. I place my faith in them. I have no fear of

their ultimate victory."28

Kingsley ends the play with his
character delivering part of Jefferson's actual inaugural.
"I believe, indeed, I know, this government is the world's
best hope" (p. 181). The playwright, then, is enabled in
a history play to insert didactic statements of faith both
unmotivated and unrequired by the play's context. Certainly
the speech from Harriet is less than dramatically essential.
The speech may have effect because of the nature of
the history play. Quite apart from the image projected by
the play, the words are given weight and dignity by the

person's stature already existent in the mind of the

audience. Jefferson's words, so similar in content, carry

210

more weight than Madeline Guest's simply because of
Jefferson's historical and cultural importance. Further,

a history play creates a particular context of events and
attitudes simply by presenting its historical period and
chief characters. Such a context must be created from
nothing in a non-historical play. Stark Young acknowledged
the opportunities and legitimacy of the playwright's playing
with the audience's knowledge of history, but also noted
the difficulty of estimating the average cultural pos-
session of the spectators. "There is no way of knowing at
what point exactly we leave off the assumption of a common
dialect between audience and playwright, a dialect either
or mere words, of culture, or of knowledge in experi—

ence. . . ."29

But if he is dealing with historical events
and figures commonly known, the playwright can expect his
audience to start the play with a framework of ideas and
attitudes. He can expect the spectator to perceive quickly
the play's suggested historical analogies to contemporary

events. Raymond Massey pointed out the way such analogies

work for the average viewer in Abe Lincoln i2 Illinois.

 

There really isn't such a great deal of difference
between Lincoln's fight and ours. . . . If you
substitute the word dictatorship for the word slavery
throughout this script, it becomes electric with
meaning for our own time. Try it on his answer to
Douglas in which he scores the policy of "indifference
to evil" and the fellows who hold "there is no right
principle for action but self-interest." That was

old Abe talking and he was saying as much to our own
time as he was to the world of the Eighteen Sixties.30

211

And if he is at all knowledgeable about the play's
historical period, the viewer may extrapolate--i.e., go
beyond the final curtain and continue making analogies with
the present. Thus, the failure of Wilson to get United
States involvement in the League of Nations suggests itself
as a reason for World War II. The play begins to bear a
heavy burden of advocacy if the implication is followed to
its logical conclusion: The United States must not retreat
to isolationism after World War II as it did after the

Great War. It must join the U. N.31

Yet the message need
not be stated. It is implied by historical analogy.

On a less topical and propagandistic level, this
ability to evoke the cultural images, legends, and history
in a communal experience (in the theatre setting) allowed
the theatre to provide a perhaps unique wartime experi-
ence. The impulse to explore regional history and local

color in drama, the use of national historical figures and

events suggested an interest and perhaps need from the

late 30's through the war to define the American identity
by retelling the old stories about American experiences

and the American heroes. Though not stressing the
nationalistic dimension, Rosamond Gilder suggested this

function in her review of The Patriots. "While the super-

 

structure of civilization is being blown to bits," she
said, "it is well to explore its enduring foundations.
Here the theatre's peculiar gift of recreating the very

form and pressure of past times can be of signal service."32

212

Helen Hayes refused to do either pure escapist plays or
realistic war plays during the war. Neither, she felt, was
as effective as the play that approached the contemporary
situation obliquely and tapped the national memory and
pride. ”Curiously, I think Harriet does more to inspire
audiences to effort in the present war by reminding them
of the proud moments and great aims of our past than a play
of the grim suffering of today put on the stage. They
learn of that in the morning headlines."33 What the
successful history play was to do, then, in the view of
many in the theatre, was to inspire a faith in America's
principles and confidence in the strength and success of
those principles in the past. Such strength was imaged
especially in the historical personage, in the American
communal hero.

Nearly all history plays, certainly all those of
the war period, show a great national figure caught in a
crisis of some kind. He may be challenged by domestic
enemies, as is Jefferson by Hamilton and the Federalists,
or Wilson by America's desire for isolationism as repre-
sented by Senator Lodge, or Lincoln by his own self-doubts
and a disintegrating nation. Each hero faces a challenge
or series of challenges to his principles. The plays all
portray the main figure suffering not only the outside
challenge, but an inner debate of duty vs. inclination to
flee from the conflict. Jefferson wants to return to

Monticello rather than serve in the foundling government.

213

Harriet Beecher Stowe resists writing about the horrors of
slavery, though brother Henry Beecher urges her to. "I
dare not [write of it]," she tells him. "I am afraid of
what it might to do me. There is something insidious about
the subject. It's so dark and terrible, it seems to drive
everyone who touches it into a sort of insanity" (p. 99).
Sherwood's Abe Lincoln flees from both his impending
marriage to Mary Todd and what others feel to be his duty
to go to Washington to fight the extension of slavery. In
the triumph of will over inclination and inner doubts, in
the triumph of duty, the historical figure provides a
lesson to the fearful and uncommitted person of 1938-45.
In his successful battle with enemies and his fidelity to
accepted American principles, he restates the bases of
belief for the committed person. In his triumph, though
as with Lincoln the triumph may be tempered by tragedy, the
audience may extrapolate and be inspired to expect success
in their current struggle to defend the same principles.
Below these rather obvious characteristics and
appeals of the historical figure plays, a more profound
pattern and appeal is evident. The pattern and appeal is
that of the mythic hero rendered for American audiences in
American terms. The figure most clearly identified as an
American legend, or a mythic hero, is Abraham Lincoln.
The increased interest and dramatic use of him during the
war period is significant. From 1865 on there has been a

fairly steady stream of both scholarly and popular work

 

 

 

 

 

 

214

based on the figure of Lincoln. In his 1935 study of the
literary and biographical treatment of Lincoln, Roy P.
Basher declared that a firm legendary or mythic quality had
been created around the Civil War president and in 1966
David Donald declared the popularly drawn Lincoln to have

"34 The treatment

"the outlines of a mythological hero.
continued beyond 1935. In 1939 Sandburg published his

four volume study, EEE.E2£.XEE£§J and finished the biography
begun in 1926 with Thg_Prairie ZSE£§° The 1926 book had
been influential in stirring the interest and forming the

late 30's image of young Lincoln. Sherwood testified in

his notes to Abe Lincoln 12 Illinois: "It was not until I

 

had read Carl Sandburg's Th3 Prairie ZSE£§.that I began to
feel the curious quality of the complex man who, in his
statement of the eternal aspirations of the human race,
achieved a supreme triumph of simplicity."35
Spurred, perhaps, initially by Sandburg's pastoral
portrait and by the Federal Theatre's interest in regional
and historical figure plays, and, possibly by the subtle
realization of the Lincoln figure's impact on a country
threatened by war, numerous plays about the man began to
appear starting in 1938. In fact it is fair to say that
the use of Lincoln in drama peaked in the period from 1938
to 1945. Victor Searcher's bibliography of Lincoln
materials, Lincoln $2922! lists only three plays using the
figure before 1938. During the seven year period under

study there are at least nine adult plays directly

 

 

 

 

m

215

treating Lincoln, three juvenile plays, and two movies.

His figure is also treated indirectly in Harriet and
Bloomer ElEl' From 1945 to 1969, a twenty-four year period,
Searcher lists only eight additional plays, most of those
from the 1950's.

The dramatic treatments during the war years
included one act plays, such as Chase Webb and Betty Smith's
Lagyer Lincoln (1939), a comedy in which Lincoln acts as
matchmaker; and a play by former governor of New Jersey,
Harold G. Hoffman, Egg hghg Remember (1939), presented
privately at the Lambs Club in New York with Raymond Massey
as the wartime president. Two of the full-length plays,
Paul Horgan's 1942 play, 32253, 5, Lincoln, and Nat Sherman's
1944 §2£_President, were presented at the Experimental
Theatre founded by the Dramatists' Guild and Actors'

Equity. The plays' runs were limited to only two per-
formances each, and hhthresident's audience was limited
to those invited. A huge audience heard Millard Lampell's
"folk cantata" about Lincoln's funeral train, Thg_Lonesome
Tghih, when it was presented by Norman Corwin over CBS in
1944. Starring Raymond Massey as Lincoln and Burl Ives as
narrator, the play portrayed through folk music and
narration both Lincoln's wartime opposition and the great
love felt for him by the people. The radio play became one
of the most widely known and moving dramatic events of the
war. Decca recorded the broadcasts. When President

Roosevelt died, the analogies between the two war presidents

216

seemed clear and poignant. So, as Roosevelt's funeral
train carried the body north, local radio stations across
the country broadcast transcriptions of 311% Lonesome m,
and schools assembled to listen to the Decca recordings.36
Lincoln became the figure of the period. His story
and the Civil War, when the country's survival was trau-
matically threatened, had lessons to teach and inspiration
to give. No other American figure quite stirred, or
probably stirs, the imagination as does Lincoln. In no
other figure was there such universal recognition of
greatness and of intriguingly complex and mysterious
personality. No other figure is so clearly a prototype of
America's supposed social pattern of log cabin to White

House.37

Probably no other American figure is seen
as being so beset by enemies and challenges, yet able to
triumph, to carry through his mission. He is the figure
communally recognized and revered who has strength to
duel with the fates and win, however tragically. He is
the American mythic hero, and as such seems especially
attractive as subject for dramatic treatment during a
period of national crisis. The rendering of his exploits
and agonies has a special edge at a time when the nation
must again face the kinds of dangers this national mythic
hero faced.

In a real but highly qualified sense, the history
plays produced during the war period, particularly those

about Lincoln, function in the manner of primitive drama.38

217

That function, according to Northrup Frye, is "to present a

powerful sensational focus for a community."39

Such plays
”present to an audience a myth already familiar to and
significant for that audience, and they are designed to
remind that audience of their communal possession of this

myth."40

The abundance of Lincoln plays between 1938 and
1945 suggests the recognition by playwrights and audiences
of one heroic figure in whom cultural beliefs and images
coalesce, and in whom the community's identity, strengths,
and principles are made manifest. And though the American
nation as a body could not view a dramatic spectacle until
the advent of television, and the New York theatre reached
a relatively small audience, Sherwood's movie version of
hhg Lincoln 12 Illinois (1940) could be seen in even the
smallest American village. The population at large could
hear Thg_Lonesome 3E2$E.°n nationwide radio. In these
events and in the Lincoln plays that toured or were
presented at the local high schools, the entire population
could share in the story of America's greatest legendary
figure.

Because it seems at least possible that the Lincoln
plays served the function suggested above, it is inter-
esting to note how the dramas utilize the structure and
motifs of primitive mythic hero tales. Joseph Campbell has
abstracted the conventional adventure pattern of nearly

all mythic heroes in his The Hero With 2 Thousand Faces.

218

With obvious transformations, the pattern is that found in
the history plays of 1938-45, especially those dealing with

Lincoln.

The mythological hero, setting forth from his commonday
hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else volun-
tarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There
he encounters a shadow presence that guards the
passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power
and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-
battle, dragon-battle . . .), . . . Beyond the
threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of
unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which
severely threaten him (tests), some of which give
magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir

of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme
ordeal and gains his reward. . . . If the powers have
remained unfriendly to him--his theft of the boon he
came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft) [may be his
reward]; intrinsically it is an expansion of conscious—
ness and therewith of being (illumination, trans-
figuration, freedom). The final work is that of the
return. . . . The hero re-emerges from the kingdom of
dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings
restores the world (elixir).41

The above composite myth or monomyth is followed

with remarkable fidelity in both E. P. Conkle's Prologue £3

 

glg£y_and Sherwood's hhg_Lincoln ih Illinois. If we see
the pattern in its broadest outlines of ordeal, nadir of
fortune, and return to the kingdom with principles and
strength (boon) to restore the kingdom, then nearly all the
history plays follow the monomyth. (In lfl.$$fl§.£2.§2§2.
Wilson undergoes all the ordeals of the hero, but fails to
save the kingdom. It is suggested that in the League of
Nations he did have the boon, elixir that might have helped
save the kingdom (world) from World War II, however.) The

monomyth, of course, has undergone extensive transformation,

219

and both Frye and Campbell describe the process by which
the primitive, basically religious myth changes. Frye
notes that in Christian societies the sacred myth becomes
mixed with secular elements, and the result is "a romantic
drama presenting the exploits of a hero, which is closely
related to tragedy, the end of a hero's exploit being
eventually his death, but which in itself is neither tragic

42 The magical and

nor comic, being primarily spectacular."
supernatural dimensions of the primitive mythic stories are
made credible; in Frye's term they are displaced, in
Campbell's they are rationalized. "In the later stages of
many mythologies, the key images hide like needles in great
haystacks of secondary anecdote and rationalization,"

43 "The outlines of myths and tales are

comments Campbell.
subject to damage and obscuration. Archaic traits are
generally eliminated or subdued. Imported materials are
revised to fit local landscapes, custom, or belief, and
always suffer in the process."44

Campbell's comments on the obscuration and ration-
alization of the Christ figure illuminates what happens to
that figure in the plays of the war period. "In modern
progressive Christianity," Campbell says, "The Christ--
Incarnation of the Logos and Redeemer of the World--is
primarily a historical personage . . . who preached a
benign doctrine . . . yet was executed as a criminal. His
death is read as a splendid lesson in integrity and

45

fortitude." This rationalized Christ is clearly the one

220

presented in Anderson's Journey £2 Jerusalem. Note
Ishmael's and the play's conception of Jesuah's (Jesus)
role.
And in the end

for this love and bitterness with which he speaks

he will become a symbol of those who are guiltless--

And those who are guilty, seeing him in this symbol,

will turn and destroy him. He will suffer for them

and conquer them in their hearts.
The same, although secularly conceived, Christ figure lurks
beneath the surface also in the instructive and inspiring
deaths of King McCloud, Quizz West, in Sherwood's Dr.
Valkonen, and is suggested in the truth-seeking journalist,
Morey Vinion's death fighting with guerrillas in the
Philippines. His wife asks after his death, "Are [we]
changed . . . because of what Morey did? . . . Has his
death had any effect on all the things he fought against
and hated in his life?" In short, she asks if his death
serves as the lesson of integrity and fortitude that it
should.

In looking at the plays not tapping the resources
of the Christ mythos but still using the monomyth's patterns,
specifically Conkle's and Sherwood's plays, it is possible
to see the myth transformed for the modern American
audience, rationalized or displaced until it is completely
secular and mundane, yet retaining the primitive patterns
that have moved audiences to a sense of community and

identify from time immemorial.

221

The structures of Prologue £2 Glory and Abe Lincoln

12 Illinois, as those of the other history plays mentioned

 

in this chapter, correspond to the structure of the mythic
hero's tale, i.e., the structure is episodic. The plays
may best be called fluid form, chronicle plays and are a
series of scenes telling of significant crisis points in
the hero's journey to his destiny. Such structure is
especially valuable for a play tracing the development of
a figure over a long period of time, and coincidentally,
because of its fluidity and unusual wealth of characters,
lends itself to the infusion of local color elements. That
such elements are often somewhat inappropriate and detri-
mental to the play's purpose and impact may be seen in
Conkle's play. Conkle makes obvious use of dialect,
frontier humor and story-telling. The play seems as aware
of its telling a story about early nineteenth century
Illinois as it is of Lincoln, and its focus is somewhat
diffused. Brooks Atkinson commented on the problem of
fusing the local color play with a play about legendary
hero figures. "The style of [Prologue Eg_§lg£y] is that of
the folkplay, and the folk play is too casual and artless
to measure the dimensions of a towering man."46 Despite
the possible confusion of genres and confusion of effects,
however, the play does follow the form of Campbell's
monomythic pattern with startling correspondence.

The play, like hhg Lincoln 22 Illinois roughly

covers the New Salem years--the period of youth, preparation,

222

initiation and commitment. In Scene I of Prologue to

 

Glggy Lincoln, like the mythological hero, is lured ”from
his commonday hut." Lincoln, a listless and aimless young
man is urged by his step-mother to accept big-talking
Denton Offut's offer of a storekeeping job in New Salem.
Abe, a bit worried that he is wasting his life sitting on
a stump, proceeds to New Salem, which becomes for him a
fusion of the mythic "threshold of adventure" and site of
adventure. In scene II he meets the rationalized and
Americanized "shadow presence that guards the passage,"
Jack Armstrong. They "wrastle"; Abe undergoes the test,
which is both a mythic test and one actually employed on
newcomers on the American frontier. He defeats Armstrong,
of course, and they are conciliated. Abe is pronounced
"officially natcherlized," or initiated. Over the
threshold now, Abe comes in contact with ”strangely intimate
forces,” specifically of the helper variety, and more
specifically, Ann Rutledge who prods Abe to make something
of himself. It is in Ann Rutledge's role in Abe's life
that Atkinson and others who felt the play too folksy and
sentimental. She is seen to be the major influence

on his actions; the play is said not to portray any depth
of character from which strong resolution or commitment
could come. However valid the criticism, Ann's proddings
at least provide coherent motivation within the play's

context. Abe, responding to Ann's proddings, soon

223

declares his intent to run for state legislature and asks
Ann to marry him.

Ann's help and his own quick wit and strength have
taken him far on his adventure. But the supreme ordeal is
yet to occur, and does so occur with Ann's death. In

Prologue £2 GloEy and Abe Lincoln ithllinois the death

 

event is the test that almost drives Lincoln to despair
and defeat. "You can't have a light like her come, and
lose it, without everything goin' blank before your eyes!
. . . She showed me my power and strength, and she's gone,

and I've got nary a wish to go on."47

Abe's friends, Aunt
Polly and Squire Bowlin Green, persuade him that Ann would
not approve of his giving up, and that he is needed as a
lawyer. So the play ends with Abe committed to going to
Springfield to pursue his law career. The play may be said
to conclude then, as a truncated version of the mythic
adventure pattern in which the hero emerges from the kingdom
of dread and returns to the world. It is in such truncated
renderings that the extrapolation inherent in history plays
completes the pattern. If the play leaves off before
Lincoln is able to give his boon to the world, the
spectator's knowledge of history and of the Lincoln legend
fill in and tactitly complete the hero's triumph.

Though both Conkle and Sherwood deal with the
early years of Lincoln, their emphases differ. Conkle is

interested in the earliest years. Sherwood looks at the

more mature hero, and is careful to define more clearly

224

for us the boon (principles and strengths of character) that
Lincoln drew from his tests and with which he will set out
to restore the world, i.e., the crumbling union. The
different emphasis may be accounted for, perhaps, by
Sherwood's personal struggle to find firm attitudes about
the war. Lincoln's mature turmoil is a more attractive
and intriguing subject to Sherwood because the playwright
himself was undergoing the inner turmoil that can beset a
serious, pacific, and principled man. Also, Sherwood
recognized that Lincoln's coming to commitment was an
instructive spectacle for the United States as it observed
the world surely being engulfed by conflict.

The Conkle play and hhg.Lincoln £h_Illinois differ
not only in their emphasis on different points in the
hero's life, but also in their approaches to character.
Though Conkle's Lincoln is identifiably Lincoln, he is even
more a local color character, a crude, frontier creature.
Sherwood's Lincoln is approached with more psychological
sensitivity. In the first scene Abe is found studying,
being introduced to Henry Clay's belief in an indissoluble
union, and pondering Keat's ”On Death." The inner tensions
that Sherwood found in his fairly extensive research as
central to Lincoln's character, intellectual curiosity,
commitment to justice, and law, and union, a brooding
introspectiveness and something like a death wish, all

these are suggested in the short first scene.

225

The emphasis on mimetic characterization suggests
a further displacement or rationalization of the monomyth,
but the basic pattern does remain. In scene II, the initial
test of combat with the shadow presence, Armstrong again,
is referred to when Abe keeps Jack from fighting with a
Springfield politician by offering to match Jack himself.
The play then shows Abe tested by several ordeals, the
death of Ann, the dilemma, intellectual and academic at
this point, of opposing slavery and yet somehow keeping the
South appeased and holding the union together, and the
further ordeal of his unsure commitment to Mary Todd.
These ordeals, all in one way or another intellectual and
emotional rather than physical, nearly deliver him to the
black underworld of his despair and death. It is at the
nadir of his fortune in dealing with life that Sherwood
provides inspiration for Abe (the helper figure) in the
person of Seth Gale and family. Gale is crossing the
country on the way to Oregon when his son grows sick in
Illinois. Abe, who has been wandering near Ann's grave,
comes to their wagon and is impressed by Seth's determi-
nation, despite the hardships, to push on to an Oregon free
of corruption and slavery. "Seeing you now," says Abe,
"and thinking of the big thing you've set out to do-~well,
it's made me feel pretty small. It's made me feel that
I've got to do something, too, to keep you and your kind
in the United States of America" (p. 120). He is ready

to return from the kingdom of dread and carry to1:he world

226

his boon of wisdom, principle, and strength wrested from
the bitterness of his personal turmoil. The rest of
Sherwood's play shows Lincoln moving into the world,
carefully developing his gifts and principles against the
tests that are to come. Sherwood's hero is not the god of
the myth; he is secularized and, thus, even after his
emergence from the underword, he must debate Douglas, deal
with a neurotic wife, face election, etc. But extrapolation
works again, and Lincoln's strength and character is
tacitly recognized as sufficient to help restore the
nation.

Aided by Raymond Massey giving what Brooks Atkinson
called a ”transcendant performance,"48 the play ran 472
performances, and was made into a movie in 1940, again
with Massey as Lincoln, and moved audiences profoundly.
Carl Sandburg, in a "Forward" to the printed version of
the play, testified to the play's effect on audiences and
suggested reasons for the effect. "Having seen Sherwood's
play, and having noticed how the audience itself partici-
pated, I believe it carries some shine of the American
dream, that it delivers great themes of human wit, behavior
and freedom with Lincoln as mouthpiece and instrument"
(p. xii). Sandburg's comment suggests the didactic value
of the topical analogies, so evident, for instance when
Lincoln debates Douglas and denounces the complacent

policies of allowing slavery to go on. "I hate it," he

227

says, "because of the monstrous injustice of slavery
itself. I hate it because it deprives our republic of its
just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free
institutions everywhere to taunt us as hypocrites, causes
the real friends to doubt our sincerity . . ." (p. 139).
The call for a rethinking of America's attitudes at this
point, a month after the Munich agreement, is clear.
Sandburg's comment also seems to sense the communal
participation in a contemplation of a cultural hero.
Brooks Atkinson came even closer to tapping one of the
sources of the play's impact. It is a superior play to
Britisher John Drinkwater's 1919 play, Abraham Lincoln,
he said, "because it is written out of an instinctive
understanding of an American with a broad point of view.
Mr. Sherwood shows the common wonder that Americans feel

49 The intimations of primitive

toward their national idol.”
religion are probably unintentional here, but may be
suggestive.

It is not until Th2 Lonesome Tghih was presented
by Norman Corwin in 1944 that the Lincoln myth was directly
used again. In this collection of folk songs and narrative
tribute to the slain president, the common features of
history plays are evident. The songs and narration draw
analogies between that time and the 19408, specifically the

parallels of Copperhead opposition to Lincoln and Republican

opposition to Roosevelt. After Roosevelt's death, the

228

widely broadcast show served doubtless as a contemporary
elegy and an implicit appeal to unity behind the new
President in Washington. There is an Americana and local
color appeal in the show when its scene shifts to a
Southern negro church service and a Kansas square dance.
The "cantata" also contains mythic and pseudo-

religious elements that are less rationalized than in other
treatments of Lincoln. There is the more primitive and
mysterious suggestion of Lincoln's unity with his people.
Two of the repeated lines in this almost incantatory play
go:

You couldn't tell where the people left off

And where Abe Lincoln began.
Another speech expands the identification and its impli-
cations.

A job for all the people,

Carrying freedom across the land.

A job for Lincoln's people!

And you know ho Lincoln's people were. . . .
A primitive and Christian mythic element is contained in
the suggestion of spiritual if not actual resurrection.
The dead President is said to be at the negro church
service in the South, at the square dance in Kansas. The
figure, living and dead, is portrayed as ubiquitous. When
a wounded soldier tells Lincoln he will soon be going

home, Lincoln says he will see him (Lincoln) there. The

229

treatment is obviously metaphorical--it is Lincoln‘s spirit,
ideas, presence that live on and are triumphant. Yet the
treatment is curiously literal and intense. The effect of
the show must have been especially poignant after Roose-
velt's death. It is not typical of the plays or spectacles
of historical figures during the war period; it is simply,
perhaps, the purest example of the impulse to use folk
expression and cultural figures to state or suggest

artistically a cultural commonwealth and unity.

What had happened in the American theatre after the
mid-thirties, then, was a discovery of the local image, the
American historical image, a discovery of their potenti-
alities as dramatic material and their impact upon the
American war-period audience. Behind what was specifically
American lay the universal, perhaps, but what was on the
surface seemed literal and local. The images found their
ultimate wartime and ultimate popular reception in the
musical. The musical was a form that never threatened
profundity, it seemed. In this genre Broadway appeared to
be nearest to its generally accepted wartime role as
entertainer. But actually the musical smacked of ritual
and cultural celebration more profoundly than did the
history plays, indeed, more profoundly than any other

theatrical form during the war.

V. BROMIDIC PARABLES: THE MUSICALS
The Evolution of a New Form

The musical stage, with its glitter of scenery, costume
and spectacle, its liveliness of humor and spirit and
its exuberance and music, is the one department of the
theatre in which America leads the world. No other
country has the tempo in its blood and the mechanical
ingenuity in its tradition that produce our Showboats
and Panama Hatties.

Brooks Atkinson

Long before the present crisis came into being, there
was a saying that if one could control the songs of a
nation, one need not care who made its laws.
John Dewey, Freedom hhg_Culture, 1939
The Second World War caught the musical theatre at
a crucial point of evolution and full of introspective
self-analysis about those evolutionary directions. One is
struck by the number of articles written during and just
after the war about what the American musical, especially,
had been and was to become. In those written just prior
to the war there is implied an expectation of the imminent
birth of a new form, a new kind of musical theatre, born,
to be sure, of old genres, but nonetheless somehow new.

The sense of impending development was best expressed,

perhaps, by Brooks Atkinson writing in the Times in

230

231

February, 1941. "Nothing of epochal importance has been
created yet," he says. "But it is encouraging to notice
that all at once several theatre people have become
impatient with the dramatic patterns that have been serving
our stage for many years. Perhaps they feel the necessity
of saying something that does not fit neatly into old

"1 Atkinson is referring specifically to straight

forms.
drama here, and notes as a development away from old forms
the emergence of plays like 92£.32!2.and 322.55222 Pastures
. that deliberately reject objective reality in their
presentation. Ironically, with the obvious exception of
drama that the new forms developed. Instead, the stirrings
Atkinson felt were realized in the field of the musical,
probably the most innovative and creative genre of Broadway
production during the war. With the production of Oklahoma!
and its similar successors, a new kind of Broadway musical
was born.

The new form was synthetic and evolutionary.
George Beiswanger in Theatre 5522.1“ 1941 noted that here
had been a line of theatre develOping toward music for
twenty-five years.2 The new musical drama had its prototype
in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1927 production
of £223.222E3 In the new style the book was literate and
was integrated with the music; the play served as more than

a string on which gaudy mother-of-pearl dance and musical

beads were strung. In Show Boat drama and music were put

232

together so that one really could not very well be taken
away without making the other less effective (though
certain songs from ghgy_§ghh, such as "Old Man River,"
gained popularity on their own merits). This kind of
fusion was to solidify during the war years, beginning with
Moss Hart and Kurt Weill's musical dream fantasies in hhgy
$2.222H23E5 (1941) and reaching its highest point of
development in Carousel in such songs as Billy's "Solilo-
guy.” After the war such integration continued in Kurt
Weill and Langston Hughe's Street §2222.(1945) where music
and lyrics helped propel the drama instead of being a kind
eddy in the forward moving current.3 But if Shh! 2235 was
a great success and a prototype for what was distantly to
follow it, it did not serve as a model for shows immediately
following it. The other genres of musical theatre con-
tinued to be dominant through the 19208 and 19308 and:even
into the war period.

The genres of the musical show from which the
integrated musical drama had parentage were vaudeville, the
follies, and the revue. These threatrical forms derived
from a popular theatre based on the minstrel show, musical
extravaganza, and spectacle. The shows consisted
essentially of individual performers doing their inde-
pendently developed and autonomous skits or acts. Thus,
in the shows closest to the minstrel-vaudeville pattern
there was no story line with which to integrate the music.

In the primitive musical comedy the plot merely tried to

233

provide some little coherence to the sketches and specialty
acts of the variety theatre that was the real content of

4 The individual performers did not even have to

the show.
compete with a plot for the audience's interest and
attention. But rosy times for vaudeville and the follies
ended in November, 1932 when the Palace closed. Performers
panicked. Vaudeville seemed dead for sure. It did, in
fact, shrink and turn rather shabby and threadbare. But it
did not disappear. Variety and others spoke in 1942 of a

"possible vaudeville renaissance."5

In the spring of 1942
there were three strong vaudeville, revue-shows on Broad-
way: Priorities gf’;ggg, comedians Olsen and Johnson's
£222.95 22h, and Hellzagogpin'. During Holy Week, £223.95
£22."33 actually the strongest show on Broadway, grossing
$35,000. Priorities g£_lggg_was not too far behind,
grossing $25,000 during the week of April 15 and ultimately
running for forty-five weeks.6 There were rumors of a new
revue in the fall starring Mae West and Al Jolson, which
did not, however, materialize. In 1943 EEEEE.$$EE.With
Frank Fay, Burt Wheeler, and Ethel Waters, was a near hit.
It seemed that the idea of vaudeville's having died was,
in Lewis Nichol's words, "one of the theatre's most
depressing legends. . . ."7
There was a definite and positive relationship

between war conditions and vaudeville's resurgence. During

the summer of 1942 more theatre's were retaining their

234

stage shows than at any time since the early 19308.

Variety attributed this to the fact that defense workers
were foregoing vacations and were staying at their jobs
during the hot months.8 And if war conditions helped
revive the New York vaudeville stage, they practically
resurrected vaudeville in the provinces across the American
continent. After having been closed for seven years,
Montreal's Gayety Theatre reopened in April, 1942 with a

9 In that same month the RKO houses in

vaudeville show.
Springfield and Salem, Massachusetts adopted stage shows.
Variety explained the rise in small town vaudeville by the
taste of the public for fast, varied shows, and by the
difficulty small town residents had in getting to the big

10 The small-towner could see

cities for entertainment.
live shows right down at the Strand or the Albee. But the
picture for vaudeville was mixed. The snake charmer and
the baggy-pants comedians did live better during the war,
but that brief, brighter period proved to be not so much a
renaissance as a short respite. One could not help notice
that these performers continued to grow a bit shabbier and
more tired as they went from one hotel and shallow stage

to the next. Paul Small, producer of the successful

"time" shows, §22!.EEEE (with George Jessel), §52£_T$hg,
hig_2$hg, 22222.2iflsv etc., said that vaudeville could
produce no more than one or two gggg shows a season because
there simply were not enough performers of the first

11

caliber and box office potency. One looks at the

235

statistics of vaudeville production on Broadway during the
war. He was evidently right.

Vaudeville's first of kin was the revue. What
differentiated the two was a slightly higher level of
sophistication of the revue, more plot line within the
revue's separate skits than in the acts of vaudeville, and
less reliance in the revue on novelty acts such as dancing
dogs and snake charmers. The revue, possibly because of its
more highly sophisticated forms, continued healthy through
the 19308 when vaudeville was tottering, held on more
precariously during the war years, and got a new breath
of life on television in Sid Cesar's §22!.2£ ghggg and the
Egg Skelton hghh. Actually the pure revue, i.e., a show
of varied acts interlarded with short skits featuring a
single great star, was to find television a more congenial
home than the Broadway stage. After 1942, like vaudeville,
the form began to seem old and tired. Billy Rose tried to
resuscitate it with his glamorous 1944 revue, §gygh Lively
5532. Rose wanted a spectacular revival, so he created an
overripe spectacle. Opening night audience members were
charged $24.00 tops and were served champagne at inter-
mission. The entertainment fare was rich and varied.

There was a ballet by Igor Stravinsky, performances by
Benny Goodman and Bert Lahr, and a score by Cole Porter.
The big attraction was Bea Lillie, however, who was,
according to WOlcott Gibbs, the "greatest comedienne living

in our time," and who was back on Broadway after an absence

236

of five years.12 But even the greatest living comedienne

could not breath real life into a show that tried to
substitute size and flashiness for authentic style and wit.
The performers themselves were not happy with the show or
with Rose, reports John Lahr in the biography of his

13

father. Cole Porter felt Seven Lively Arts to be one of

14 The show

his unhappiest experiences in the theatre.
simply lacked a creative center. It certainly did not
resuscitate the revue, which was to survive but not
flourish until the new medium of television appropriated
the form as its own.

Brooks Atkinson suggests two reasons for the
survival of the revue after §22!.§22E and the advent of
musical drama had shown its greater energy and artistic
superiority. The revue pleased many customers, and it did
that partially by the quality of its music. The most
talented composers and lyricists continued for years after
§22!.EEEE.t° create some of their finest songs for such
slender shows. Richard Rodger's "With a Song in My Heart"
was composed for the 1929 revue Spring i§.§2£23 In 1939,
Jerome Kern, the creator of §22!.§22E1 composed "All the
Things You Are" for V_e_g 3.9.119. _f_9_r_ Ma. The revue's music
may not have been integrated, but it was often very good.
Atkinson further suggests as reason for the revue's long
life its characteristic of giving good comedians and
entertainers opportunity to be good. In a real sense,

revues were star vehicles for such performers as W. C.

237

Fields, Bert Larh, Jimmy Durante, and Ed Wynn,15 and the

"musical comedies" Banjo Eyes (1941) and Something for the
Boys (1942) were hardly more than star vehicles for Eddie

16 It is significant to note that

Cantor and Ethel Merman.
the first specimens of the genre that evolved from the
revue, the musical drama, had no big name stars. The
performers became stars because of the success of the new
shows, a reversal of the usual pattern. Alfred Drake,
Celeste Holm, Joan McCracken, and Bambi Lynn were the lead
performers and dancers of Oklahoma!, but they were not stars
until the show became a hit. Unlike the revue, Oklahoma!
had to rely on an innovative style and integrating idea to
succeed.

As already implied, some of the shows called musical
comedies might better be labeled revues. Even though some
shows had a single and continuous plot line, the plot
seemed a pretense for putting together some snappy songs
and some startling visual effects. Furthermore, the plot
was often just a vehicle for a strong star. Somethingfgh
hhg|§gyg is, perhaps, an example of the highly developed
and evolving musical revue that has almost become something
else. It is only because the revue was flexible and capable
of growing away from pure vaudeville to a more sophisticated
form that musical drama had a base on which to stand. The
revue was flexible enough to allow ballet into its canon
of acts. This inclusion was important because the ballet

demanded more extended musical compositions and suggested

238

a movement toward a new kind of orchestra. Something
besides the Tin Pan Alley song grew acceptable to the music
show audience. Further developments came in the music as
more and more black music and blues singers, such as Ethel
Waters, were incorporated into revue shows. Such singers
and their blues style demanded declamatory and, like the
ballet, more extended forms of music.17 The use of black
performers and black music grew to be important during the
war years. Berlin's Thig_ig.phg hghy included an all black
segment, and Hammerstein used a black cast for Carmen 22222!
1943. In 1945 there was the black musical, Memphis hphhg.
But the show where the black influence was perhaps most
strongly felt was in the 1942 revival of Gershwin's EQEEX.
ghgflhggh. The 1942 shortened version of this semi-
operatic, semi-song-tune black show was more favorably
received than the 1935 version had been. It had a suc-
cessful run on Broadway as well as an extended tour of
major cities. Things had changed since 1935, racially
perhaps, and musically. People had accepted the increasing
sophistication of some revues and were now willing to pay
to see really complexly integrated music, dance, character,
and story.

Other great changes in the music and dance that
occurred as vaudeville and revue became refined into
musical drama demand attention. The orchestra of the revue
and musical comedy of the 19308 had basically a band sound,

a vaudeville sound. Porgy and Bess used a nearly full,

239

symphonic sounding orchestra. But, then, £2£21.22§.§E§§
was a hybrid and closer to opera than musical comedy. The
real departure from the band sound came along with the many
other evolutionary but decisive innovations of Oklahoma!
In designing orchestration for his music, Richard Rodgers
decreased the brass and saxaphones and replaced them with
strings. He added a harp.18 The sound was new, fuller,
more subtle. It was more like a concert orchestra and was
capable of creating a greater range of moods. The change
in orchestration was evident in the composition of
orchestras assembled for nearly every musical drama after
Oklahoma! It is interesting to compare the conventional
saxophone band sound of Kurt Weill's orchestra in Eggy_ih_
Ehg_hh£h, 1941 with his orchestra for QEE.EQEE§.2£.!EEE§J
the first really major musical after Oklahoma! Venus's
orchestra never tires for the fullness of Rodger's strings
and is far from the almost overripe sound of Harold Arlen's
Bloomer gig; orchestra, 1944, but the evolution to strings
is evident. With 92.222.22221 a well respected young
conductor and composer, Leonard Bernstein, gave Broadway a
score that had the familiar song integrated right into the
bodies of highly complex ballet numbers. The music was
full of syncopated modern rhythms, and it demanded an
orchestra with skill and fullness. The vaudeville sound
was done, replaced by an orchestra that was a logical
outgrowth of certain earlier ensembles, such as the

orchestra for Porgy and Bess and for Rodger's "Slaughter

240

on Tenth Avenue," but one that was conceived and delivered

to musical comedy and drama by Rodgers in Oklahoma!19

 

The other most significant development in music
during the war years was the loosening of the thirty-two
bar song formula, standard for nearly all the music and
vaudeville and revues. It has been noted how the intro-
duction of black singers and their blues numbers demanded
extended forms. The music of EEEEX.EEQ Eggg presented
music that had qualities of the recitative yet escaped
being strictly operatic. In EQESX.22§.§S§§.there were
interludes, straight "songs," recitatives, and some
hybrids. There were numbers that began as songs, were
briefly interrupted for dialogue and perhaps for even a
recitative or different song sung by another character,
then the original song would return and be completed.

The handling of "Summertime" in the first few minutes of

the play is an example of this kind of hybrid. Though gpggy_
hhg|gggg_was not a pure example of the Broadway musical

and was not terribly influential, it did provide precedent
and background for the musical dramas to come after it.

Another show providing an interesting new use of
musical form is Kurt Weill's EEQX.EB.EEE.22£ER There were
only three segments in which music was used in the play,
periods of dreams and fantasy of a lady executive (played
by Gertrude Lawrence) who is suffering a near nervous
breakdown. In these segments, which Weill called operatic,

choreography and music are nearly continuous, providing

241

sophisticated expression of the mental problems and
processes of the character. Certainly this use of music
and dance seems to presage the revolutionary ballet in
Oklahoma! where Laurey falls asleep and dreams of Jud's
murdering Curly. The songs within the dream/fantasy
sequences of hhgy_ih_hhg_hh£h_remain rather standard form
songs, however. It is really only with Rodgers and
Hemmerstein that the song is used and integrated into the
texture of the action as flexibly as it was in the
hydridized, opera forms of £2£21.229.§E§§f Hammerstein's
adaptation of Carmen, Carmen gghgg, used the extended forms
of that opera, of course, but the real innovations for
musical drama came in Oklahoma! and even more so in
Carousel. The opening song of Oklahoma! "Oh, What a
Beautiful Mornin'," seems conventional enough if heard on
a recording. But heard in the show, it is something quite
different. Curly enters singing the song, engages in
dialogue with Aunt Eller, then resumes singing. The
curiously cruel-humerous "Pore Jud is Daid" starts and
stops to allow Curly to improvise double edged comments
about the villainous farmhand. Such suspended song forms
are seen also in Carousel in "There's Nothing so Bad for

a Woman," among others. In Billy's "Soliloquy," he finds
out that he is to be a father. The number changes in mood
from pride to tenderness to resolution, and develops a
complex metrical pattern. It too becomes an extended

musical segment, not a "song." In Dark g£ the Moon

 

242

experimentation with sound and musical speech is evident.
In addition to traditional songs, the authors employ
repetition in the dialogue, especially in the revival
scene, Act II, scene iv, and the repetition creates a
chanting, almost musical effect.

It would be misleading, however, to imply that such
innovation in musical form was as extensive and widespread
as innovation in orchestration. Most of the musical shows
of the period continued to use the thirty-two bar standard
form, or minor variations thereof. The lyricist may have
been more careful to make lyrics express more closely the
character who sang them, as in 22$.22221 but the form
did not always express the inner emotional state as did
Billy's soliloquy in Carousel or the long slow lines of
Mrs. Maurrant's "Somehow I Never Could Believe" in Kurt
weill's Street Sgghg, 1947. 922.22222.2£.!222§v Bloomer
EiEl! hy Jupiter were among the biggest shows of the World
War II musical shows that used the standard song form.

But even songs that remained formally autonomous and did not
try to integrate their structure into the dialogue and
action were usually ”absorbed" enough into the character

and situation so they could not easily be lifted from the
play and sung on any occasion as could songs from revues.
The songs of musical shows during the war were no longer
looked on as potential hit parade candidates. They were

seen as part of their context.20

243

A development fully as significant as that in music
occurred during the war in the dance. The development in
dance obviously took some by surprise. In 1942 Theodore
Strauss wrote in the New York 22222 Magazine that the revue
chorus girl was staging a comeback. The number of chorus
lines and chorus girls had been diminishing during the
1930s. In 1929 there were 3,800 chorus girls; in 1936 only
552. Strauss cited expectations of employment for as many
as 1,400 in 1942, the same approximate number as in 1932.21
Yet in 1945 the $1222 Magazine carried an article by Thyra
Wimslow stating that “the chorus, so long the keystone of
the modern musical show, has lost the battle and dis-
appeared."22 Miss Wimslow noted that only Follow Ehg.§i£;§
and Mexican Hayride of the eleven musical shows running at
the time had anything even resembling chorus lines. It
would appear that an unexpected revolution in dance had
taken place in the three years that separate Strauss's
article from Wimslow's.

The revolution was ballet. Dance was not dead;
the chorus line "dance" style was. Actually even Strauss
noted the changing styles in Broadway dance. More and more
was being expected of this girl who earned, after all, an
average of $500.00 a year, or less than $10.00 a week.23
The old style dancers needed only be friendly to her
auditioner and good looking. She must hone her look of

naughtiness and disdain, however, for on stage it was the

diffident kick and attitude of charming coolness that won.

244

She really did not have to dance, just kick at approximately
the right time. That something other than gracefulness was
essential is satirized in £2l.£22¥.by a showgirl who says,
rather tiredly during rehearsal, "Wish I was tall enough to
be a show girl, then I wouldn't have to dance."24 That was
the old-style chorus girl, the Ziegfield Girl, the Busby
Berkley Girl. The new one had "to spin across that stage
in a complex counterpoint of routines that [took] weeks of
work and a quick mind to perfect. She [had] to know the
rudiments of ballet technique; . . ."25 So Broadway dancers
grew better trained, sometimes having as much as five to
eight years of training. And with the training came a
steadily increasing professional sense. The girl who had
only glamor to offer began to leave for Hollywood or for a
photographer's studio. Both places offered more money and
made fewer demands.26
The chorus line had been replaced by the ballet
ensemble. Ballet became a legitimate, nay, even a necessary

part of every show.27

The origins of ballet on Broadway

lay in the experiments of the mid and late 19308. There
were such popular ballets as Agnes de Mille's hgggg,
Bernstein's EEESX.§£EEI and Rodger's "Slaughter on Tenth
Avenue" from 92.!22£.22§§ choreographed by George Balanchine
of the Ballet Russe. The Federal Theatre's dance drama,
American Exodus, with its depiction of American pioneer

hardships and successes, seems now to suggest itself as a

direct precedent for the interpreting of Americana themes

245

through ballet. But the single event that consolidated
the evolutionary tendencies into one inevitable movement
was, once again, Oklahoma!

This time the figure of importance was Agnes de
Mille. Her ballet for Act I, scene 3 explores Laurey's
fears through dance. Such exploration is more graphic and
probably is made more immediate than could be done with
words. Laurey has been forced through her own pride to
reject Curley's offer to take her to the box-social.
Instead she has accepted an invitation to go with the dark
and somewhat ominous Jud. As the stage lights go down, the
ballet counterparts of Laurey and Curly come on stage. In
the subsequent ballet, Laurey dreams she is about to marry
Curly, but she finds the groom that comes to her to be Jud.
Her friends and Curly back away from her though she appeals
for help. After a sequence in which Jud abandons Laurey
temporarily for some gaudy dancehall girls, Curly enters
and begins the inevitable fight with Jud. The anxiety and
dread that Laurey has felt in her waking state is projected
into the dream. Given Laurey's psychological state, the
result of the conflict is inevitable. Jud kills Curly.
The ballet is an effective piece of action that gives some
needed psychological depth to what has been a rather
shallow characterization. The ballet was more, then, than
mere color and movement. It added dimension to the show,
creating mood and tension without which the show might

become vapid. It defined the conflict of the play, the

246

conflict of the good and innocent with the evil and

28 and the integrated

ominous. Critics praised the ballet,
dance form became gg_rigeur for every big musical drama
thereafter.

Miss de Mille did the choreography for at least
three of the biggest musical dramas during the war years--
Oklahoma!, with the ballet that started it all, Bloomer
EiEl' and Carousel. In Bloomer EiEl she created a ballet
which had to do the difficult job of telescoping into a
few minutes of dance the events and emotional impact of
the Civil war on a small, upstate New York town. Critics
generally felt she succeeded. Said Kappo Phelan of Th2_
Commonwealth, "In an exact space of time, the struggle is

29 This

experienced and emerged from by the audience."
ballet saved the author and audience from awkward and dull
exposition of passing time and replaced it with an
expressive, emotional spectacle. In Carousel de Mille
again had to express in short compass the emotional hurts
suffered by Billy Bigelow's daughter (played and danced by
Bambi Lynn). The audience is introduced with economy and
art to her life's characteristic rejection experiences and
resulting frustrations. The ballet here, as in Oklahoma!,
serves both psychological and plot functions.

Other shows followed de Mille's example, not always

with equal success. Even such a slight show as the 1945

entry, Hollywood Pinafore, had a ballet. One Touch 23

247

Venus contained two brief ballets, "Forty Minutes for

Lunch," and "Venus in Ozone Heights." Featured in "Forty
Minutes for Lunch" was Sono Osato who later starred in

the show to incorporate more ballet than any other during

or probably since the war, 92.222.22333 92.222.2222! with
music by Leonard Bernstein and choreography by Jerome
Robbin, integrated a slender plot with much dancing. Three
sailors on twenty-four hour leave in New York City seek Ivy
Smith, the subway rider named Miss Turnstiles for June. In
seeking her (because one of the three has taken an impelling
shine to her), they chase all over the metropolis, meeting
strange people, adventures, and nearly continuous oppor-
tunities to dance. The hectic life of the city is expressed
in the hectic search for Miss Turnstiles, in the music's
rhythms, and the kinetic, witty dialogue. In 92.222.2232.
the music, dance, and plot, however slender, become one,
all working toward a unified experience. Far from vaude-
ville or revue specialty acts, this; here the actor must
sing, and he must dance, and he must act. The best of the
new musical dramas began to achieve new complexity and to
make new demands of appreciation.

It had been a long, hard way from 1927 to 1941.
Groups like the Neighborhood Playhouse and the American
Lyric Theatre had had to crusade for what they felt was to
be a new theatre. The American Lyric Theatre called for a
music theatre between popular musical comedy and grand

opera. It called for this new form to be rooted in folk

248

material.30 Though the Lyric Theatre itself was less than

a success, it was a leader in verbalizing the general
feelings of the period that the American musical theatre was
ready to move from its vaudeville and revue parentage into

a new phase.

In 1941 George Beiswanger stated succinctly the
demands sympathetic observors made of the American theatre.
"The theatre . . . has become ready at long last to
acknowledge that music must take part if America's drama
is to be commensurate in imaginative wealth with its

life."31

During the war the musical theatre accepted the
implicit challenge, if, indeed, it could have done other-
wise given the background of forces that had developed by
1941. And by the end of the war, commentators noted what
seemed to have been the emergence of a new and attractive
organism. "Within the last few years, with what seemed
like suddenness, there came out of all this hodge-podge an
American theatre form--entertaining and artistically sound,
made up of story, verse, music, dance and design, with
plenty of opportunity not only for the comedian, long an
outstanding American theatre product, but for our newer
singing-actors and actor-singers."32
At least three tendencies are evident in the
comments of observors and participants during these years.
One is their emphasis on the new musical theatre's need for

and sometime success in gaining integration of all the

elements of production, and, concurrently, its need for

249

and sometimes success in achieving emotional depth and
mature consideration of some weighty subject--the war, for
instance, or psychoanalysis. EEQX.£2.EEE.EEEEiS relatively
serious handling of its psycholanalytical theme seemed a
fluke, and even after its example, most observors did not
really expect much seriousness from the musical comedies.
One or two musical shows had war settings, just as some
straight dramas put a character or two into a uniform and
claimed relevance. Carmen gghgg, which opened in December,
1943, was such a musical. Oscar Hammerstein's new
libretto for Bizet's music and story moved the action from
Spain to the American South during the war. The Spanish
gypsies became American blacks. The cigarette factory
became a parachute factory, Carmen Jones a worker in the
factory, Joe (Don José) became an M. P., and Escamilla
became Husky Miller, a prizefighter. The setting was
contemporary and the story serious, but the show did not
really deal with the war. Besides, Carmen Jghgg was a
special case-~more a transposed opera than a pure musical
"comedy."

Actually there were very few pure musical comedies
and musical dramas that dealt directly with the war at all.
Of those few that had any connection with the war, 93.222
2912 (1945), and h.Connecticutt Jankee (1944), put their
heroes into naval uniforms. Herbert and Dorothy Fields
revue-like Somethihg»prDEhg.§gyg_was probably most

successful and would have been typical if a hypothetical

250

33

war musical comedy vogue had developed. The show was

characterized by some of Cole Porter's "second-best music,
[and] beautiful girls all covered with sequins. . . ."34
No one could accuse the book of being too serious.
Three cousins are located and informed by the Court of
Missing Heirs that they have inherited a ranch in Texas.
Taking possession of the ranch, they find it to be nothing
but a broken down building near Keeley Field air base.
The patriotic and evidently ambitious Blossom Hart (Ethel
Merman) decides to turn the building into a boarding house
for fliers' wives. She also wants to make the lower floor's
rooms into some kind of a defense plant. Love comes for
Blossom in the figure of flier Sergeant Rocky Fulton (Bill
Johnson). But the flier is not free; he is pursued by
Melanie, a senator's daughter. In an effort to break up
Blossom's budding romance, Melanie hints to the base's
commanding officer that the boarding house is actually a
brothel. The C. O. responds to this news by ordering the
house off—limits. Ruined but still energetic, Blossom
discovers that she is a human radio, made so by the
carborundum fillings of her bridgework. She informs the
commanding officer of this discovery, and he is under-
standably grateful. Now every one of his men can be his
own radio. Blossom further endears herself when she saves
a plane and crew by serving as a radio when the one in the
plane breaks down. Being now a heroine and her word

trustworthy, she explains the real nature of her

251

establishment and the C. 0. allows it reopened. Blossom

and Rocky, of course, are reunited and all ends happily.

One may agree with Wolcott Gibbs that it is "one of those
books that won't hurt you if you don't pay too much

attention to it"35

and wax philosophical with Brooks
Atkinson, "although it is not dishonorable, it is not
sublime." But the real joys of the show had little to do
with thought or fine plot, and few really expected them to.
The real joys came when Ethel Merman started belting out
such songs as "Hey, Good Looking.” The songs, the star,
stood out, apart from the texture of the play. This was
not to be the style of the newly developing musical drama
gentre.

Richard Rodgers attributed much of Oklahoma's!
success to its integration of elements. "The scenery looks
the way the music sounds and the clothes look as though
they belonged to the characters rather than the manage-

36 At the same time that he celebrated the achieve-

ment."
ment of integration, he called for a continuing quest in
the musical theatre for seriousness. The new musical
drama, he said, "could be an extension of our musical
comedy . . . into a field where music has emotion as well
as rhythm, where lyrics become poetry, where design has
artistry, and where dancing has meaning and is not a
succession of hammer blows on a wooden stage."37

The second tendency is for musical theatre

observors to look for a new term to define that new

252

genre-organism they see having developed during the war.
Rodgers implies in his comments that the new form is
different from what we call ”musical comedy." Edith J. R.
Isaacs and Rosamond Gilder state flatly that in 1945 "the
term musical comedy is inadequate; musical theatre would
be more appropriate. . . ."38 No consensus on terminology
was reached during the war, nor has it been since, but
musical drama perhaps most accurately describes the new
genre as it was to flower in such productions as Oklahoma!,
.We_st 21.22 em: and 8x2521-

The third element seen in the comments of observors
late in the war and after it is the feeling that musical
drama is essentially an American form. The reviewer for
Theatre hhpg Monthly declared that with 92.222.2232."an

39 Observors had

American genre [had] come into being."
long felt that America's theatrical form lay in the
vaudeville-revue pattern. American did it best. In
America it had more zest and mature talent. But it was in
the vaudeville-revues's offspring, the musical drama, that
the cruder music hall kind of performance indirectly
achieved sufficient artistic stature to be accepted as a
valuable esthetic contribution to the theatre.

With the unity and integration of such shows as
gc_>_r_gy _a_r_1_<_l_ _B_e_s_§_L Oklahoma!, Carousel, and 9h hhg m, a
Broadway musical show could be judged seriously on its

artistic merits. The critic did not have to pretend there

was no book to discuss, as was often the case before and

253

 

even during the war with such shows as Somethiggfor the

Boys and Mexican Hayride. The American musical drama

 

began to take serious works from both literature and music
and transform them into its own new conventions. Carmen
became the successful and respected Carmen gghgg. One
version of the ballad of "Barbara Allen" became the basis
of EEEE g: £22.52223 W. Somersett Maughm's story, "Rain"

and play, Miss Thompson, became the musical Sadie Thompson,

 

1944, with June Havoc. Both Oklahoma! and Carousel were
adapted from serious dramas, Lynn Riggs' Egggh‘ghgy.phg_
Lilacs and Ferenc Molnar's Liliom respectively. In short,
the new form was a synthesis of elements, story, music,
dance, capable of treating varied topics and themes
seriously or lightly, as occasion demanded. It was,
perhaps, the most flexible of genres. But when the
observors pointed to the musical drama as a distinctly
American form, they were referring to more than the
esthetic capacities of a genre that had developed in
America of American "parents." They also had in mind the

emerging content of the American musical theatre.
Cultural Celebration in 4/4 Time

There is an attempt to find a genuine theme for this

whole affair [Sing Out, Sweet Land]; all through it

runs the effort to create a kind of folk fable:

America singing, America saved by a song, the people's

wild and scattered heart gathered up and given its life

again through our songs, songs, songs, countless songs.
Stark Young

 

 

 

 

   

254

The music haunts the communal imagination of a society,
subliminal advertisements for the American dream.
John Lahr, Gp Against the Fourth Wall

[Mass fiction] tends to become an objectified mass
dream. . . . The individual writer abandons his own
personality and identifies himself with the reveries of
his readers.
Henry Nash Smith, Thg_Virgin 2222
Something had happened to the content of musical
shows during the war. In 1941-42 no dominant theme or
setting could be discerned. The big shows were Gy Jupiter
by Rodgers and Hart, £2l.2221.by John O'Hara, Rodgers,
and Hart, and ESEX.$2.EEE.EE£E' The hero, if there was
one, was the ne'er-do-very-well and kept man, Joey, an
anti-hero. In 1945 things had changed; patterns and
dominant motifs had emerged. The biggest shows on Broadway
in 1945 were the continuing Oklahoma!, Carousel, Gihg_th,
§E§EE.EEBQJ which was a cavalcade of American folk songs
assembled and made into a somewhat coherent whole by Walter
Kerr, Bloomer Gigi, a musical drama about the liberal niece
of the famous women's dress reformer and about helping
slaves on the underground railroad, 22EE.2£.E§E.§2221
based on an Appalachian version of the ballad of "Barbara
Allen," and finally, 92.322.2232:
The most startling thing about these musical plays,
the ones most people were paying money to see, is that in
one way or another they all deal with Americana.4o Rogers

and Hammerstein moved the action of Liliom from Hungary to

New England. Sing Out, Sweet Land used a panorama approach

255

to American music and history, moving from Puritan New
England to a contemporary bar scene. When the observors

and critics of Broadway began to speak of a new American
genre, then, they were referring in part to this phenomenon
of subject matter. The new American genre seemed to be
reaching into American folklore and folk types for its
matter. And it seemed to be moving uniformly to the
American past for its setting. Note that only one of the
hit shows listed for 1945, 92.222.2232! had a contemporary
setting. The rest took their audiences back into the past--
sometimes a Currier and Ives past, as in Gp_ih Central high,
sometimes a darker past, as in 225E.2£.EEE.§222J but always
an American past. And only those shows dealing with the
American subjects survived their 100th performance in the
1944-45 season.

It would seem that the interest and cultivation by
the Federal Theatre of American local color and historical
subjects found its most innovative, and popular, and
polite, embodiment in the American musical drama after
1942. Part of the reason for the move of Americana from
straight drama to musicals has been suggested in the
previous chapter--musicals are more closely akin to the
spectacle form of many of the Federal Theatre's regional
and historical festivals. But the reason is probably more
complex than that. Northrup Frye's discussion of genres

suggests that the musical comedy genre is the one best

256

suited to project American communally shared images and
ideals.

As the comedy form incorporates music and dance,
according to Frye, it moves in the direction-of the masque.
The masque, he explains, is usually supportive of the
contemporary social order and sense of identity.

The masque is usually a compliment to the audience
. . . and leads up to an idealization of the society
represented by that audience. . . . The ideal masque is
in fact a myth play. . . . It is designed to emphasize,
not the ideals to be achieved by discipline or faith,
but ideals which are desired or considered to be already
possessed. Its settings are seldom remote from magic
and fairyland, from Arcadia and visions of earthly
paradise.
The musical drama/masque genre, then, becomes the con-
ventional and apparently most effective mode for projecting
cultural ideas and patterns of thought.

The almost ritual-like combining of music, words,
and dance in celebration of specifically American settings
and stories seemed in World War II to have an almost
hypnotic effect upon spectators. The audiences' reactions
to the Americana shows was not merely casual enjoyment.
There seemed to be some deeper appeal than that of light
entertainment. The ticket lines for Oklahoma! were
notorious. People told with zest stories of their hard-
ships and dealings to get tickets for that show. Even with
what may be the weakest of this All-American crop of shows,

EE.££ Central Park, people were drawn to see it again.

"Audience reaction in this town is something of a marvel,"

257

said Kappo Phelan about the 22.12 Central Ehgh audience.
"Here, one finds second-night people firm in each seat,
even a fringe of them standing at the rear; . . ."42 Such
devotion to shows, good or weak, suggests that there may be
something of interest to a student of literature and its
relation to culture and mass psychology.

Supposing there to be a real trend going on in the
theatre, especially in the most vital and creative genre at
the time, and supposing that this trend is in response to
and reflects some probably unconscious psychological under-
current, one can ask if this general psychological
atmosphere has direct or indirect genesis in the war. The
taste for the past, the desire to be in contact with one's
roots, traditions, and one's justifying heritage may be
emotional products of a culture under siege. A people under
stress may seek some kind of statement of identity. It may
seek comfort in archetypal motifs through which it can feel
identity, pride, or perhaps a nostalgic melancholy. The
trends in the musical theatre after Oklahoma! indicate

43 If this need of people

that this is possibly the case.
for their past when the present proves threatening either
personally or collectively is real, then one may say that
the theatre did not, indeed, ignore either the war nor its
audience as some Congressmen and columnists sometimes
feared. The theatre's reaction to the war may have been

oblique but essentially fitting with its nature and

capacities. We recall Helen Haye's response to Martha

Dreiblatf'!
war. M155
where migh
earned thr
triumphs.
more to in
reminding
rather the
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Consolidat
reSPODding
and inspir
later musi
mesion Sh
esthetic d«
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% M, ,
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“similar t

258

Dreiblatt's question about the role of the theatre during
war. Miss Hayes seemed to see the theatre as a place
where might be experienced the strength the culture has
earned through its past collective sufferings, trials, and
triumphs. "Curiously," she said, "I think Harriet does
more to inspire audiences to effort in the present war by
reminding them of proud moments and great aims of our past
rather than of the grim suffering of today put on the
stage."

Examination of the Americana play may finally
consolidate our consideration of the motifs people were
responding to and evidently finding emotionally rewarding

and inspiring. The musical drama that became the model for

later musical plays was, of course, Oklahoma! Its dis-

 

cussion shall be reserved, for it has both a cultural and
esthetic depth and importance that deserve closer study.
The only Americana hit having a contemporary setting, Gh
222.2222! found its success and depth from a subtle
coalescence of specifically American and universal appeals
--similar to the coalescence seen in hhg Lincoln ih
Illinois. Gh 222.2222 did not hide the fact of the World
War II city ethos-~the shrill-tongued, gum snapping
stenographers, the crowds. It did not hide the war. Its
heroes were three sailors on leave in the big city. On
the other hand, it did not really look at the war either.
It rather smothers the war in our sympathy and affection

for these likable people out on the natural quest for an

ideal girl.
boys in the
the universe
It
Smith--comm«
the show is
knight figu
transformed
subway ride
the vision .
Pel‘severanc.
debased, bu
it is fOIRSj
soon CaSts
Show does n
Turnstiles
Of a comple
the Ship Ca:
of the Sail

dOWn. n

Th0
from thOse
being has i

American mc
Images, su
courting,

and irreve

259

ideal girl. Here are good, clean, high-spirited American
boys in the American city seeking the comforting, the good,
the universal perhaps.

It is no accident that Miss Turnstile's name is Ivy
Smith--common, green, wholesome. What we seem to have in
the show is a highly displaced, ironic, quest romance, with
knight figures made into sailors, and the princesses
transformed into a taxi-driver, an anthropologist, and a
subway rider. The grail becomes an idealized subway queen,
the vision of which is reward for the American virtue of
perseverance in the pursuit of a vision. The quest is
debased, but honorable and funny; rather than supernatural
it is folksy and human. That the sailors' leave must end
soon casts a melancholy note over the proceedings, but the
show does not and till the quest is successful and Miss
Turnstiles is found. So there is the esthetic satisfaction
of a completed romance structure. And even returning to
the ship cannot completely dampen the irrepressible spirit
of the sailors, so there is the emotional satisfaction
coming from contemplating strong people who cannot be "got
down." Though most of the elements in Gh_ghg_igyh_differ
from those of the other musical dramas of the period in
being basically ironic and esthetic, there are certain
American motifs that merge with the more universal esthetic
images, such as the innocent hero, the image of chaste
courting, and especially a general life-spirit of youth

and irreverence.

to W
down
endi
and

and

ngg
23gb
that
year
PerS'
0f h!
his 1
barge
conjt

PUShe

260

As Gh the Town demonstrates, the boy did not have
to win the girl permanently so that the curtain could come
down on a happy-ever-after finale. Certainly the happy

ending was common enough during the war, from Oklahoma!

 

and Lady ih the Dark to One Touch gg'Venus, Bloomer Girl,

 

and HE.£2 Central Park. But the outcome of the action in

Carousel and Dark hi the Moon was quite different. In

 

.22£E.2£.E§2.!222 a witch boy is made human on the condition
that his true love, Barbara Allen, be true to him for one
year. Though Barbara loves John, the witch boy, she is
persuaded to be unfaithful to him by the shocked Christians
of her mountain community. So John is forced to reenter

his unholy realms again, and Barbara dies because of a
bargain the jealous female witches have made with the
conjuring man of the mountain. The play ends as John coldly
pushes Barbara Allen's body with his foot.

In Carousel, Billy Bigelow, a carousel operator,
shows the increasing complexity of characters in musical
dramas during the war. He is proud and neurotic, beating
his wife, Julie, in his frustration at failing to support
her and achieve the American respectability of the hard-
working and upright Mr. Snow. His real tragedy, however,
is that he cannot communicate his deepest feelings for Julie
and must show love by striving for external symbols of that
love. He tries to steal a payroll to get money for his
coming family, is caught, and kills himself rather than go

to prison. Certainly no revue-musical comedy would have

dared handl
given the c
help his da
because of
badly, and
He fails ac_
last scene,
does any kj
father occx
self-reliax
lum direct:
and beliexn
enduranCe 6.

Bot
the 1°OSest
those of tr

mental . WI“

"tender" e

emetic“.l ls

and WQnde r

 

The inVOlv
settings a

Lo
consistQnt

ericana

261

dared handle such a complex character. In heaven Billy is
given the opportunity to return to earth for one day to
help his daughter, who is suffering social rejection
because of her father's reputation. Their meeting goes
badly, and Billy ends by striking his frightened daughter.
He fails again to reach the people he loves. Only in the
last scene, as he invisibly watches his daughter graduate,
does any kind of communication between the girl and her
father occur. The graduation speaker celebrates Emersonian
self-reliance and selfeworth, and, though she cannot hear
him directly, Billy tells her, in effect, to forget him
and believe in herself. The show ends in a song of
endurance and comfort, "You'll Never Walk Alone."

Both 22£5.2£.E§E.§222 and Carousel are "tragic" in
the loosest sense of the word. The primary appeals are
those of the much maligned literary tradition, the senti-
mental. Whether the issue of the action is happy, tragic,
or cynical, the characters and their struggles engage the
"tender" emotions. Whether the result of the engagement of
emotion is weeping, inspiration, or the ambivalent pity
and wonder at the revelation of other realms, the audience
is moved and, theoretically, ennobled by their involvement.
The involvement may be all the more intense because the
settings and stories are American.

Local color and American types find their most
consistent, though perhaps blandest, employment in the

Americana musical drama. Probably the most authentic and

 

compel
gggg.
that 1
local
power
establ
Americ
common
fears
there
'3er 2
human
POWers
the di
an Ame
of reg

is don!
made Ne
ploddin
England
point w
returni1
fishermf

Yankee a

262

compelling of the plays under discussion is Dark 9: the

Moon. Part of the compelling quality comes from the fact

 

that it is set in the Smoky Mountains and is based on a
local version of a story that has universally shown great
power of fascination. In watching this drama the viewer
establishes a kind of link with the common folk of the
American soil. The audience shares with the characters a
common story, common folk songs, and perhaps latent common
fears and fascination with witches and witchcraft. But
there is also the simpler interest in local color. In
22£5.2£.E§2.§222 a region's particular superstitutions and
human types are presented. The conjurer man and his
powers, the revival preacher and his curious congregation,
the dialect spoken by the characters--all these appeal to
an American outlook that paradoxically links the diversity
of region and richness of regional characters with a sense
of common American identity.

The same kind of local color appeal is seen in Gp_
ih Central Eggh, in which New York's past is evoked. It
is doubtless partly this evocation of their own past that
made New Yorkers flock to this show in spite of its

plodding book. Carousel, moved from Hungary to New

 

England, consciously exploited local color appeal, to the
point where some critics objected.44 The joy of spring's
returning to a northern climate, clam bakes, smelly
fishermen, and the typically taciturn, earnest, hardworking

Yankee are all evoked and portrayed. In Oklahoma! the

frontier b
such uniqu-
and the fa
much bitte
tried to i
multiplici
but all An

T1“
tOgether x,
drama duri
°°mParatiV
even more
Singing of
reading fr
“Evie. Thi

\
fraternity
AmeriCan e
limina11y_
Krutch We

and indivi
C

%.

mOtivate A!

 

263

frontier box-social is a central element of the action, and
such uniquely frontier conflicts as that between the rancher
and the farmer raise their heads, though without injecting
much bitterness into the action. The musical dramas

tried to incorporate and exploit a sense of the American
multiplicity and unity--many regions, many curious types

but all American.

The shows tied the regions and types of people
together with certain common ideas and ideals. The musical
drama during the war did not usually preach. The sure but
comparatively subtle patriotism of ihig i§_ghg_hghy grew
even more subtle in the musical drama. There was no
singing of the "Marseilles" as in the movie Casablanca or
reading from the "Rights of Man" as in Charles Laughton's
movie, EELE.EEBQ.£§.§£22¢ But such common ideas of liberty,
fraternity, and equality, and the more specifically
American expressions of them were often glorified sub—
liminally--the most effective way according to Joseph Wood
Krutch we recall.* The Emersonian ideals of self-reliance
and individual worth are central to the final scene of
Carousel. At least two other American ideas that supposedly
motivate Americans are evident in the musical dramas of

the period. The interest in Lincoln and the Civil War is

 

*"An oblique or tangential approach to the most
important topic of the moment is more likely to be
effective on the stage than direct statement."

incorporate
national un
and motivat
Holm) is th
hoop skirt
so committee
to persuade
one of his
Show's brig
Sings "I GC
The
logical nec
equality fc
the war Shc
diVerSe reg
Civil War 1
When the We
dQSt’rOYed.

Cicero Pal 1

south he st

he hears Li

the C011 cep t
EVE-1111a in

 

S
olized

264

incorporated in Bloomer Gigi, where the attendant ideas of
national unity, freedom, and equality provide the framework
and motivations for the action. Evelina Bloomer (Celeste
Holm) is the liberal, abolitionist-minded daughter of a
hoop skirt manufacturer in Cicero Falls, New York. She is
so committed to the underground railroad that she is able
to persuade her slaveholding fiancé from Kentucky to help
one of his own slaves escape via the system. One of the
show's brightest moments comes when the escaped slave

sings "I Got a Song" with its verse on Freedom.

The Civil War, as popularly conceived, was the
logical necessity of the North's belief in freedom and
equality for all (i.e., slavery had to be abolished), but
the war showed the failure of Americans to bring their
diverse regions and ideas into a consensual unity. The
Civil War is the central crisis and symbol of Bloomer Gigi.
When the war begins, union of the characters and nation is
destroyed. Evelina's Southern slaveholding fiance leaves
Cicero Falls to join the Confederate Army. But on his way
south he stops off in, of all places, Washington. There
he hears Lincoln and is so moved by that man that he accepts
the concepts of freedom and equality. He returns to
Evelina in Cicero Falls, and the stated American ideals of
liberty for all and unity of moral principles despite
diversity of regions and ways of life are evoked and

symbolized by the characters' personal union.

_BLl
of America
of America
but there
conquer it
in conflic
cies is a
Central E
the Tweed
COI’ruption
The report‘
the Park m‘
Plate, a b:
amidst the
brOgues. 1
fight f0: 1
black Pe0p1

c1113 ade I an

reforming a,

chord dutin

conlplete 1y

The
lnSpiratior

regiOna 1 ty

265

Bloomer Gigi and HE.£E Central ghgh evoke an image
of America related to that discussed above. This image is
of America as a place of reform. Evils exist in America,
but there are always honest men to fight the evil and

conquer it. In Oklahoma! Curly seems a minor culture hero

 

in conflict with Jud, who, because of his arsonist tenden-
cies is a definite threat to the community.' In HE.££
Central Ehgh, a newspaper reporter and a cartoonist take on
the Tweed gang to try to bring to light their graft and
corruption in arranging for the building of Central Park.
The reporter and cartoonist are, of course, successful, and
the park may be completed untainted, a Currier and Ives
plate, a bit of the American pastoral dream-landscape
amidst the urban clang of commerce, fire engines, and Irish
brogues. In Bloomer Gigi Evelina and her Aunt Dolly Bloomer
fight for reform in women's dress and for the freedom of
black people. The North joins in with this personal
crusade, and the American community becomes a united
reforming agency. Such an image of Americans and the
American nation must have struck an especially responsive
chord during the war years when the enemy could so
completely be identified with evil.

The musical drama, then, provided certain kinds of
inspiration for a war weary culture. Here were images of
regional types, admittedly tailored for the theatre, but
identifiably and proudly Americans. Here was diversity

made unity through ideals. Here were reformers successfully

 

meeting a
the natic
reformer
somewhat
really it
that CurI
The refo:
Past, con
changed t
legislate
forever t
New York
La Guardi
allowed r
then the .
an(Jer, an:
C:Ol‘1fj_dencE
nation's L
the maSque
idealizing

The
had fought
that the b
tough

OUt
\' SW
w

0 and

and apparel:

266

meeting and beating the particular evils they faced, and
the nation itself as a kind of collective savior and
reformer of vast evils. The images of the reformers were
somewhat idealized and the issue of their battles never
really in doubt. Jud is threatening, but no one doubts
that Curly, the pure and strong, can overcome his threat.
The reforms to be effected, furthermore, were all in the
past, comfortably settled. Women's dress had long since
changed to more comfortable styles, and the Civil War had
legislated slavery out of existence and supposedly settled
forever the problem of black equality. The corruption of
New York City seemed under control as long as a man like
La Guardia remained remained mayor. The reforms and evils
allowed relatively complacent contemplation. Obviously,
then the goal was not to stir the viewer to awareness,
anger, and action in the Ibsen tradition, but to instill
confidence in the success of the American person's and
nation's use of virtuous power. The musical was performing
the masque's conventional role of complimenting and
idealizing the audience and the society it represented.
The musical drama showed its audience that Americans
had fought battles before for unquestionable causes and
that the battles had been won. The American nation was
tough, and good, and spirited. It would survive, as Gihg
th, Gyggg_ihhg implied. And for those moments of doubt

and apparent loss and failure, the musical drama provided

 

a gutsy pt

of Oklahon
Oh, 1c
bein'
die.

can st
you gc

things
Pe
theatre's
unconsciox
imagery, t
moved. It
unconscioL
Perhaps or
Show becan
word fOr i
SLRJgest it
The New Yo
Years and
City alone
Visiting 2
befOre 10,
started to
It visited
There was
mind in a
productior

267

a gutsy philosophy of frontier endurance like Aunt Eller's
of Oklahoma!
Oh, lots of things happened to folks. Sickness, er
bein' pore and hungry even--bein' old and afeared to
die. That's the way it is--crad1e to grave. And you
can stand it. They's one way. You gotta be hearty,
you got to be. You cain't deserve the sweet and tender
things in life less'n you're tough.45
Perhaps the most interesting element of the musical
theatre's response to the war environment was its probably
unconscious movement in the direction of cultural myth and

imagery, the same direction in which the other genres

moved. It is in Oklahoma! that the use, conscious or

 

unconscious, of cultural archetypes is most fully made.
Perhaps one may suggest that this is the reason that the
show became such a phenomenon. And phenomenon is the only
word for it; it was not merely a hit. The statistics
suggest its role as a major event of cultural expression.
The New York production ran for 2,248 performances (five
years and nine weeks). It grossed $7,000,000 in New York
City alone. A national company toured for ten years,
visiting 250 cities, grossing $20,000,000 and playing
before 10,000,000 people. The New York company also
started touring after its Broadway production closed, and
it visited seventy-one more cities before disbanding.46
There was something in Oklahoma! that moved the American

mind in a profound way. Certainly the high quality of the

production, the fine music and dance were important, but

such a phe
more than
that brouc;
It
in America
and common
Americans
SOmewhere,
as an idea
even thoug
be mythic.
the unaffe
for E E
“Out it,
these is t1
and bright
American bL‘
is 011: Plai
Willie nati
wha
Americans 8
is that mos
image Of a

W!

paredise th

L

the maSQuel

 

268

such a phenomenal production record suggests that it was
more than mere integration of elements and esthetic quality
that brought people in by the millions.

It may be possible to argue that Oklahoma! evoked
in Americans a sense of community, a sense of a common land
and common ideals. It may have evoked an America that all
Americans wanted to remember, believed still existed

somewhere, maybe only in the mind. Critics noted Oklahoma!

 

as an idealized projection of cultural images and wishes,
even though they did not explicitly state the projection to

be mythic. Life said Oklahoma! "is wholesome and sweet in
47

 

the unaffected way that a fairy tale is." Stark Young,
for EEE.§S! Republic said, "There is nothing distinguished
about it, and nothing chic and nothing smart, but none of
these is tried for; what is sought is the open, the friendly
and bright and plain American--not the realistic plain
American but the Broadway version of what we like to think
is our plain, folksy, happy-hearted, waltz-mevaround-again-
Willie native life and character ways."48
What is evident in Oklahoma!, and what millions of
Americans suffered hardships of a sort in order to partake
is that most powerful of American cultural images, the
image of a pastoral, innocent, and hopeful West. In
Oklahoma! the pastoral West is the Arcadia or earthly

paradise that Frye describes as conventionally a part of

the masque-myth-play. What the musical evokes is the image

269

of the American West that has stirred the imaginations of
Americans since settlers first landed on these shores.
Cultural historian Henry Nash Smith attests to the power of
this image of the garden of the world, of a "vast and
constantly growing agricultural society in the interior of
the continent" to become "a collective representation, a
poetic idea . . . that defined the promise of American

life."49

One must admit that there are shadows in this
picture of promise and paradise. The conceptual and actual
conflict between the wild west of the trapper and the
agricultural west is suggested in the mention of conflict
between the ranchers and farmers. Evil and disorder are
present in the figure of Jud. But the conflict between

the ranchers and farmers is minimized in the play, and
though the Jud story grows ugly, the reality of it is soft-
pedalled. There is also some suggestion of deeper and
darker psychological reality both in Laurey's ballet and

in the exposition of Jud's mind as that character talks
with Curly in the smoke house. In fact, as Jud's history
of exclusion and alienation becomes clearer, the character
becomes almost too sympathetic. His formal function as
villain is nearly compromised, and he becomes dimensional,
threatenting, somewhat like Shylock, to upset the tone of
the play. But the overwhelming aura is of a simple idyll
in American pastures. Americans in such an ongoing idyll
can deal with evil and then get back to the business of

living out the Arcadian dream.

270

The American images evoked in Oklahoma! are best
50

 

described in what Nash calls our yoeman ideal and in
R. W. B. Lewis's The hmerican Adam, which is an attempt to
define American culture's basic mythic construction of
reality. Lewis's description of the images consistently
employed in American literature and thought to picture the
American person in this new world seem to describe the
figure of Curly in Oklahoma! Curly is just one of a long
line of conventionally conceived and rendered men. Curly,
like Lewis's "Adam," is a figure bereft of ancestry,
“untouched and undefiled by the usual inheritance of family
and race, an individual standing alone, self-reliant and
self-propelling, ready to confront whatever [awaits] him
with the aid of his own unique and inherent resources.

. . . His moral position [is] prior to experience, and in

"51 The

his very newness he [is] fundamentally innocent.
American figure, innocent, moral, ready to face a new land
and challenges; that is Curly.

The future for the American has always been viewed
as bright. Even after the Census Bureau and Frederick
Jackson Turner declared it closed, there has always been
in the American imagination or memory some kind of frontier
on which the American man could become new, free, and
hopeful again. Lewis deals with this aspect of American
Adam figures, i.e., their view of history and the future.

"The image contrived . . . [has been] that of the authentic

American as a figure of heroic innocence and vast

potential
This imag
a sense 0
theme of
personal
and the r
effort ca
American
and Ameri
every per
faction."
T
beginning
the Same
new life,
about Okl
\
W E
of the YO

As with t]

 

271

potentialities, poised at the start of a new history. . . .
This image had about it always an air of adventurousness,

a sense 0f Promise and possibility."52

The underlying
theme of Oklahoma! is that of starting on a new adventure,
personal and communal. A few problems exist, such as Jud
and the rancher/farmer dispute, but a little sweat and
effort can deal with them. As John Lahr has observed about
American musicals in general, there is "still the rainbow,
and America still [looms] as some profuse Eden in which
every person [has] only to wait his turn for satis-
faction."53
The show opens with an ode to sweet morning--sweet
beginnings, "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," and ends with
the same song as Curly and Laurey drive off to start their
new life. One of the interesting and significant things
about Oklahoma!, and one which is somewhat echoed in
Bloomer EiEl' is the identification of the personal life
of the young man and woman with the life of the community.
As with the Anderson-Sherwood Christ figures, the indivudual
and communal destinies are linked, but here the implications
are not tragic. In the marriage of its individual members,
the community gets new life. Individual destiny and
community destiny are one, and together they share the
Adamic image as defined by Lewis, innocent, full of vast
potentialities and hope. The best example of this union of

destinies occurs at Curly and Laurey's wedding. Instead

of a wedding march being played, an ode to the territory

 

and way 01

and commul

am garde]
Aunt 1
in li:
Ike:
Curly
Laure}

All:
Gonna

Fred:
Carro1

Cord I
Carneg

Aunt I
zoom--

Ike:

Fred:

 

272

and way of life is sung, suggesting the union of personal
and community identity, and incorporating the images of

the garden-~fertile, blissful, and promising.

Aunt Eller: They couldn't pick a better time to start
in life!

Ike: It ain't too early and it ain't too late.
Curly: Startin' as a farmer with a brand-new wife—-
Laurey: Soon be livin in a brand-new state!

All: Brand-new state
Gonna treat you great!

Fred: Gonna give you barley,
Carrots and pertaters--

Cord Elam: Pasture for the cattle--
Carnes: Spinach and termayters!

Aunt Eller: Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs
zoo --

Ike: Plen'y of air and plen‘y of room--
Fred: Plen'y of room to swing a rope!
Aunt Eller: Plen'y of heart and plen'y of hope. . . .

Curly: Oklahoma,

Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain,
And the wavin' wheat

Can sure smell sweet

When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma,

Every night my honey lamb and I

Sit alone and talk

And watch a hawk

Makin' lazy circles in the sky.

We know*we belong to the land,

And the land we belong to is grand!

And when we say:

EE-ee-ow! A-yip-i-o-ee-ay!

We're only sayin'

ll You
Okla

innocenc
is accid
be settl
this inn
so clear
formalit
acceptar
Court p1

freed tc

Outside :
Marx ana
kind of 1
other Inns
be basics
threat.

minded Wi‘
feel-1:19."!
culture a
point for

ROSta 191 a

273

"You're doin' find, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma, 0. K.!
(pp. 75-76)

Unfortunately Jud appears to upset this idyll of
innocence and hope. He comes at Curly with a knife, but
is accidentally killed himself. There are legal problems to
be settled because of this development, of course. But in
this innocent Eden of the West where moral categories are
so clear cut and moral evaluation so sure, where legal
formalities run counter to a basic anarchic impulse, it is
acceptable to bend the law a little. In a near parody of
court proceedings, Curly is absolved of all blame and is
freed to start his life with Laurey.

The power of American archetypes to create a sense
of communal identity in a culture threatened from the
outside must be obvious. In The Machine i2_thg_Garden Leo
Marx analyzes the impulse that creates and responds to the
kind of pastoral expression found in Oklahoma! and the
other American musicals of World War II. He finds it to
be basically an impulse of escape from complexity and
threat. Such impulse can lead, he says, to "A simple-
minded wishfulness, a romantic perversion of thought and

54 Yet it can lead to more. "While in the

feeling."
culture at large [the pastoral impulse] is the starting
point for infantile wish-fulfillment dreams, a diffuse

nostalgia, and a naive, anarchic primitivism, yet it is

also the

power to

evoking

any prof
as they

ment, se
rather tj
contempl.
CUItural
were safc
liminall}
and Jud,

ation the

the hard

 

274

also the source of writing that is invaluable for its

power to enrich and clarify our experience."55
It is extremely doubtful that any of the musicals

evoking American's past clarified the American experience in

any profound way. The musicals, excellent and innovative

as they may have been in terms of their generic develop-

ment, served mostly a popular, cultural celebration function

rather than a clarifying one. It seems in retrospective

contemplation that they created nostalgic but subtle

cultural parables. They created a past in which things

were safer and sunnier, but also a past in which a sub-

liminally wished for present could be discerned. In Curly

and Jud, Laurey and the Oklahoma territory was the situ-

ation that Americans found themselves in. In Jud were all

the hard and ugly challenges of a world at war. In Curly,

a hero who combines the Adamic, local color innocence of

E. P. Conkle's Lincoln with that of a John Wayne cowboy,

we have a goodness and resolution that suggests the

American nation, puzzled by evil but strong against it.

In Laurey and the Oklahoma territory was the promise of a

bright future after the war. Americans must have recog-

nized these correspondences or analogies to some extent in

Oklahoma! and the shows that followed. For a few moments

on a dimmed out Broadway they could put away doubts about

the vincibility of the present evil, and about the future

in a post-war world. For a few moments they could believe

275

in that vague thing--the American myth. For a few moments
the theatre spoke to their deeper needs, not just to a need
to be entertained and diverted, but to needs made more
acute by the war, the need of a past and a sure identity,
and a need for assurance that that past and identity were
sufficient to deal with the problematic present and that

void ahead, the future.

VI. 1946: THE WORLD IS LIT BY LIGHTNING
Period of Adjustment

Night is at hand, and life, and another day is about to
begin. It will be bad or good, beautiful or tawdry, all
depending on the point of view. It will be normal,
however, for the lights are on.

Lewis Nichols, New York Times, May 20, 1945

Rarely has a season opened more languidly or made so
many futile gestures in the wrong direction. . . . The
theatre is temporarily becalmed. Its prewar creative
impulse has died away; the new winds have not risen.
Rosamond Gilder, Theatre Arts, December, 1945
Compared to VJ Day, the VE Day celebration seemed
as intimate and sedate as an afternoon tea in the east
eighties. News of the Nazi surrender came on May 7 at
9:00 A. M. EWT. Shops closed for the day, and New Yorkers
from the nearby garment district and from the far reaches
of the island gathered in Times Square. They were mostly
cold sober at first, but were obviously happy. One
discharged serviceman looked at the crowd of 500,000 and
asked, "What the hell are they happy about? Right now some

1 The war was,

of my own buddies are dying in the Pacific."
indeed, not over. But officials decided that the threat

of air raids clearly was, and so by May 20, 1945 the more

276

277

than twenty miles of neon tubing and other lights that made
the Great White Way white were glowing again. The nighttime
town and its theatre appeared to be back to their old
selves. All that was necessary for an actual peacetime
Broadway was that final victory in the Pacific-~a mere
matter of time and, as it turned out, the atomic bomb.

The final victory came and was announced at 7:03
P. M., August 14, 1945. The words on Times Tower read:
"Official--Truman announces Japanese surrender.” By
10:00 P. M. 2,000,000 people and thousands of taxis joined
voices and horns for a roaring, giddy, mob celebration that
extended from 40th to 52nd streets.2 By April, 1946 the
Broadway theatre was able to celebrate the peace officially
with Arnold Auerbach's and Harold Rome's 221$ Me Mister.
Irving Berlin, under the auspices of the United States Army,
had inducted and made a soldier of John Doe at war's
beginning in Thi§_i§_thg_5£my, Now Auerbach and Rome,
under the auspices of producers Douglas and Herman Levin,
made an ex-soldier of the G. I. The money from This is the
Army went to charities and overseas relief. The money from
.92ll.§2 Mister went to Messrs. Levin gt 2l° Things were
getting back to normal.

The ordeal that had organized, given direction,
purpose and a substantial degree of unity to the American
nation was over. What cohesion existed on domestic problems

began to weaken. Large communal goals and identity seemed

278

obscured by smaller group and individual goals. A man
might no longer think of himself as an American, but as a
farmer or auto worker eager to consolidate or extend the
economic gains made during the war. Actually, Americans
felt uncertain about their security in the post-war future.
A Gallup poll found 71 percent of its sample citing some
problem of "personal financial security" as the biggest
post-war problem. To demonstrate their anxiety and their
demands 3,500,000 workers became involved in nearly 5,000
strikes during 1945.3 Economic and other forces struggled
against each other, and the American pattern of controlled
domestic conflict resumed its petty, though perhaps
healthy and creative pace.

The theatre too, suddenly bereft of the vague
sense of duty to a war culture, began a period of drift.
In October, 1945 Lewis Nichols labeled the season, "the
saddest in at least four years."4 No Drama Critics' Circle
Award was given for the 1945-46 season, no play being
judged worthy. Nichols expected theatre to find a
direction and improve its products' quality. A reconversion
process was necessary for the American theatre just as for
American industry. Producers during the war had developed
the attitude that even the mediocre products could succeed
in a prosperous wartime, post-war period. The attitude
would change. The playwrights who were in the army or
otherwise officially occupied, including Wilder, Saroyan,

and Robert Sherwood, would return to their real profession

279

and would start to produce quality plays. So Nichols felt.
But the expected "reconversion" came slowly if at all.
There was an air of the theatre's not knowing what to do—-
not knowing what subjects to discuss, what appeals to make.
The Americana, nostalgia formulas and appeals of the war
period seemed less attractive. There were several
important shows still running, including Oklahoma!,

Carousel, I_Remember Mama, and Life With Father, which

 

 

satisfied the need for nostalgia. Furthermore, the
audiences seemed to want a rest from war plays and
patriotic, communal appeals, no matter how subtle those
appeals might be made. But, no new direction could be
discovered. No vital audience nerve was touched. John K.
Hutchens noted in February, 1946 that since the Labor Day
season's opening only ten shows had survived the public's
perusal.S The statistics for the 1945-46 season show a
drop in total production from ninety-five for the 1944-45
season to seventy-nine. Part of this drop was due to the
simple lack of theatres. Because many theatres had been
converted for use as television studios by 1946, only
thirty-four houses were available for legitimate production.
When one considers that this number was further reduced by
the numerous long run shows (at least nine), the smaller
number of premieres seems inevitable. Plays could not

find a stage to play on. Producers were uncertain and were
being cautious. Rather than experiment with unusual

vehicles in an attempt to find the post-war audience's new

280

sensibility, producers dragged out the supposedly tried and
true. Few seasons on Broadway have seen so many revivals
as those of 1945—46 and 1946-47. "It is violating no
confidence to state that for a year or more the bulk of
the product has been substandard," said Brock Pemberton in
December, 1946, "and that to make up for this scarcity of
attractive consumer goods, many wheezy old vehicles
boasting only fresh duco jobs have been pushed in, without
fooling many customers."6 Actually many customers were
fooled, or if not fooled, were happy with the revivals.

Of the eighty-seven productions of the 1946-47 season,

nineteen were revivals, and six, including Lady Windemere's

 

Fan and Cyrano 99 Bergerac were major successes.

 

The revivals seemed to indicate a theatre as
uncertain of its post-war role as it had been of its
wartime role in 1941-42. The revivals signaled a reversion
in the theatre rather than a reconversion. But the
theatre's uncertainty mirrored, perhaps, great and
pervasive uncertainities about the new world that had just
been created with the purging of the fascist and Japanese
menaces, about the new potential for apocalypse attendant
upon the creation of the atomic bomb, and about the new
attempts to create order. Burns Mantel tried to view the
theatre's malaise in its world-wide context. "The theatre
staggered a little this last season [1946-47]. . . . The
theatre's mental processes . . . were a bit on the foggy

side. Its established dramatists as well as those in

281

search of a hearing, were still reeling slightly from their
impact with a wartime conditioning . . . that included the
hysterical struggle of a dazed and unhappy world trying to
right itself with the help of an untried United Nations
gyroscope."7

There was no lack of prescriptions for the theatre's
role in the uncertain new world order. On the domestic and
practical level, Sidney Kingsley pointed out that the
theatre industry's plans for helping the theatre profession
vets get the most from their G. I. Bill (; Rights edu-
cational benefits could provide a model for other pro-
fessions.8 On a more idealistic level Kingsley and others
felt that the theatre had a leading and necessary role to
play in furthering international understanding. Arthur
Hopkins proposed a World dramatists Congress in which
leading playwrights from various countries would adapt each
others' plays. Thus people in thelparticipating countries
would gain an understanding and respect for each other.
"Dramatists truly depicting their own people can make them
known and undersood, their faults as well as their virtues.
. . ." claimed Hopkins. "People are looking into each
other's hearts and ways. No evil can long survive
exposure."9 A lofty and perhaps impossible challenge to
dramatist, and one never actually accepted or apparently
seriously contemplated.

If the theatre from 1945 to 1947, with is uncertain

direction and questionable quality, with its continuing

282

domination by comedies, if this theatre could be said to
accept any challenge at all, it was the more limited one
thrown up by Lewis Nichols. Writing in the March 11, 1945
New York Times, Nichols asked the theatre to become a
forum for post-war American problems. "The public is
engaged in the war," he said, "and it has a vital interest
in the peace and in the days which are to follow. There
are many problems to be solved, all of them difficult of
solving. The theatre should take part in the discussion.
It should not go on with only one bell ringing."lo Not
that the theatre from 1945-47 became a real forum for
social problems. It lacked any dominant trend, except
perhaps toward revivals, which were a kind of creative
evasion, a treading of water. In fact, one of the themes
that recurred during the two seasons under discussion was
the theme of escape from reality into a fantasy world. Of
this theme, more later. But even so, the 1945-47 seasons
did make some serious acknowledgment of social and
political America. The World War II theatre had presented
a mythologized, distanced America of memory and wish-image.
With the basic threat of survival removed by Axis sur-
render, the theatre no longer need serve quite so slavishly
the communal myths. Rather, it could turn to the com-
munity's internal threats--specifically its political
shortcomings and racial problems--and cast the kind of
critical eye on them that would have been unacceptable to

a wartime audience.

283

The first play to turn such an eye on American
political hypocrisy and opportunism was Howard Lindsay and
Russel Crouse's §E2EE.2£.EES.HE£22"WhiCh opened on
November 14, 1945 and starred Ralph Bellamy and Ruth Hussey.
The play concerned Grant Matthews (Bellamy), an honest
airplane manufacturer, who is urged by James Conover, a
professional politician, and Kay Thorndyke, Matthews'
mistress and editor of a large chain of newspapers, to run
as the Republican candidate for President. Matthews is
deeply concerned about the post-war occupational and
nationalistic/ethnic divisions in the country. "We're
splitting apart," he says. "Business, labor, farmers,
cattlemen, lumbermen--they're all trying to get the biggest
bite of the apple. We talk about the war being over--well,
we've got a war on here at home now-~a civil war--an

11 The explicit and serious topicality of

economic war."
the play sounded a note not often heard on American stages
since some of the Federal Theatre productions.

Matthews desired to speak honestly to his audiences,
calling upon the interest groups to work together and make
sacrifices if necessary for the greater good of the com-
munity. But as a speaking tour progresses, Matthews finds
himself under pressure from Conover to make politically
expedient changes in his addresses. Instead of speaking
honestly about reconversion, Conover urges Matthews to

promise the Poles this today and the Italians that

tomorrow. Labor this, and management that. The play,

284

then, becomes a personal test of integrity for Matthews,
and a rather cynical look at American political deceit and
compromise of principle. "In this country we play
politics--" Conover tells the potential candidate, "and to
play politics you have to play ball" (p. 221).

The conflict is structured along lines similar to
S. N. Behrman's N9_Timg_£g£ Comedy. In that 1939 play the
playwright-character's integrity to his creative gift is
threatened by the influence of a mistress, Amanda Smith.
In Stage of £32.92i22' Grant Matthews is tempted by his
mistress to compromise his beliefs and make appeals to
special interest and prejudice "until after the election."
In both plays the male is nearly seduced, then, by
temptresses and their appeals to vanity. They promise
immortality and power. But the narrow road of integrity
and purity has its champion in the figure of the wry,
clearsighted wife-figure. In State of the Union the
slightly bitter, Mary is happy that Grant may run for
president only as long as she sees him maintaining his
ideals. When he begins to compromise, she confronts him,
forcing in him, finally, an awarness of his gradual
corruption by Conover, Kay, and the vision of power.
Grant, like Gay Esterbrook of N2 Time for Comedy returns
to the domestic fold, refuses to play politics and appeal
to the worst in Americans.

The play's version of American politics is, at

best, cynical. It sees the American politician without

285

motivating ideals and with a greater desire for power than
for the nation's welfare. Kay asks Conover: "Is there any
real difference between the Democratic and Republican
Party?" Conover replies: "All the difference in the
world. They're in--and we're out" (p. 147). The point is
to get power. But the play also suggests that there is
hope for American politics in 1946 if the naive and
manipulable American electorate will not allow politicians
to buy its votes with false promises, and if it will try
for a broad rather than a self-interested view. Mary
declares that "Your politicians have stayed professionals
because the voters have remained amateurs" (p. 170). The
power can still lie with the people if they will rise and
demand straight answers from the men they elect.

The play was well written, the dialogue being
generally adult, pointed, and without preachment or reform
cliché. The character of Grant Matthews is complex enough
to bear credibly the internal struggle of power and
integrity. Mary's character is fully delineated and shows
her rigorous in her own integrity, a woman jealous of her
husband's wandering attention, but still proud of his
inherent honesty. The play's topicality is emphasized
with names like Stassen, Truman, and Taft recurring; such
headline items as price ceilings are mentioned. It was a
solid, if not an inspired play. The Pulitzer committee
liked it as a play and as a lesson for Americans, and they

gave it that prize for being 1945-46's best play. The

286

public liked it; the play ran for 756 performances.
Apparently it tapped a reservoir of cynicism about public
officials that had been untouched for some time and needed
release. Other plays began to feature the corrupt or

foolish political figure. Born Yesterday included a

 

senator anxious to be bought off. 22l$.§2 Mister included
a satirical sketch on Southern senators, and the 1947
musical, Finian's Rainbow made bitter fun of negro-hating
Senator Billboard Rawkins. Satire, an admission of basic
social problems, a form noticeably underplayed during the
war, was reemerging.

The social problem receiving most attention from
playwrights after the war, however, was not the short-
comings of American democracy. It was, instead, the
festering religious and racial hatreds in the United
States. Anti-semitism, one of the very evils of Naziism
that Americans had supposedly been fighting, seemed to many
writers a very real danger in post-war American. Arthur
Miller's 1945 novel, Focus, deals with anti-semitism and
has as its climax a group of neighbors beseiging a Jew's
corner news and stationary store. In order to combat the
alleged incipient anti-semitic wave, the Research Board of
American Jewish Arts called in April, 1945 for scripts
advocating tolerance, especially between Jews and Gentiles.
The group hoped to sponsor such a play or film.12 Plays
dealing with the theme had already begun to appear in

1945. In April of that year, This, Too, Shall Pass by

287

Don Appel appeared at the Belasco. It tells of a Jewish
soldier who returns home with a gentile buddy, becomes
involved with the buddy's sister, and meets the opposition
of the mother. Arthur Laurent's first play, 3222.2ilgmi
Bragg, opened on December 27, 1945, and skillfully inter-
wove the themes of psychosomatic paralysis, battle shock,
and anti-semitism.13 Coney, a young, Jewish soldier, has
been made extremely sensitive, almost paranoid by the anti-
semitic remarks and actions that he has experienced from
his childhood on into his military service. During an
expedition to map a Pacific island, now held by Japanese
but soon to be invaded by Americans, Coney becomes
mysteriously paralyzed after his best friend is shot. We
discover, as he (Coney) is treated with drugs which help
him to relive the experience his mind has blocked from
memory, that the paralysis is a result of his relief that
it was his friend and not he who was shot. There is even
a deeper guilt at his feeling that his friend deserved
death because he had almost colled Coney a "lousy yellow
Jew." Being assured that his guilt and resentments are
actually quite normal under the circumstances, Coney is
able to make a physical and psychological recovery. The
play combines effective evocation of jungle warfare with a
picture of the debilitating effects of religious prejudice.
Getting more attention than religious prejudice in

the post-war American theatre, however, was the problem of

288

racial hatred. The politicians most satirized in this
period were Southern politicians, including Judge Jefferson
Davis Alexander of §E§EE.2£.E§E.EE$2£ and the Southern
senators in EEll.§E.MiSter's skits. It is a bigoted
senator from the mythical but definitely Southern state of
Missitucky who is turned black by Finian's Rainbow's
leprechaun, Og. Black freedom had been given polite lip
service during the war in those plays, like Harriet and
Bloomer ElEl' that had the Civil War was part of their
background. After the war, the handling of the problem
became much more hard—eyed and explicit. In the five months
between September, 1945 and February, 1946, three plays
appeared (2222 are the Roots by Arnaud d'Usseau and James
Gow, Strange §£2i2.bY Lillian and Esther Smith, and ng.by
Robert Ardrey) which dealt with racial prejudice. The
theme cropped up in plays even when it seemed quite
irrelevant to the main thrust of the action. In H225 that.
Trumpet, a play about a love triangle including a jazz
musician, his wife, and the group's sponsor, the theme
appears in the difficulty of making bookings because of the
combo's colored clarinetist. In Finian's Rainbow the theme
is sounded, and in Rodgers and Hammerstein's S22E3_Pacific,
1949, it is the central thread.

The new awareness of racial problems was a product
of the cultural and theatrical history of the war years.
World War II stood as the four year period most important

to the negro-American between the Civil War and the mid to

289

late sixties. Edwin Embree gives a good capsulized picture
of race relations in the United States during the war in an

14 There were gains for blacks. The

Atlantic article.
income gap between blacks and whites narrowed. The CIO
spoke out strongly against discrimination, and President
Roosevelt's 1941 Executive Order 8802 forbade discrimi-
nation on the basis of race, creed, or national origin.
The Order was issued, however, only after A. Philip
Randolph, head of the all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters threatened a massive march on Washington. There
were increased numbers of black policemen. In fact there
were larger numbers of black workers in general; the
53,000,000 negroes employed in civilian jobs in 1944 was
1,000,000 more than had ever been employed before in
American history. To get the jobs, some moves had to be
made, however. One million blacks migrated North to find
jobs in the war industries. With their migration came the
necessity of social adjustments most white were unable or
unwilling to make. The result was an increasingly tense
situation that provided a background for the postdwar
dramatists and their works. There were riots in Detroit,
Mobile, Newark, and Dayton. The job upgrading of blacks
brought on numerous strikes. The six day Philadelphia
transportation strike began because eight negroes were
given jobs as motormen on trolleys. There seemed to be
official reluctance to recognize the change occurring in

the society; Congress refused to outlaw lynching and the

290

poll tax. The Army retained its segregated units until
shortly before Germany's surrender in 1945, and the Army was
hardly diligent about protecting its black members while in
the States. Three black men from Camp Doren in Mississippi
were killed when one of them said "yes" instead of "yes,
sir." Other black servicemen were beaten or shot near
Southern bases, and little was done to bring the guilty to
justice. Racial incident followed racial incident; the
black man's presence could not be ignored. His existence
called to awareness the gap between the American ideals,
the Four Freedoms, and the American performance in granting
those rights to its citizens. The war first made America
truly aware of its deepest social problem, its most
persistent and destructive inconsistency, its most ugly
hatred.

The theatre had a good record of integration
during the war. The Stage Door Canteen opened its doors
to all races, though a kind of fastidiousness demanded that
black hostesses be provided for black servicemen. During
the thirties and the war years, the black professional and
the black literary image had made extensive gains. Though
the shuffling, superstitious, and mammy stereotypes were
projected on the legitimate stage, there were also rather
hard hitting, realistic plays about black life. And
there‘vere serious and respected black actors and actresses

to create convincing portraits of black Americans. Such

291

a production was Richard Wright's l94l adaptation of his
novel, Native S23, with Canada Lee as Bigger. The black
performer, however, found most opportunities during the war
in musical productions (perhaps an unconscious perpetuation
of the stereotype of the naturally rhythmic negro). Ethel
Waters, a much loved personality, starred in the black
musical fantasy, 9.3.122. in 93.2 _S_lgy_ in 1940. m 9351 _Bg_s_s_
toured the country successfully in 1942. Hammerstein's
Carmen Jones opened in 1943 and was still running at war's
end. In fact, in 1945 two black productions were running
simultaneously as hits, Carmen 22222 and Anna Lucasta, and
Paul Robeson's Othello at City Center was drawing rave
notices. The American Negro Theatre was regularly producing
plays, including the long running Anna Lucasta. In the
an increasing acceptance of blacks on the stage and an all-
time high number of mixed casts on Broadway and on the
road.15
The point is that an increasing national awareness
of the racial problem and a concurrent growth of black
acceptance and importance in the theatre made the small
flurry of civil rights plays seem almost an inevitability.
The war was over and the visions of national unity could
be laid aside for the moment. Real national division
could be faced squarely--or so the liberals hoped. The
public agreed, cautiously, tentatively. Of the plays

dealing specifically with the theme of racial prejudice,

292

only Eg§p_gg the 52225 was a long running hit,16 and its
melodramatic qualities may have almost as much to do with
its popularity as its serious theme.

The play, like £22, concerns a decorated black
serviceman, Brett, who returns to his home in the South.
Brett's home happens to be with a Southern senator (the
figure almost becomes a ubiquitous bogey during the
period). The senator seems in the first act to have some
elements of humanity, but he becomes a stereotyped, hate-
filled white supremacist by the play's third act. Senator
Langdon had sponsored Brett's education at Fisk University
before the war, so the returning negro figure, again as
in 332 where the protagonist has learned a semi-skilled
trade in the Army, is not the naive and ignorant black man
who is seen in Paul Green's plays or in Native S23, Black
figures are changing, and social adjustments must be made.
Brett wants to teach and help his fellow black improve their
statuses. With the help of Senator Langdon's super-
ficially liberal daughter, Alice, he is to be appointed
principal of the black school. But the educated Brett
wants to move faster toward negro improvement and civil
equality than the Senator and Alice can stand. He dares
to enter the town library by the front door, and asks to
attend a racial conference in Atlanta. Worst of all he
dares to walk out at night with the Senator's other
daughter, Genevra, who loves Brett. Up to this point the

play has portrayed a set of relationships clearly defined

293

and limited by social attitudes. Brett, the new black man
who has education and has tasted some dignity of treatment
overseas, can no longer fit neatly into those societal
limits. So the relationships grow increasingly tense and
move toward confrontation.

D'Usseau and Gow are unable to create a crisis in
the play which is as inevitable as they have shown the
societal crisis to be. They manufacture, instead, a
melodramatic plot device in which the Senator, threatened

by the independence of Brett is able to frame Brett for

 

stealing a watch. In an incredibly contrived final scene,
Brett confronts his accusers and comments on their sickness.
"Go on living," he tells Alice, whose liberality could not
stand the test of a rumored relationship between Brett and
Genevra, "and shake with fear every time you see a black

17 Ultimately he and Alice are reconciled. The

face."
Senator stands ugly and rather impotent in the face of this
newly emerging social alliance. The play's denouncement
suggests an ambiguous prognosis of the racial problem.
Brett has been rendered powerless without the support of
Senator Langdon, the Southern power structure, but he has
made a kind of alliance with the liberals, Alice and her
fiance, a Northern novelist.

Strange Fruit and £29 appeared on Broadway shortly
after 2222.2E2.EES.§22£2.339 were less ambiguous. Lillian

Smith enlisted her sister, Esther's, help in adapting her

popular novel for the stage. The stage version lost little

294

of the novel's hopelessness. A weak Southern white man
decides that his affair with a black woman can no longer
continue. He tries to persuade his houseboy to marry her
and give the illegitimate child a name. The woman refuses
to accept the arrangement, and her brother kills the white
man in disgust and hatred. The brother escapes, and a mob
lynches the houseboy, feeling that some negro must atone
for the murder. In 229 melodrama is repressed till the
end, and we get a picture of Southern whites and blacks
that is unusually free of stereotyped monsters, such as
Senator Langdon, and saints, such as Brett. Jeb is a
decorated and wounded veteran, who, having learned to run
an adding machine in the Army, wants a job running the
machine at the mill in his home town. Though the current
clerk is both dishonest and usually drunk, Jeb is denied
the job because it is traditionally a white man's job.

The situation is unspectacular and one likely to face many
black veterans returning to the South. But lacking
confidence in the actual to be dramatically effective,
Robert Ardrey, like d'Usseau and Gow, creates a somewhat
melodramatic crisis. Jeb enters the mill one night to see
if he can still run the machine, is seen, accused of
having a white girl with him, beaten, and forced to leave
town. Again, the spectacular is substituted for what is
probably the more typical and authentic problem portrayed

in the play's first scenes--the problem of jobs and frozen

295

social roles and attitudes that even rightminded men cannot
quite alter.

Strange Fruit ran sixty performances; Jeb, nine.
Robert Ardrey explained his play's failure by saying that

it was twenty years ahead of its time.18 But Deep are the

 

Roots had found an audience, and though marred by uncon- Fab
vincing melodrama, it at least raised the problem, just as V
Hgmg_g£ 322.23232 and This, 222, Shall £2§§_raised the

problem of anti-semitism and State of EEE.HEiQE.the problem

of professiOnal politics. The post-war theatre was willing

 

I

I.

to tackle, at least tentatively, American problems, to
confront rather than merely celebrate the social community.
Such dramatic confrontation was sometimes financially
dangerous for its sponsors. The audience, weary of war
tensions was not quite anxious to face immediately the
problems that were not only difficult, but that threatened
personal values and shook faith in accepted communal
patterns of behavior. As Howard, Alice's Northern fiance
in 2222.2E2.EEE.§22£§.t3113 her, "The prejudice is rooted
deep—-so deep it will take every ounce of your strength to
dig it out and look at it squarely" (p. 188). The question
was whether the American theatre audience and playwrights
were willing and able to summon the strength required to
look persistenly at America's unresolved problems. There
was the impulse, and it was to grow and flower ultimately
in Arthur Miller's All_§y_§gg§ (1947) and Death offla

Salesman (1949), a play that probed so deeply into the

296

American value patterns and myths that it did in fact take
every ounce of many viewers' strength to endure the image
of themselves in Willy Loman. But there was also an

impulse in the other direction--the impulse to escape.
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad World?

And it seems to me that the basic reason (that Broadway
is unendurable) is that Broadway is still playing
jackstraws in a world that is playing with the atomic
bomb. Playwrights have been selecting subjects that
could not possibly interest a playgoer of average
intelligence. The schism between Broadway and the
adult world has always been clearly visible. Now it is
so wide that you can hardly see across.
Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, October 13, 1946
When the adult world is a world of atomic brutality,
strikes, imminent racial confrontation, the only sane thing
to do may be to escape, if only momentarily. At war's end
the problem of whether or not a person could deal with the
modern world on an unflinching basis began to be considered
somewhat seriously by the theatre. Perhaps the world, as
manifested by war which can best be ended when sane men
decide to drop a monster bomb and kill 100,000 persons at
a shot, perhaps this world could not be rationally dealt
with. In Pulitzer Prize winning Harvey, Drama Critics'
Circle Award winning The Glass Menagerie, the biggest hits
of 1945, and in O'Neill's 1946 The Iceman Cometh, the
problematic relation of cruel reality and soothing escape

is dramatically discussed. In each play, escape from the

world appears to be almost a necessity. On one level, the

297

three plays and the receptive audiences suggest an ex post
fagtg rationale for the escape role explicitly espoused by
America's wartime theatre. In one of the numerous inter-
views he gave before the opening of The Iceman Cometh,
O'Neill, profoundly serious playwright that he was,
declared escape to be the theatre's purpose. "Almost the
first words of my father I remember . . . are, 'The theatre
is dying.‘ And those words seem to me as true today as
when he said them. But the theatre must be a hardy wrench,
for although she is still ailing, she will never die as
long as she offers an escape."19
O'Neill seems to be suggesting that the theatre
serves an innate human need-~the need to soften the
blinding light of reality with the artificial hues of
fantasy. O'Neill's belief in the need may have its deep
roots in his personal life. His deep sense of guilt and
his reluctance to face squarely his family past (until
Long 23yL§ Journey i222.§i2§£) may account for his feeling
that in each life there is a vista of horros too destructive
to confront. But there is in O'Neill of 1939-1946 a
deepening recognition that the vista is not just a
subjective one. Objective reality, as it began to
manifest itself during the thirties simply underlined the
“individual's need to develop a protective hedge of fantasy,
the kind of hedge Harry Hope's inmates have all so
pathetically constructed. By June 1939, when The Iceman

Cometh was begun, and in the year or so following, O'Neill

298

became almost hypnotized by world happenings. In 1940 he

wrote Laurence Langner that he had spent several months

"with an ear glued to the radio for war news. . . ." He
would not allow Iceman to be produced: "I don't want the

strain of any production now," he said. "To tell the truth,
like anyone else with any imagination, I have been

20 Sickened

absolutely sunk by this damned world debacle."
and pained by the outside world, he strangely enough turned
to the vista of horrors in his own life, his relationship
with his father, mother, and brother, and for the first
time tried to face it with real honesty. The result of the
confrontation was ngg_22y s Journey igtg_NighE and almost
excruciating pain for the playwright. His wife, Carlotta,
told Arthur and Barbara Gelb, "at times I thought he'd go
mad. It was terrifying to watch his suffering."21 Not
everyone is strong enough to face his own and the world's
past and present.

In The Elggngenagerie and Thg_Iceman Cometh
characters rely desperately on illusion and falsified
memory to save them from the squalor and hopelessness of
their lives. The defeated men and women in Harry Hope's
Raine's Law hotel nullify the memory of their guilts and
their total superfluity by their deadened, drunkened states
and their "pipe dreams" of a successful return to potency
and effectiveness in the world. Amanda Wingfield, in The

Glass Menagerie escapes from her oppressive St. Louis

apartment and her frustrated, aimless children to a

299

glorious Southern childhood. "One afternoon in Blue
Mountain," she reminisces about the high point of her life,
"[I] received--seventeen!--gentlemen callers! Why, some-
times there weren't chairs enough to accomodate them all.
We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs

from the parish house."22

Here is a past as heightened,
falsified (mythologized, if you will) as the pipe dreams
of Harry Hope, Willie Oban, or any of Iceman's characters.
In both plays the escape is seen as being both
destructive and saving. In Iceman illusion becomes almost
a necessity. Incapable of dealing with life outside,
Hope's inmates must retreat to a somewhat manipulable world
of dreams. Dwelling there they can at least have the

23 If they

"appearances of life," as Larry describes it.
try to face the facts of their past and try to deal with
the exterior world, as Hickey would force them to do, they
face only their own psychic death. In EEEHElEEE Menagerie
the situation is not so extreme. Amanda, Tom, and Laura
have not retreated so far from the depression American of
the thirties as O'Neill's characters have from New York of
1912. Thus there is a greater tension in Menagerie
between the characters' fantasies and their conduct in the
world. Amanda is practical, obsessed as well with her
plans and provisions for Laura's future and the family's
independence as with her romantic Southern past. She

sends Laura to business school, and when that fails, tries

to arrange for her the only other future that custom seems

300

to allow--marriage. Laura is furthest removed from contact

with the real world and tries to hide from Amanda's plans
and provisions behind a shield of glass figurines and
victrola records. Tom attempts to blunt the boredom of his
job at the warehouse by drinking and the vicarious escape
that movies give. He ultimately tries to escape the trap
of his family and life by joining the merchant marine,
running off to sea; he attempts the archetypal romantic
escape.

But in Williams, unlike O'Neill, reality cannot be
evaded. The escapes, the fantasies, poetic and beguiling
as they are, create haunting memories and new guilts.

They demand new attempts at escape. ”Oh, Laura, Laura,"
cries the supposedly freed Tom. "I tried to leave you
behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!
I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the
movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest
stranger--anything that can blow your candles out!" (p.
237). But they cannot be blown out. Our defections
remain; objective reality remains. Tom, in his role as
narrator, notes the uselessness of fantasy against the
cruel, contemporary reality when he describes the Paradise
Dance across the alley from the Wingfield apartment.

Couples would come outside, to the relative privacy

of the alley. You could see them kissing behind ash

pits and telephone poles. This was compensation for

lives that passed like mine, without any change or
adventure. Adventure and change were imminent in

301

this year. . . . Suspended in in the mist over
Berchtesgaden, caught in the folds of Chamberlain's
umbrella. In Spain there was Guernica! But here there
was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, bars,
and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a
chandelier and flooded the world with brief deceptive
rainbows. . . . All the world was waiting for bom-
bardments! (p. 179).
In these late war and post war plays a note of
despair and pessimism sounds more loudly than in any of
the serious plays appearing at the onset of world holocaust.
Even in the charming fantasy, Harvey, the implications are
ominous. The dipsomaniac, Elwood P. Dowd, suffers from
illusions about a six foot tall rabbit that has befriended
him. The play suggests that this state of illusion is
preferable to living on a realistic level. Elwood tells
his doctor, "I wrestled with reality for forty years,
Doctor, and I am happy to state that I finally won out

24 Reality is destructive; its impact on those

over it."
who try to face it squarely is to dehumanize and make
monsters of men. The taxi driver tells Elwood's sister,
Veta, that the treatments she has arranged for that will
make Elwood normal again will also make him a nasty person.
"Lady,after this he'll be a perfectly normal human being,
and you know what bastards they are!" (p. 188). In this
Pulitzer Prize, immensely popular play, a world softened
by alchohoic fantasy is seen as preferable to the real
world. It would seem that by the end of the war there is

a new spirit of blank pessimism and negation abroad in the

land.

302

In the pre-war and early wartime plays such as Kgy.
93.212. mwemm. audiemgez-ree
there had been catastrophe. But the outlook of the plays
was tragic optimism. In spite of personal disaster and
seeming universal meaninglessness, these plays saw human
dignity and the promise that struggle had significance. In
Harvey normal human beings are bastards and those who
escape reality are lovable models of conduct. In Thg’
‘Elg§§_Menagerie the real world is "lit by lighting," and
illusions are powerless to alter that world. Instead of
making persons compassionate, as they do in Harvey, and
bringing people together, the fantasy escapes of 222.9l22fi
Menagerie further isolate characters from one another.
There may be a poignant beauty in Amanda, Tom, and Laura's
dreams, and their dreams may save them from being crushed
by their lives, but those dreams offer no hope--only
disappointment. In The Iceman Cometh the illusions do not
even have beauty, and the world definitely has no hope.
The individual is faced with the dilemma of facing crushing
reality squarely, which means death, or cultivating
illusions which do not save and barely even salve. There
is a blank despair here not found even in the critical
social problem plays of the period. And this despair
seemed to strike a nerve in the post-war audience. After
the perhaps artificial optimism and cultural celebration
of the war period plays, the sense of latent horror could

surface and be expressed. The pressure of combatting a

303

discreet enemy was relaxed; the luxury of admitting one's

deepest fears was now allowable and maybe psychologically

necessary. Samuel Crafton of the New York £2 E noted the

acceptance of such pessimistic plays in New York and Paris
and saw it as "'a phenomenon of great, even frightening

25

current significance.'" The post-war era had begun.

Conclusions: The War, the
Audiencey the Theatre

I say to you solemnly that if Hitler's present military
plans are brought to successful fulfilment, we Ameri-
cans shall be forced to fight in defense of our own
homes and our own freedom in a war as costly and
devastating as that which now rages on the Russian
front.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Message to Congress

October 9, 1941.

Imagination needs a soil in history, tradition or human
institutions else its random growths are not signifi-
cant enough. . . .
George Santayana, Obiter Scripta
Such philosophic despair could probably only find a
theatre audience when the audience was relatively safe from
the threat of possible actual destruction. During a period
of threat the popular taste seems to demand spectacles
quite different from thoughtful examinations of existential
tensions and mysteries. The audience seeks inspiration
and justification through mythic projections of man and
culture. As our major playwrights moved toward personal

commitment to the war against Hitlerism in the pre- and

early war period, they created in their plays an image of

304

heightened man. King McCloud, Dr Valkonen, George
Antrobus, Quizz West, the various Lincolns all assume
primitive heroic, Christ-like, or other Biblical identities
and undergo heroic and Christ-like patterns of adventures.
As the United States enters the war and our national, or
communal involvement becomes intense, the artistically
recreated man remains somewhat heroic, but becomes
increasingly identifiable as American, e.g., Oklahoma's
American Christ-figure, Quizz West. The drama of the
Second World War also tends to recreate American man in a
more life size version. His life size contours are
generally softened and silhouetted, however, by the misty
hues of domestic nostalgia, as in EEEE.E$E§ Father, g
Remember Maaa, and even Junior Magi. ‘World War II drama,
then, taps with amazing recurrence what Northrup Frye calls
archetypes, or culturally associative clusters, and what
Henry Nash Smith calls symbol or myth, "an intellectual
construction that fuses concept and emotion into an image."26
The tempting question is why the imaginative recreation of
man begins to employ these cultural archetypes and mythic
characteristics with greater intensity, clarity, and
frequency during a period of national stress and crisis
than at other times.

Any answer to such a question must be tentative,
speculative, and with a good deal of fear and trembling,

for it must move from the regions of literary analysis and

305

history into thel.ess familiar regions, for this author, of
individual and social psychology, into the realms of anthro-
pology. The theatre responds to the needs and desires

of its patrons—-that is how it survives, much to the chagrin

of its most passionate champions and sourest critics.

Occasionally its playwrights try to move ahead of public
and Opinion and help form that opinion through their
plays. Such was the case with Anderson in Candle $2.222.
Wiag, Sherwood in EEEEE.§EE$$.EE.§2.E£2§EI and Lilian
Hellman in E252§.22.EE2.§§i223 But generally the theatre
takes its cue from the nebulous but somehow discernible
taste and underlying personal and collective psychic needs
of its audience. Thus, we may assume that in the war
period's plays and their projection of cultural myths
recurrently enveloped by the clouds of a nostalgically
idealized and distanced America, we are witnessing the
extremely subtle relationship of communal/personal need
and commercial/artistic response.

Perhaps the need and response is somewhat illumi-
nated by Irving Janis in his report, "Psychological Effect
of Warnings." Americans were, in effect, not so much under
immediate threat of physical or cultural annihilation as
under a protracted period of warning that such annihilation
could occur. President Roosevelt warned the American
public of the danger in a December 9, 1941 Fireside Chat.
Note his use of terms calling to mind the Old West. "We

must be set to face a long war against crafty and powerful

306

bandits. The attack at Pearl Harbor can be repeated at

any one of many points in both oceans and along both our
coast lines and against all the rest of the hemispheres."2'7
The long isolationist and suppodedly secure American public
could not at first believe the warning and initial air raid
drills in San Francisco and New York were essentially

28 but the continuing bad news of Axis successes at

farces,
Midway, in Southeast Asia, and in Europe gave the warning
and threat credibility. Janis describes the two usual
psychological responses to a credible threat as (a) feeling
a need for vigilance and (b), "a strong need for alleviating
emotional tension by obtaining convincing reassurances.
. . . Heightened need for reassurance is also manifested
by changes in beliefs and attitudes-~the adoption of a
fatalistic outlook or a greater faith in divine protection,
the use of magical or superstitious practices for warding
off bad luck. . . ."29

President Roosevelt seems intuitively to have
understood the psychological dynamics of a threat or
warning situation. He appeals to the need for vigilance.
He also provides reassurance, and in terms which suggest
the same image of America as righteous agent of reform and
justice that would appear again in Bloomer EEEl and HE.£E(
Central EEEE: ”I don't think" he declared in the
December 9 Chat, "any American has any doubts of our
ability to administer punishment to the perpetrator of

"30

these crimes. The theatre also seems to have understood

307

intuitively the psychological needs of a community under
the stress of physical and cultural threat, especially

the reassurance component. Though the producers and
writers often consciously felt that what the public wanted
was sheer relief and escape, an apparently unconscious or
oblique response to the need is evident in the rise in

numbers of productions projecting cultural images. These

 

to the lyric celebration of the American land and charac-
ter, the American past and future in Oklahoma! and Bloomer
Eigi, are almost rituals of reassurance, wherein the focus
is the community, its health and life.

"Myths and rituals are reinforced," says anthro-
pologist Clyde Kluckhohn, "because they reduce the

"31 The triumphs of the hero, be

anticipation of diaster.
he Lincoln, Curly, or even Mama of John Van Druten's play,
represent to some extent the power of the community and its
ideals to triumph over external threat. The spectacle
becomes one of wish fulfillment--of desire successfully
altering reality and memory. As George Jean Natkan
remarked in his essay, "The Audience Emotion," "A theatre
audience enters a theatre with the deliberate intention of
either forgetting itself for a couple of hours or of being
reminded of half-remembered phases of itself, of its life

"32 During the World War II

and of its dreams and despairs.
period the theatre combined, however unconsciously, both

the appeals to escape and cultural memory that Nathan

308

speaks of. In projecting images of an artistically
idealized communal life of strength and honor, the plays
provided an image in which a relatively sophisticated
audience could find personal and social identity and
security. Kluckhohn noted this identifying and solidifying
role of mythic and ritual expression. "Myth and rituals are
adaptive from the point of view of the society in that they
promote social solidarity, enhance the integration of the
society by providing a formalized statement of its ultimate
values--attitudes."33
The World War II theatre, then, to the extent that
it used cultural motifs and myths, served to celebrate and
give focus to the community. People responded by making
successful those shows, among others, that did so celebrate
the wishful image of America. The increasing recurrence of
the motifs, the nostalgic pastoral/historical motifs, for
instance, began to take on something of the character of
mindless repetition or theatrical fad. Yet the audience
apparently wanted such repetitive Americana. gp.ia_Central
§2£5.13 an example of a comparatively weak show that not
only drew an audience, but drew the people back to see the
show a second time. This same desire for repetition and
the expected is observed by Harry Schein in the Western's
audience. "The desire to experience the same thing time
after time implies on the part of the audience a ritual-

istic passivity similar to that which one finds in a

309

congregation at divine service. It cannot be curiosity
which drives the public to the Western; there is no wish
for something different and unfamiliar, but a need for
something old and well known. . . . The Western has the
same bewitching strength as an incantation; the magic of
repetition."34 The repetition of cultural archetypes in
World War II drama and musicals fulfilled, probably, the
same cluster of needs and expectations Schein defines.
The recurrence of idealized cultural figures provided the
individual with something friendly, unchanging. Kluckhohn
comments: "We can [see] the function of myth as fulfilling
the expectancy of the familiar. . . . In the face of want
and death and destruction all humans have a fundamental
insecurity. To some extent, all culture is a gigantic
effort to mask this, to give the future the simulacrum of
safety by making activity repetitive, expective. . . ."35
The individual, then, may find a personal reas-
surance of security in the nostalgic and culturally signifi-
cant patterns before him on the stage. He may enter
momentarily into a revery that includes a firm sense of
personal membership in the community (identity) and a
feeling of certainty that that communal identity is both
honorable and strOng enough to meet its challenges. And
at an unconscious level, the repetitive archetypal motifs
of World War II theatre pieces might have had the

mysterious power of incantation. The Broadway play, in

its nearly ritualistic playing out of certain of the

310

culture's fondest dreams may begin to serve an almost
talismanic function. That is, the repetition of images of
American heroes successfully (though sometimes tragically)
meeting a challenge and protecting the community, may have
the psychological effect of creating a reassuring magical
formula that has power to nullify threat. The nostalgic
spectacle, if repeated as it was during the war years,
seems to reassure the spectator that the community is
fundamentally the same as his wishful memory has recorded
it, and if the wishful image is repeated and asserted
enough, that community may well be secure against the
threat of destruction or fundamental change. Assertion
creates reality. Repeating the assertion creates a magic
powerful enough to drive away evil spirits. While the
threatening evil remains, the repetition continues. While
World War II went on, the repetitive evocation of Americana
went on. As the war drew to a close in 1945, the repetition

ceased (though certain hits such as Oklahomap, Carousel,

 

and ga£a_fliaa Father continued into the post-war and cold
war periods). The less threatened American community began
to look, however tentatively, at its internal social
problems, and a few brave souls faced the frightening
prospect of reality without the soft cushions of myths and
fantasies. The theatre's oblique but strangely perceptive
response to the communal psychological needs during
wartime ended; new needs were emerging. New responses must

follow.

311
Limitations and Hopes

The conclusions about the historical-theatrical-
audience relationship are tentative and speculative. They
would obviously be hard to prove. The study, further, is
not meant to be inclusive literary. It is fairly selective
in what it has chosen to describe and analyze, but it has
not selected arbitrarily. The choices were determined by
what seemed to indicate significant trends of the warperiod
theatre and by the desire to see literature as a human
cultural phenonemon as well as art. It is hoped that the
study and conclusions may be suggestive rather than
definitive, that it may, in fact, suggest new investi-
gations into the complex and mysterious human-literature

relationship.

NOTES

NOTES

I. ELUSIVE JUSTIFICATION: THE THEATRE SEEKS A ROLE

1Everett Dirksen, The Congressional Record, 84
(16 June 1939). PP. 7372-7373:1.

2Dirksen, p. 7373:l.

3Robert Reynolds, The Congressional Record, 84

(28 June 1939), p. 8089:1-2.

4Henry Ashurst, The Congressional Record, 84
(28 June 1939), p. 8096:2.

5Hallie Flanagan, Arena (New York: Benjamin Blom,
1965), p. 347.

6Caspar H. Nannes, Politics ia the American Drama
(Washington, D.C.: The CathoIic University of America
Press, 1960). p. 150.

7"War Between U. S. and Germany is Opposed in Any
Circumstance, Gallup Test Finds," New York Times, 21
February 1940, p. 6, col. 3.

8"Survey Finds Public Against A. E. F. but Still
Back of Aid to Britain," New York Times, 17 August 1941,
p. 36, col. 2.

9"All Workers Urged to Help Finns," New York Times,
17 January 1940, p. 12, col. 4.

10"Stage Folk Plan Wide Finnish Aid," New York
Times, 13 January 1940, p. 2, col. 5.

312

 

 

TEff‘l

 

313

11"Benefits for Finns Stir Theatre Row," New York
Times, 19 January 1940, p. 21, col. 1.

12"Finnish Stage Fund Assails Union Reds," New York
Times, 23 January 1940, p. 7, col. 1.

l3"Sees Finnish Aid Imperiling Peace," New York
Times, 21 January 1940, p. 27, col. 1.

14"Sees Finnish Aid Imperiling Peace," P- 27, 001- 1-

15"Benefits for Finns Assured by Equity," New York
Times, 24 January 1940, p. 5, col. 3. But a poll of players
By Theatre Authority, which supervised stage benefits,
found an "overwhelming majority" willing to give per-
formances without pay. See "Actors' Poll Backs Benefits
for Finns," New York Times, 26 January 1940, p. 5, col. 5.

16Rosamond Gilder, "'Smile, Demmit, Smile,'"
Theatre Arts, XXIII (November 1939). p. 772.

17"Next Draft Quota in State is 6,200," New York
Times, 17 December 1940, p. 20, col. 2.

18August H. Anderson, Congressional Record, 88
(9 February 1942), p. 1143. For an actorTs experience with
slurs directed toward theatre people by the public outside
Congress, see Sgt. Eugene Francis, "Actors are Americans,"
New York Times, 7 June 1942, VIII, p. l, cols. 3-5.

19Clevenger, Congressional Record, 88 (16 February
1942), p. 1266.

20Charles Fabbis, Congressional Record, 88 (6
February 1942), p. 1097.

21In a telegram to his agent, Phil Berg, Douglas
protested against the attack on himself and denied the
innuendoes. He noted that he was working, in fact, without
pay and had not asked for the job. "I am not,” he con-
tinued, "have never been, and never will be a Communist or
a sympathizer with any communist doctrines." See "Actors
Defend Douglas," New York Times, 11 February 1942, p. 15,
col. 2.

22

Congressional Record, 88 (9 February 1942),
p. 1158.

314

23Brooks Atkinson, Broadway (New York: Macmillan,
1970): P- 168.

24"Actors Protest 'Slurs' of Congressmen in Debate
Over Theatre's Role in War," New York Times, 10 February
1942, p. 13, col. 4.

25Emmanuel Cellers, Congressional Record, 88 (7
July 1942). PP. 6035-6036.

 

26Cellers, p. 6035.

27John Gassner, "The War in the Theatre," Current
Histogy, 3 (December 1942), p. 360.

28Gassner, p. 360.

29Variety, 3 June 1942, p. 1, col. 3.

30Richard Grunberger, The lZ-Year Reich (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1971), pp. 400-401.

1Gassner, p. 361.

32Rosamond Gilder, "Watchman, What of the Nights,"
Theatre Arts, XXVIII (October 1943), p. 573.

33See for example, Lee Simonson, "Prescription for
an Ailing Theatre,” New York Times Magazine, 14 November
1943, p. 16.

34Martha Dreiblatt, "Words on the Theatre and War,"
New York Times, 16 May 1943, II, p. 1, col. 4.

35Dreiblatt, p. 1, col. 4.

36Coe Ladd, "The Theatre in Wartime," Arts and
Decorations, LV (March 1942), p. 5.

37"More Comedy, Less Drama," Variety. 20 May 1942'
p. 1, col. 2.

38"Filmusicals Biggest Year," Variety, 18 March
1942, p. 1.

315

39S. N. Behrman, No Time for Comedy (New York:
Random House, 1939), p. 497 Future page references will
appear in parentheses following the quote.

4
0S. N. Behrman, The Talle Method (New York:

Random House, 1941), p. 144. uture page _references will
appear in parentheses following the quote.

41Brooks Atkinson, "Time for Behrman's Comdey,"
New York Times, 2 March 1941, IX, p. 1, col. 1.

42Atkinson, ”Time for Behrman's Comedy, p. 1,

col. 2.

43Maurice Schwartz, "Theatre in a Democracy," New
York Times, 1 December 1940, X, p. 1, col. 7.

44F. W. T. Ross, letter in the New York Times, 18
August 1940, IX, p. 2, col. 7.

45Brooks Atkinson, "Drama Tomorrow, Thoughts on
the Place of the Theatre in This Chaotic World," New York
Times, 30 June 1940, IX, p. 1, col. 2.

46Atkinson, "Drama Tomorrow," p. 1, col. 2.

47Atkinson, "Drama Tomorrow," p. 1, col. 1.

48Brooks Atkinson, "Some Reflections on the Uses of
the Theatre in Time of War," New York Times, 14 December
1941, IX, p. 3, col. 1.

49Brooks Atkinson, ”Things to Write About Now,"
New York Times, 15 December 1940, X, p. 1, cols. 1-2.

soAtkinson, "Things to Write About Now," p. 1,

col. 2.

51Brooks Atkinson, "Art Can Do the Job," New York
Times, 6 September 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

52Lewis Nichols, "Of War Plays," New York Times,
3 December 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

316

53Lewis Nichols, "Theatre at War," New York Times,
11 March 1945, II, p. 1, col. 1.

54Lewis Nichols, "End of Summer," New York Times,
7 September 1945, II, p. 1, col. 1.

SS"Theatregoer," "The 'Amusing Evening,'" New York
Times, 1 December 1940, X, p. 3, col. 6.

56"Topics of the Times," New York Times, 6 November
1940, p. 22, col. 4.

57George Jean Nathan, "The People Versus the
Playwrights," The American Mercury, LIV (January 1942),
p. 103.

58George Jean Nathan, "Ivory Towers to Let," The
American Mercury, LIII (October 1941), pp. 425-426.

59George Jean Nathan, "The Status of Male Play-
wrights,” in The Entertainment of a Nation (Teaneck, New
Jersey: Farleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, I969), p. 31.

60Brooks Atkinson, "Hot Time Next Friday," New York
Times, 16 February 1941, IX, p. 1, cols. 1-2.

61Milton Bracker, "Service Men Get in Free," New
York Times, 10 August 1941, IX, p. 1, cols. 1-3.

62"Free Stage Shows for Soldiers Begin," New York
Times, 30 July 1941, p. 12, col. 3.

63See Irving Spiegel, "War and the Theatre," New
York Times, 7 March 1943, II, p. 2, cols. 1-2, and "American
Theatre Wing Recruiting Show People for War Prod. Labor,”
Variety, 1 April 1942, p. 1, col. 4.

64Brock Pemberton, "Of the Vanished Year 1942,
New York Times, 3 January 1943, VIII, p. 2, cols. 2-4.

65"This 2.3. the Amy," Life, xxx: (20 July 1942) .

p. 73.

66"Kate Smith's $10,000 Ducats for 'Army' Preem,"
Variety, 17 June 1942, p. 1, col. 4.

317

67George Jean Nathan, "School Opens Again," Tag
American Mercur , LV (October 1942), p. 450. See also
"SoIdiers Cfiorus," Time, XL (13 July 1942), p. 36, and
Edward Fitch Hall, "This aahgaa_Army," New York Times
Magazine, 12 July 1942, pp. 6-7, and Milton Rosenstock,
Reunion with Broadway," Tag Saturday Review afi Literature,
XXIX (26 January 1946), pp. 7-8.

 

68"Show Biz to Forefront, Again," 2232231! 13 May
1942, p. 1. col- 1-

69"15 Broadway Hits to Aid Bond Drive." New York
Times, 17 June 1945, p. 19, col. 1.

70"War Bond Buyers Attend Shows," New York Times,
27 June 1945, p. 21, col. 4.

71“War Bond Honor to Carousel," New York Times, 30
August 1945, p. 15, col. 2.

 

72See Pemberton, "or the Vanished Year 1942," p. 2,

col. 2.

73"N. Y. Theatre Canteen Hosts 1,200 Servicemen
Nightly in First Week," Variety, 11 March 1942, p. 51,
col. 5.

74"N. Y. Show Biz-Sponsored Canteen Host to 10,640
Servicemen in 2nd Week," Variety, 18 March 1942, p. 51.

75"Stage Door Canteen Reopens in Splendor," New
York Times, 21 June 1944, p. 23, col. 3.

76801 Lesser, in Variety, 20 January 1943, p. 56.

77James Boyd, Introduction, The Free Company
Presents. . . . (New York: Dodd, Mead, I94I), p. v.

78Boyd, p. vii.

79Rosamond Gilder, "Rue for Remembrance," Theatre
Arts, XXVI (June 1942), p. 358.

80Brooks Atkinson, "Drama at Its Lowest Ebb," New
York Times, 26 April 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

 

 

 

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318

81Lewis Nichols, "Note on the War Plays," New York
Times, 3 October 1943, II, p. 1, col. 3.

82Brooks Atkinson, "Problems in War Plays," New
York Times, 1 March 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

83Jordan Y. Miller, "Drama: The War Play Comes of
Age," in The Forties: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, ed. Warren
French (Deland, Florida: Everett Edwards, 1969), p. 66.

84Milton Bracker, "Note on Colonel Lanser," New
York Times, 19 April 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 5.

85John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down, in The Best
Pla s'gg 1941—42, ed. Burn§_ManteI (New York: 533d, Mead,
, p. 70. Future page references will be given in
parentheses following the quote.

86James Thurber, "What Price Conquest," The New
Republic, 106 (16 March 1942), p. 370.

87Thurber, p. 370.

88James Thurber, letter in The New Republic, 106
(30 March 1942), p. 431.

89Frank G. Nelson, "In Support of Steinbeck's
Characters," The New Republic, 106 (13 April 1942), p. 495.

90Hans Olav, letter in The New Republic (4 May 1942),

 

p. 607.

91The London audience loved the 1943 production.
W. A. Darlington attributed the warm response to the
unfolding record of Nazi occupation. After another year
of war it appeared that resistance was having its effect on
German occupation army morale. Such external reports
prepared Londoners to accept the play's premises. W. A.
Darlington, "London and The Moon ia_Down," New York Times,
11 July 1943, II, p. 1. ESL—"“5. """ _—

92Brooks Atkinson, "Our War of Nerves," New York
Times, 10 May 1942, Sec. VIII, p. 1, col. 2.

93See Maxwell Anderson's "Poetry in the Theatre,"
and Thorton Wilder's "Some Thoughts on Playwrighting."

319

94In the case where ideology and motifs are
acceptable but form is new or outrageous, the response may
be divided and the play highly controversial, as was the
case with The Skin of Our Teeth.

95Brooks Atkinson, "Melancholy Time of Year," New
York Times, 10 March 1940, XI, p. 1, col. 2.

' 96"Actors in Experimental Program," New York Times,
20 February 1944, p. 34, col. 7.

97Northrup Frye, "Myth, Fiction, and Displacement,"
in Fables of Identit (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,

1963; ' ppo-77- 80

98Brooks Atkinson, "Problems in War Plays," p. 1,

col. 3.

II. PLAYWRIGHTS ADJUST: THE WAR AND ANARCHIC INDIVIDUALISM

1Maxwell Anderson, "A Confession," New York Times,
5 December 1954, II, p. 7.

2For accounts of the formation of the Playwright's
Co. see Robert E. Sherwood, "White Desert to Bad Seed,"
Theatre Arts, XXXIX (March 1955), p. 28, and 'Ufiion of
Playwrights for Joint Producing," Theatre Arts, XXII (May
1938). PP. 323-324.

 

 

3Burns Mantle, Contem ora American Playwrights
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1938), p. 3%.

4Eleanor Flexnor, American Playwrightay 1918-1938
The Theatre Retreats from Reality (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1938), pp. 78-79.

5Harold Clurman, "Theatre: Maxwell Anderson,"
The New Republic, CXIX (27 December 1948). p. 29.

6Allan G. Halline, "Maxwell Anderson's Dramatic
Theory," American Literature, XVI (1944), pp. 63-64.

320

7Maxwell Anderson, "Whatever Hope We Have," in
The Essence of Tragedy (Washington, D.C.: Anderson House,

33973—57787"

8Maxwell Anderson,1My Lar 0 (Washington, D. C.:

Anderson House, 1939), p. Future page references will
appear in parentheses following the quote.

9Anderson, "Whatever Hope We Have," p. 20.

10Allan G. Halline suggests in "Maxwell Anderson's
Dramatic Theory," p. 70, the use of Emerson's phrase and
suggested to Anderson that he was influenced by the Concord
idealist. Anderson confirmed the influence in a February
17, 1943 letter to Halline.

11Maxwell Anderson, Candle in the Wind (Washington,

D.C.: Anderson House, 1941), p. 116_' Future page refer-
ences will appear in parentheses following the quote.

12Joseph Wood Krutch, "Modernism" in Modern Drama

(New York: Russell and Russell, I962), p. 12

13Maxwell Anderson, Joum to Jerusalem (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Anderson House, 1940), p. —vi. Future page

references will appear in parentheses following the quote.

14Anderson, "Whatever Hope We Have," p. 23.

15Maxwell Anderson, "The Essence of Tragedy," in
The Essence g£ Tragedy, p. 10.

16Anderson, ”The Essence of Tragedy," p. 14.

17Edward Foster, "Core of Belief," Sewanee Review,
XLX (January-March 1942), p. 95.

18In 1942 Edward Foster ("Core of Belief") saw the
play as an "allegory of the plight of democracy in a world
fast moving toward totalitarianism," p. 95.

19Maxwell Anderson, Tor, in Eleven Verse Plays
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, H133 9), p. 141.

321

20Anita Block, The Chan in World in 4Pla s and
Theatre (Boston: Little, Brown, 13395, .7

21Eleanor Flexnor commented in American Playwrights,
1918-1938: "The danger is, that in eschewing the realism of
'journalistic social comment' for poetic prophecy, the
writer will lose his grip on the reality of which must
necessarily be the basis of dreaming if it is not to be idle
vaporing and self-delusion. A dream can be, not only the
setting of a goal, the embodiment of a hope, but an escape
from the difficult and the necessary," p. 90.

22Krutch, p. 116.

23Vincent Wall, "Maxwell Anderson: The Last
Anarchist," Sewanee Review, XLIX (July-September 1941),
p. 369.

24Foster, p. 100.

25An exception occurs in Valle Forge, whose
subject militates against a pacif1st stance and an evasive
protagonist.

26Maxwell Anderson, The Miracle of the Danube
(New York: The Free Company, 19415, p. 212 Future page
references will appear in parentheses following the quote.

27"Hitler Denounced at Drama Benefits," New York
Times, 21 November 1938, p. 4, col. 4.

28William L. Laurence, "New Curb is Seen for Bone
Cancer," New York Times, 11 October 1941, p. 20.

29Maxwell Anderson, "Your Navy," in This is War!
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942), pp. 47- 68.

30Maxwell Anderson, "A Summons from Valley Forge,"
New York Times Magazine, 22 February 1942, p. 8.

31Mabel Driscol Bailey, Maxwell Anderson, The
Pla r1 ht as Prophet (New York: Abelard-Sfim man, 1957),
pp. gl8-II9.

322

32Nearly all Anderson's later major figures can be
considered Christ figures--i.e., from King McCloud to Joan
of Joan of Lorraine, and Socrates of Barefoot in Athens.

 

33Mabel Driscoll Bailey does devote a Chapter to
them in Maxwell Anderson, The Playwright as Prophet.

34Anderson, "A Confession," p. 7, col. 1.

35George Jean Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year,
1945-46 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1536), p. 3T9.

 

 

36Bailey, p. 117.

37Philip Stevenson, "Concerning M. Anderson," New
York Times, 9 January 1944, II, p. 1, col. 6.

38Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt, "Candle in the
Wind," The Catholic World, CLIV (December 15315, p. 355.

 

 

3QSee, for example Rosamond Gilder, "Candles that
Light the Way," Theatre Arts, XXV (December 1941), pp. 861-
866.

40Richard Watts, Jr., "Miss Hayes and the Nazis,"
New York Herald Tribune, 24 October 1941, p. 14.

41John O'Hara, "Cool for Candle," Newsweek, XVIII
(3 November 1941), p. 58.

42Stark Young, "Regrettable," The New Republic, CV
(10 November 1941), p. 621.

 

43Joseph Wood Krutch, "The Theatre and the War,"
The Nation, XLIII (8 November 1941), p. 462.

44"Anderson's Drama to Go on in Britain," New York
Times, 1 May 1943, p. 3, and "Eve of St. Mark Sold for
$55,500," New York Times, 17 November-T945, p. 29.

45Wolcott, Gibbs, "But is it Art?" The New Yorker,
XVIII (17 October 1942): p. 36.

46Howard Barnes, "Inspired War Drama," New York
Herald Tribune, 9 October 1942, p. 16.

323

47Joseph Wood Krutch, "The Eve of §E. Mark," The

Nation, CLV (24 October 1942), p. 425.

48nNew Play in Manhattan," Time, XL (19 October
1942), p. 60.

49See Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (New York:
Random House Vintage Book, 1950), pp. 138 ff.

SOAnderson's attempt to rid the play of all
excrescences is seen in his use of scenery. The short
scenes are played against curtains with only enough
furnishings to suggest location. Again the result is one
of universalization and is similar in technique to that of
Thorton Wilder, another American playwright who consciously
experimented with stage technique, ridded the stage of
distracting naturalistic details, and explored American
cultural motifs.

51Krutch, "The Eve 2£.§E° Mark," p. 425.

52Maxwell Anderson, The Eve of St. Mark (Washington,
D.C.: Anderson, 1942), p. 15§.

53"Anderson Going to Africa," New York Times, 24
January 1943: P- 31-

54"Maxwell Anderson in Africa," New York Times, 1
June 1943, p. 19.

55Maxwell Anderson, ”A Dramatist's Playbill," New
York Herald Tribune, 19 September 1943, V, p. 1.

56Howard Barnes, "Report from Africa," New York
Herald Tribune, 13 January 1944, p. 14.

S7Burns Mantle, Best Plays 9£_l943-44 (New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1944), p. v.

58Maxwell Anderson, Storm Operation (Washington,
D.C.: Anderson House, 1944), pp. 7-8. Future page refer-
ences will appear in parentheses following the quote.

59Other artists made similar moves from various
positions on the pacifist spectrum. Lewis Milestone, for
instance, had directed the anti-war movie, All Quiet on the

324

Western Front in 1929-30; in 1943 he became a warrior of
sorts by directing Lillian Hellman's portrait of the
Russian peasant courageously fighting the Nazi invaders,
The North Star. In an example of American pragmatism
triumphing over principle, and an example of the art of
expedient definition, Milestone defended his new role.

”If by pacifist is meant a man who prefers peace and
doesn't like war but who will fight rather than surrender
his freedom, then I am a pacifist. There were 130,000,000
of that kind of pacifist in this country before Pearl
Harbor, and I was quite content to be included." In "Mr.
Milestone Beats a Plowshare into a Sword," New York Times,
14 March 1943, II, p. 3, col. 4.

60The idea of corpses refusing burial occurred
earlier in Chlumberg's Miracle gt'Verdun, but this does not
detract from Shaw's powerful use of the image.

61Irwin Shaw, "Notes on Bury the Dead," New York
Times‘ 3 May 1936, X, p. 1, col. 6.

62Irwin Shaw, The Gentle Peo 1e (New York: Random
House, 1939), p. 149. Note the 81ml arity of The Gentle
Peo 1e to Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, which—appeared
later that year. In-Tt'tfie mean, petty tyrant cop, Blick
is killed by the gentle dreamer, Kit Carson. The murder
is justified by our sympathy for Carson and by the brief
poetic essay that Saroyan attached to the play. The essay
includes the following: "Have no shame in being kindly and
gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to
kill, kill and have no regret."

63Robert E. Sherwood, Preface, There Shall be No

Night (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 19405, pT_xIT

64Quoted in "The First Current War Play," Life,
VIII (13 May 1940), p. 48.

65"The First Current War Play," p. 48.

66John Mason Brown, The Ordeal of §_P1aywright,
Robert E, Sherwood and the Challenge g£_the War (New York:
Harper and Row, I970}, p. 82.

67See Jack Gould, "The Broadway Stage Has Its First
War Play," New York Times, 12 May 1940, Ix, p. 1, col. 3.

 

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325

68"Finnish War Play Picketed," New York Times, 31
May 1940, p. 15, col. 1.

69Gould, p. 1, col. 3.

7oGould, p. 1. col. 5.

71Gould, p. 1, col. 5.

72Robert E. Sherwood, "An American Crusader," in
The Free Comgany Presents. . . . (New York: Dodd, Mead,

I§IITT‘E . 5 -86.

73

 

"Stop Hitler Now!" New York Times, 10 June 1940,
p. 36.

74"Sherwood Assails Ford, Lindbergh," New York
Times, 26 August 1940, p. 9, col. 1.

75Robert E. Sherwood, "Plan for Union," Life, IX
(7 October 1940), pp. 98-100. The plan for union Had other
supporters in the literary-theatre world, including W.
Somerset Maughm and Raymond Massey.

76"Calls Lindbergh a Nazi," New York Times, 12
October 1940, p. 18, col. 3.

77"Sherwood Bids U. S. Keep Pacific Bases," New
York Times, 29 March 1945, p. 11, cols. 2-3.

78"Playwright Back Home; Worked on His Vacation,"
New York Times, 18 July 1939, p. 14, col. 2.

79Letter quoted in Brown, pp. 26-27.

80Robert E. Sherwood, There Shall be No Ni ht,
p. 21. Future page references will appear—In parentheses
following the quote.

81Brown, p. 28.

82Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt, "Macbeth in
Harlem," The Catholic World, CXLIII (June 1936), p. 338.

H01

 

omcsntff.

 

. 1 -

326

83Irwin Shaw, Bury the Dead (New York: Random
House, 1936), p. 56.

84Brooks Atkinson, "The Play," New York Times, 25
March 1936, p. 25, col. 3.

85Atkinson, p. 25, col. 2.

86Stark Young, "Government and Guild," The New
Republic, LXXXXVI (8 April 1936), p. 253.

 

87Joseph Wood Krutch, "The Devil's Tones," The
Nation, CXLII (15 April 1936), pp. 491-492.

88Krutch, p. 492.

89Part of the problem lay in the writing, especially
of the ending. The old, gentle men have just committed
murder yet our attention is directed not to the implications
of violently resisting cruel men, but by the humorous and
shrewd hiding of a piece of incriminating evidence. The
major problem, however, as in Idiot's Delight, stemmed from
the production. Clurman states in The Fervent Years that
he felt the play to be "rather slight" and felt a Bit unsure
how to stage it. Several critics noted the uncertainty.

In the January 25, 1939 issue of The New Republic Otis
Ferguson complained of the mishma§h_that resulted from the
reluctance of the production to live up to the play's
content. "As produced, there is some hesitation over
whether they want straight drama or laughs, and a tendency
to go out indiscriminately for both, so that I don't know
where you can match the scene of the murder for confusion
and plain criminal awkwardness--the whole climax of the
piece held up and stretched farther than the nerves will go
while there is this hammy playing for guffaws, the whole
effect of resolve and violence ruined" (p. 343).

In the London production, the confusion was less
apparent, probably because the implications about appease-
ment vs. fighting evil men were clearer to Londoners than
to New York producers and audiences. W. A. Darlington
noted in his reports to the New York Times that though no
one explicitly suggested that the play was a "parable of
power politics," everyone felt the parabolic content
subconsciously. The result of this intuitive insight was
a more consistent production and a more uniform audience
reaction. Goff, the petty gangster, played a bit too
charmingly by Franchot Tone in New York, was played with
less charm and more menace in London. The audience felt so
strongly his menace and accepted the necessity of action

327

against it that they applauded his murder. See the New
York Times, 30 July 1939, IX, p. 1, cols. 3-7.

90Apparently feeling that the point might be
obscured by the play, Sherwood added a Postscript to the
printed version. The Postscript included the following:
"If decent people will continue to be intoxicated by the
synthestic spirit of patriotism, pumped into them by
magalomaniac leaders, and will continue to have faith in
the 'security' provided by those lethal weapons sold to them
by the armaments industry, then war is inevitable: and the
world will soon resolve itself into E58 semblance of an ant
hill, governed by commissars who owe their power to the
profundity of their contempt for the individual members of
their species," pp. 189-190.

91Robert E. Sherwood, Idiot's Deli ht, in Famous
American Pla s of £22 1930's, ed. Harold Clurman (New York:
Dell, 1962 , p.-296. Future page references will appear in
parentheses following the quote.

92Robert E. Sherwood, The Ru ed Path, in The Best
Pla s 2: 1945-46, ed. Burns Mant e (New York: DoddTfiMead,
, p. 362. Future page references will appear in
parentheses following the quote.

93Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman (New York:
Little, Brown, 1969), p. 82.

94"Russia Acclaimed by Miss Hellman," New York
Times, 2 March 1945, p. 5, col. 1.

95Lillian Hellman, "I Met the Front-Line Russians,"
Colliers, 115 (31 March 1945), pp. 11 ff.

 

96Hellman complained that though the completed
movie was worthwhile the director, Lewis Milestone, had
romanticized the opening scene making the Ukranian peasant
appear to be the happy, operetta peasant of some never-
never land. See Theodore Strauss, "The Author's Case,"
New York Times, 19 December 1943, II, p. 5, col. 8.

97Northrup Frye, "Myth, Fiction, and Displacement,"
in Fables of Identit (New York: Harcourt, Brace and

World, 1963), p. 8.

98Joseph Wood Krutch, "Unpleasant Play," The
Nation, 148 (25 February 1939), p. 244.

328

99Lillian Hellman, Days to Come in Four Pla SPJK
Lillian Hellman (New York: Random House Modern L1 rary,
p. 154. Future page references will appear in

parentheses following the quote.

100Frye, p. 27.

101Lillian Hellman, "Back of Those Foxes," New York
Times, 26 February 1939, IX, p. 1, col. 4.

102Brooks Atkinson, "The Play," New York Times, 16
February 1939, p. 16, col. 2.

103Krutch, "Unpleasant Play," p. 244.

104Lillian Hellman, "Day in Spain," The New Republic,
LXXXIV (13 April 1938), P. 298.

105Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes, in Four Plays,

p. 225. Future page references will appear in parentheses
following the quote.

106M155 Hellman promoted the loyalist cause in Spain
after her return to this country. She asked that a benefit
performance of The Little Foxes be given. For more details
see Chapter I.

107Lillian Hellman, Watch on the Rhine, in Four
Plays, p. 296. Future page references —wiII appear in
parentheses following the quote.

108Robert Van Gilder, "Of Lillian Hellman," New York
Times, 20 April 1942, IX, p. 1, cols. 607.

109Brooks Atkinson, "Hellman's Watch gg_the Rhine,"
New York Times, 13 April 1942, IX, p. l, cols. 2-3.

110Jordan Y. Miller, "Drama: The War Play Comes of

Age," in The Forties: Fiction, Poetr Drama, ed. Warren
French (Deland, Florida: Everett7Edwards, 1969), p. 71.

111The play seems to be one of the allegorical
structures described by Frye. It is one of "the poetic
structures with a large and insistent doctrinal interest in
which the internal fictions are exempla, like the epics of

 

Apr

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329

Milton," Anatomy gf Criticism (New York: Atheneum, 1970),
p. 91.

112Stark Young, "Behind the Beyond," The New
Republic, 110 (1 May 1944), p. 604.

113"The Searching Wind," Life. XVI (1 May 1944).

 

p. 43.

114Lewis Nichols, "The Play," New York Times, 13
April 1944, p. 25, col. 2.

115Lillian Hellman, The Searching Wind (New York:
Viking Press, 1944), p. 37. Future page references will
appear in parentheses after the quote.

 

III. EPIC THEATRE: THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

1Burns Mantle, The Best Pla s of 1942-43, ed.
Burns Mantle (New York: Dodd, Mea , 437} P. [55.
2

Lewis Nichols, "Gnashing Teeth," New York Times,
3 January 1943, VIII, p. 1, col. 3.

3Charlotte Hughes, "The Antrobi at Home," New
York Times, 13 December 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 5.

4Hughes, p. 1, col. 5.
5 .
Nichols, p. 1, col. 2.

6Richard Lockridge, in Critics' Theatre Reviews
(New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 1943), p. I73.

7Wilella Waldorf, in Critics' Theatre Reviews,
p. 174.

8Thorton Wilder, Preface to Three Plays (New York:
Bantam Books, 1957), p. xii.

9Burton Rasco, in Critics' Theatre Reviews,

p. 174.

330

10John Gassner, "Upswing in the Theatre," Current
Histogy, 3 (January 1943), p. 459. Actually Wilder sounds
a note common to such other World War II plays as Harriet,
i.e., he suggests that man can organize after the war, can
improve, can break the war-peace cycle. Antrobus: "In the
middle of all that blood and dirt and hot and cold--every
day and night, I'd have moments, Maggie, when I saw the
things that we could do when it was over . . . (p. 133).
Maggie, you and I will remember in peacetime all the
resolves that were so clear to us in the days of war.
We've come a long ways. We've learned. We're learning.
And the steps of our journey are marked for us here." He
refers to the books of philosophers (p. 136).

11Harrison Smith, "The Skin of Whose Teeth: Part

II,” The Saturda Review gf Literature, XXV (26 December
1942), p. 12.

12Joseph Campbell and Henry Robinson, "The Skin of

Whose Teeth?" The Saturday Review gf Literature, XXV (19
December 1942), p. 3.

13Campbell and Robinson, p. 3.

14Campbell and Robinson, p. 4.

15Campbell and Robinson, p. 4.

16See "Joyce or a Chicken," Time, XL (28 December
1942), p. 62, and "Finnegan Reawakened," Newsweek, XX (28
December 1942), p. 70.

17Edmund Wilson, "The Antrobuses and the Ear-
wickers,” The Nation, 156 (30 January 1943), p. 167.

18Wilson, p. 167.

lgSmith, p. 12.

20See "Joyce or a Chicken," p. 62.

21In "Trade Winds," The Saturda Review 2: Liter-
ature, XXVI (9 January 1943), P. I2.

22"Finnegan Reawakened," p. 70.

 

X]

S h “_C

TH

 

iv.

331

23Wolcott Gibbs, "Finnegan's Teeth," The New Yorker,
XVIII (16 December 1942), p. 34.

24Wolcott Gibbs, "Under Pressure," The New Yorker,
XIX (8 May 1942), p. 32.

25Lewis Nichols later chided the critics for their
lack of courage and their abandonment of the year's best
play (in Nichol's judgment) in the face of controversy.
"Two Prize Plays," New York Times, 9 May 1943, II, p. 1,
col. 1.

26Thorton Wilder, "After a Visit to England," The
Yale Review, XXXI (December 1941), pp. 217-224.

 

27M. C. Kuner suggests that the two playwrights were
simultaneously experimenting along the same lines, both
being independently influenced by expressionism. In Thorton

Wilder: The Bri ht and the Dark (New York: Thomas Y.
CroweIl, 1972), pp. 104-I05.

28Bertholt Brecht, "The Modern Theatre is the Epic
Theatre," in Brecht gg Theatre, ed. John Willett (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 37.

29Brecht, p. 37.

3oBrecht, p. 36.

31Thorton Wilder, "Some Thoughts on Playwrighting,"
in American Playwrights on Drama, ed. Horst Frenz (New
York: H111 and Wang, 1933‘)“, p."59.

32Bertholt Brecht, "Indirect Impact of the Epic
Theatre," in Brecht gg_Theatre, p. 58.

33

Bertholt Brecht, "The Modern Theatre is the Epic

Theatre,‘ p. 38.

34Alvah Bessie, "Wilder Allegory," The New Masses,
XLV (8 December 1942), pp. 29-30.

35Wilder, Preface to Three Plays, p. vii.

 

 

P1

54

At

15

 

 

332

36Thorton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth, in Three
Pla s (New York: Bantam Books, 196II, P. 83. Future page
re erences will appear in parentheses following the quote.

37Wilder, "Some Thoughts on Playwrighting," p. 57.

38Wilder, "Some Thoughts on Playwrighting," pp.

54-55.

391t was such fusion of the specific national detail
with universal consciousness that Wilder admired in Goethe.
See Thorton Wilder, "The Planetary Mind," Harper's Bazaar,
84 (1 March 1950), p. 148.

4ONorthrup Frye, Anatomy gf Criticism (New York:
Atheneum, 1970), p. 322.

 

41M. Mc Grath, No Wilder than Babbitt," The Nation, L
156 (13 marCh 1943): p0 395.

42Gerald Rabkin, "The Skin of Our Teeth and the
Thatre of Thorton Wilder,"‘Ifi'T§g_F5?tI3§: Fiction,
Poetgy, Drama, ed. Warren French (Deland, Florida: Everett/
E war 8' 1§6§)l P0 120.

43Dwight Macdonald, A ainst the American Grain
(New York: Random House, 1962), p. 53.

IV. ON NATIVE GROUNDS: LOCAL COLOR AND THE UNIVERSAL HERO

lArthur Bernon Tourtellot, "History and the
Historical Novel," The Saturday Review gf Literature, XXII
(24 August 1940), pp. 3-4.

 

2Hallie Flanagan, Arena (New York: Benjamin Blom,
1965), p. 45.

3Flanagan, p. 371.
4
Flanagan, p. 91.

5Flanagan, p. 248.

333

6Anthony F. Merrill, "The Town that is a Theatre,"
Theatre Arts, XXIII (July 1939), p. 520.

7Flanagan, p. 95.
8
Flanagan, p. 283.

9For a description of Nail's creations see Norris
Houghton, "Drama at the Crossroads," The Atlantic Monthly,
168 (November 1941), pp. 596-604.

 

10Edith J. R. Isaacs, "Where Do We Go From Here?"
Theatre Arts, XXIII (July 1939), p. 482.

11Brooks Atkinson, "Ought We to Found a National
Theatre?" New York Times Magazine, 24 March 1940, p. 15.

 

 

12Atkinson, p. 15.

13A possible exception might be Jack Strickland's
Tobacco Road.

14Flanagan, p. 312.

15Flanagan, p. 173.

16William Peery, "American Folk Drama Comes of Age,"
The American Scholar, 11 (Spring 1942), p. 361.

17George Jean Nathan, "The Inspiration of the
Current Drama," The American Mercury, LIV (March 1942),
p. 361. '

18Patterson Greene, Papa i§_All (New York: Samuel
French, 1942), p. 38. Future page references will appear
in parentheses following the quote.

19Brooks Atkinson, Introduction to Howard Lindsay
and Russel Crouse, Life With Father (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1946), p. xi.

20Lewis Nichols, "Harriet and Miss Hayes," New York
Times, 14 March 1943, II, p. 1, col. 1.

334

21John Gassner, "Jefferson and Hamilton in Drama,"
Current History, IV (March 1943), P. 88.

22Gassner, p. 88.
23"Critics Prize Won by The Patriots," New York
Times, 14 April 1943, p. 25, col. 7.

24Rosamond Gilder, "Time and the Rivals," Theatre
Arts, XXVI (March 1942), p. 149.

25Lewis Nichols, "Jefferson and Democracy," New
York Times, 7 February 1943, II, p. 1, col. 1.

26Joseph Wood Krutch, "Henry Ward Beecher's Little
Sister," The Nation, 156 (20 March 1943), P. 426.

27Francis Ryerson and Colin Clements, Harriet
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943), p. 2II. Future
page references will appear in parentheses following the
quote.

28Sidney Kingsley, The Patriots (New York: Random
House, 1943), p. 176. Future page references will appear
in parentheses following the quote.

29Stark Young, "Lincoln and Huston," The New
Republic, LXXXXVII (9 November 1938), p. 18.

30See Theodore Strauss, "Abe Lincoln of 45th St."
New York Times, 30 October 1938, IX, p. 3, col. 5.

31Harriet also seemed to plead the case for the U.S.
not to return to its post-World War I attitudes. "Our
danger is this," says Harriet at the recruiting rally,

"when the conflict is finished and war-weariness has set in,
we may be tempted to forget, to slip back into old ways.

. . . Then will the battle have to be fought again, and,
perhaps, yet again" (p. 211).

32Rosamond Gilder, "Patriots, 1776, 1943," Theatre
Arts, XXVII (April 1943), p. 201.

33See Martha Dreiblatt, "Words on Theatre and War,"
New York Times, 16 May 1943, II, p. 1, col. 5.

 

Inufa

 

Bc

V6

 

335

34Roy P. Basher, Th3 Lincoln Le end (New York:
Octagon Books, 1969), and David Donald, T e Folklore
Lincoln," in Lincoln Reconsidered, 2nd ed. (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. I49.

35Robert Sherwood, Abe Lincoln ig_Illinois (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939), p. I9I. Future page
references will appear in parentheses following the quote.

36Millard Lampell, "The Lonesome Train," in Radio
Drama ig.Action, ed. Erick Barnouw (New York: Farrar ana
Rinehart, I945), p. 241.

37In a 1938 review of Prologue to Glor Euphemia

Van Rensslaer Wyatt observed that LincoIn will always
remain the prototype of the American country boy who

developed himself not through any trick of fortune but
through an innate spirit of honesty and industry." In

"The Drama," The Catholic World, 147 (May 1938), p. 214.

381f the history plays dealing with such other
historical persons as Jefferson and Wilson lack the clear
mythic patterns, it is probably because their central
figures were not cultural figures in the same definitive way
as Lincoln's.

39Northrup Frye, Anatomy gf Criticism (New York:
Atheneum, 1970), P. 282.

4oFrye, p. 282.

41Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,

Bollengin Series XVII, 2nd ed. (Frincetofi: Princeton Un'—
versity Press, 1968), pp. 245-246.

42Frye, p. 283.

43Campbell, p. 249.

44Campbell, p. 246.

45Campbell, p. 249.

46Brooks Atkinson, "Lincoln of New Salem," New York
Times, 27 March 1938, X, p. 1, col. 1.

 

336

47E. P. Conkle, Prologge to Glory, in Federal

Theatre Pla 3, ed. Pierre de Rohafi—(New York: Random
House, 1 , p. 103. Future page references will appear
in parentheses following the quote.

48Brooks Atkinson, "Lincoln's Prairie Years," New
York Times, 23 October 1938, IX, p. 1, col. 1.

49Atkinson, "Lincoln's Prairie Years," p. 1,

col. 1.

V. BROMIDIC PARABLES: THE MUSICALS

1Brooks Atkinson, "New Dramatic Forms for Old,"
New York Times, 9 February 1941, p. 1, col. 1.

2George Beiswanger, "The Theatre Moves Toward
Music," Theatre Arts, XXV (April 1941), p. 287.

3Weill notes the movement on Broadway and in his
own work toward integration of elements on his notes on the
cast recording of Street Scene. "In the different Broadway
shows which I wrote . . . I tried to make the music an
integral part of the plays; especially in Lad in the Dark,
with its three little one-act operas, I continuEH'EHE'story
in musical fantasies when the realistic story stopped. In
the meantime, the whole Broadway scene began to change in
the same direction. Porgy 2gg_Bess became a big popular
success, Carousel and Carmen Jones introduced operatic
elements, and the American puSIIE_became more and more
Opera-conscious. When I finally decided that the time was
ripe for a real Broadway opera, I found Elmer Rice's
famous play . . . a perfect vehicle. The form I decided on
as the best realization of an American opera-form.was
exactly that complete integration of drama and music which
I had attempted in my earlier works." Columbia, 0 L 4139.

4Beiswanger, p. 289.

5"Al Jolson, Mae West May Head New Revue,"
Variet , 15 April 1942, p. 1. col. 1. See also Karl
Schriftgeiser, "Rebirth of Vaudeville," New York Times
Magazine, 19 April 1942, pp. 18-19.

6Variety, 15 April 1942, p. 51, col. 1.

 

19

29

337

7Lewis Nichols, "More on Vaudeville," New York
Times, 19 September 1943, II, p. 1, col. 1.

8"See Summer Vaudeville Boost," Variety, 8 April
1942, p. 3, col. 3.

9"Vaudeville Back in Montreal after 7 Years,"
Variety, 22 April 1942, p. 45, col. 1.

10"Demand for Fast, Varied Shows Cues Great Strides
in Comeback of Vaude," Variety, 15 April 1942, p. 43,
col. 1.

11"And Still the Corpse Carries on," New York EEEEEI
29 October 1944, II, p. 1, col. 4.

12Wolcott Gibbs, "Something for Everybody," The
New Yorker, XX (6 December 1944), p. 42.

13John Lahr, Notes gg_a Cowardly Lion (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), pp. 228-230.

14George Eells, The Life That Late Hg Led (New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967), p. 216.

15Brooks Atkinson, Broadwgy (New York: Macmillan,
1970), pp. 314-315.

. 16Ban'o Eyes, especially, seemed an expression of
the vaudeviIIe-revue genre. It contained the vaudeville

commonplaces of a chorus line, a parody of a ballroom
dance, patriotic songs, and talking horses that crossed
their legs. For a review and description of the show see
Wolcott Gibbs, "Full Week," Th§_Ngy Yorker, XVII (3
January 1942), p. 28.

17Beiswanger, p. 293.

18Richard Rodgers, "Theatre Music," American
Mercugy, LIX (September 1944), p. 280.

191t is curious that Rodgers, who helped give
strings their importance in the contemporary musical
drama's orchestra, later introduced an orchestra without
any strings in his show, N2 Strings.

 

338

20See Lewis Nichols, "Musical Shows," New York
Times, 11 February 1945, II, p. 1, col. 2.

21Theodore Strauss, "Comeback of the Chorus Girl,"
New York Times Magazine, 11 March 1942, p. 18.

 

2 .
2Thyra Sumter Wimslow, "Notes on a Theatrical
Revolution," New York Times Magazine, 11 March 1945, p. 16.

 

23Strauss, pp. 18-19.

24John O'Hara, Pal Joey (New York: Random House,
1952), p. 160

 

25Wimslow, p. 37.

26See Strauss, p. 18.

27The Theatre Guild tried to encourage new work in
the fertile field of ballet by announcing in 1944 a contest
for the best original ballet play on an American subject.
The prize was $500. For the announcement see Sam Zolotow,
"Premiere Tonight of M55. Kimball," New York Times, 29
February 1944, p. 21, col. I.

28See, for example, Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt,
"Oklahoma!" The Catholic World, 57 (May 1943), pp. 186-187.

29Kappo Phelan, "Bloomer Girl," The Commonweal, XLI
(27 October 1944), p. 37.

30For a critical view of the American Lyric Theatre
see B. H. Haggin, "American Lyric Theatre," The Nation, 149
(8 July 1939), PP. 52-53.

31Beiswanger, p. 296.

32Edith J. R. Isaacs and Rosamond Gilder, "American
Musical Comedy," Theatre Arts, XXIX (August 1945), p. 452.

33The Field's had put military trimmings on their
really civilian 1941-42 hit, Let's Face It with Danny
Kaye and Eve Arden. In that show three vaes adopt
servicemen from a nearby army camp as gigolos in an effort
to get revenge on their wandering husbands. Aside from the

339

numerous allusions that are made to inductee life, the play
has little to do with war or war world problems. The
Field's Mexican Hayride, 1944 had nothing at all to do with
war.

 

34Wolcott Gibbs, "Our Miss Merman," The New Yorker,
XVIII (16 January 1943), P. 32.

3SGibbs, p. 32.

36Rodgers, p. 281.

37Rodgers, p. 281.

38Isaacs and Gilder, p. 493.

39Rosamond Gilder, "The Isle is Full of Noises,"
Theatre Arts, XXIX (March 1945), P. 85.

40Several critics note this trend. See, for
example, Rosamond Gilder, "Spring Laurel," Theatre Arts,
XXIX (June 1945), pp. 325-336, and Nichols, "MusicaI SHows,"
New York Times, 11 February 1945, II, p. 1, col. 1.

41Northrup Frye, Anatom gf Criticism (New York:
Atheneum, 1970), pp. 287-288. 2"

42Kappo Phelan, "%§_ig Central Park," The Common-
weal, XLI (16 February 19 ), P. 448.

43An ad for Decca records in 1944 appeals to the
sense of American identity and the American past. "We have
recorded the love of the land, the reverence for the flag,
the joy of our people. You still find them in thousands
of Decca records and albums, such as Oklahoma! . . . For
and Bess . . . Cowboy Songs and such favorites as "SiIent
NIght" and "Sweet Lilani" as sung by Bing Crosby."
"Broken! . . . Thank Goodness," ad in New York Times
Magazine, 5 November 1944, p. 45.

44See Wolcott Gibbs, "And Very Pretty, Too," The
New Yorker, XXI (28 April 1945), p. 38.

45Oscar Hammerstain II, Oklahoma! i2 Six Plays by_
Rod ers 222_Hammerstein (New York: RandOm House, 1953),
p. 31. Future page references will appear in parentheses
after the quote.

340

46David Ewen, The Stor of America's Musical Theatre
(New York: Chilton Corporation,-I96l), p. I79 ff.

47"Ok1ahoma!" Life, 14 (24 May 1943): P- 57-

48Stark Young, "Oklahoma with Details," The New
Rgpublic, 108 (19 April 1943), P. 508).

 

49Henry Nash Smith, The Virgin Land (New York:
Random House Vintage Book, 1950), p. 138.

50Smith quotes an 1851 speech by Representative
George W. Julian to define the yoeman ideal. Julian said,
in part: "The life of a simple farmer is peculiarly
favorably to virtue. . . . His manners are simple, and
his nature unsophisticated. . . . The farmer lives in rustic
plenty, remote from the contagion of popular vices, and
enjoys, in the greatest fruition, the blessings of health
and contentment," p. 197. How like the American Adam is
Julian's yoeman, and how like the world of Oklahoma!

51R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1955), p. I5.

52Lewis, p. 1.

53John Lahr, Up Against the Fourth Wall (New York:

Grove Press, 1970), p. 118.

S4Leo Marx, The Machine $3 the Garden (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1964), p. I0.

55Marx, p. 11.

VI. 1946: THE WORLD IS LIT BY LIGHTNING

1Nat Kohn, "Broadway in Anti-Climactic Welcome of
VrE Day: Real Whoopee on Monday," Variety, 158 (9 May
1945), p. 16, col. 2.

2"All City 'Lets Go,'" New York Times, 15 August
1945, p. 1, col. 3.

 

341

3Reported in John M. Fenton, In Your Opinion

(Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), pp. 34137.

 

4Lewis Nichols, "Slow Motion," New York Times, 21
October 1945, II, p. 1, col. 1.

5John K. Hutchens, "Why They FlOp--and Who Pays,"

New York Times Magazine, 17 February 1946, VI, p. 16.

6Brock Pemberton, "Crisis over Broadway," New York
Times, 29 December 1946, II, p. 1, col. 7.

7Burns Mantle, The Best Plays pf 1946-47 (New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1947), p. v.

8Sidney Kingsley, "American Theatre Wing Recon—
verts," New York Times, 16 June 1946, II, p. 1, col. 3.

9Arthur Hopkins, "New World Theatre," New York

Times, 8 July 1945, II, p. 1, col. 1. See also Richard
Watts, Jr., "One World," Theatre Arts, XXX (March 1946),
pp. 142-149.

10Lewis Nichols, "Theatre at War," New York Times,
11 March 1945, II, p. 1, col. 2.

11Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, State of the

Union (New York: Random House, 1946), p. 9. Future page
references will appear in parentheses after the quote.

12"Seeks Play on Tolerance," New York Times, 2
April 1945, p. 15, col. 8.

13Rosamond Gilder felt the numerous themes tended
to overload the play. "Sprightly Entertainment," Theatre
Arts, XXX (March 1946), P. 141.

14Edwin R. Embree, "Balance Sheet in Race Relations,"
The Atlantic Monthly, 175 (May 1945), pp. 87-91.

15George Jean Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year,

1946- 47 (New York: Alfred A. KnopZTTé'fi), p. 6'." """'

 

16Anna Lucasta was a long run black production, but

it was originally written as a play about a Polish family

342

in a Pennsylvania mining town. Minor changes were made to
make the play "black," but the play remained basically a
color-blind, ethnic comedy-drama that seems almost
incidentally to have been casted by black performers.

17Arnaud d' Usseau and James Gow, Dee are the Roots
(New York: Charles Scribner' 5 Sons, 1946 , p. 18 2. _Future
page references will appear in parentheses following the
quote.

18Robert Ardrey, Preface to Plays of Three Decades
(New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 25.

19Interview with S. J. Woolf, "Eugene O'Neill
Returns after Twelve Years," New York Times Magazine, 15
September 1946, p. 11.

 

2oIn Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O‘Neill (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1962), p. 835.

2leelb, p. 836.

22Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, in The

Theatre of Tennessee Williams Tish York: New Directions,

1 I, p. 148. Future page references will appear in
parentheses following the quote.

 

 

23Eugene O'Neill, The Iceman Cometh (New York:
Random House Vintage Books, 194 65, .

24Mary Chase, Harvey, in Best Pla s of 1944-45,
ed. Burns Mantle (New York: Dodd, Mead, 45T, p. 133.
25

Grafton is quoted in Brooks Atkinson, "To Be or
Not To Be," New York Times, 27 October 1946, II, p. 1,
col. 1.

26Henry Nash Smith, Preface to Virgin Land (New
York: Random House Vintage Book, 1950), p. vi.

27Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Fireside Chat on
December 9, 1941," in The Public Papers and Addresses of
Franklin 2. Roosevelt,-Ed. Samuel I. RosEfiman (New York?
Harper and Brothers, 1950), X, p. 526.

 

 

 

 

343

28See Richard R. Lingeman, Don't You Know There's a

War 92? (New York: Paperback Library, 1971;, PP. 53-55. ‘—

 

9Irving L. Janis, "Psychological Effects of
Warning," in Man and Societ i£_Diaster, eds. George W.
Baker and Dwight W. C apman (New York: Basic Books, 1962),
pp. 60-61.

30Roosevelt, "Fireside Chat," p. 529.

31Clyde Kluckhohn, "Myths and Rituals: A General

Theory," The Harvard Theological Review, XXXV (January
1942)] p0 6g.

32George Jean Nathan, "The Audience Emotion," in

Art of the Night (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928),
pp. 3-94.

33Kluckhohn, p. 65.

34Harry Schein, "The Olympian Cowboy," trans.
Ida M. Alcock, The American Scholar, 24 (Summer 1955),
p. 311.

35Kluckhohn, p. 66.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following bibliography lists the primary works, ..
significant commentary on the plays and theatre trends, and E
secondary critical works cited in the above study. It does

not include the numerous brief items from the New York

 

Times, Herald Tribune, Variety, and others that provide
broad background information on playwrights and theatre
events during the war period. Also excluded are the reviews
cited in the text. If the reader is interested in a brief
review of critical comment on the dramas of 1938-45 I
recommend the reviews of Brooks Atkinson and Lewis Nichols
in the New York Times, those of Wolcott Gibbs in The New.

Yorker, Stark Young in The New Republic, Rosamond Gilder in

 

Theatre Arts, and especially the perceptive reviews of

Joseph Wood Krutch in The Nation.

Anderson, Maxwell. Candle in the Wind. Washington, D.C.:
Anderson House, 1§4l.

. "A Confession." New York Times, 5 December
1954' II, p. 7' C01. 1.

 

. Eleven Verse Plays. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Co., 1939.

 

344

345

Anderson, Maxwell. The Essence of Tra ed and Other

Footnotes and Papers. WEEhington, D.C.: Anderson
House, I939.

. The Eve of SE. Mark. Washington, D.C.: Anderson

 

Hou—se , _1942'."

. Journey to Jerusalem. Washington, D.C.:

 

 

Anderson House, 1940.

 

. Ke Largo. Washington, D.C.: Anderson House,
1939.

 

 

 

ha.
. "The Miracle of the Danube." New York: The
Free Company, 1941.
. "Second Overture.” New York: Dramatists Play
Service, 1940.
. "A Summons from Valley Forge." New York Times 3

Magazine, 22 February 1942, p. 8. +7

. "Your Navy." In This is War! New York: Dodd,

 

Ardrey,

Mead and Co., 1942, p—_p. 4736‘s."

Robert. Pla s gf Three Decades. New York:
Atheneum, I9E9.

Atkinson, Brooks. "Art Can Do the Job." New York Times,

6 September 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

. Broadway. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

 

 

. "Drama at Its Lowest Ebb." New York Times,

 

26 April 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

. "Drama Tomorrow, Thoughts on the Place of the

 

Theatre in This Chaotic World." New York Times, 30
June 1940, IX, p. 1, col. 2.

. "New Dramatic Forms for Old." New York Times,

 

9 February 1941, p. 1, col. 1.

. "Problems in War Plays." New York Times, 1

 

March 1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

. "Some Reflections on the Uses of the Theatre in

 

Time of War." New York Times, 14 December 1941,
IX, p. 3, col. 1.

. ”Things to Write About Now." New York Times,

 

15 December 1940, X, p. 1, col. 1.

346

Bailey, Mabel Driscoll. Maxwell Anderson: The Playgright
2g Prophet. New York: Abelard-Shuman, 1957.

 

Basher, Roy P. The Lincoln Legend. New York: Octagon
Books, 1969.

 

Behrman, S. N. Na Time for Comedy. New York: Random
House, 1939.

. The Talley Method. New York: Random House,
1941.

 

Beiswanger, George. "The Theatre Moves Toward Music." -—]
Theatre Arts, XXV, April 1941, pp. 287-296. -

 

Best Plays 2E 1938-39, 1939-40, etc. Ed. Burns Mantle.
New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1939.

 

Block, Anita. The Chan in World 12 Pla s and Theatre. “A
Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1 39.

Boyd, James, Robert Sherwood et al. The Free Com an
Presents. . . . New York: Dodd, Mead ans Co., 1941.

Brecht, Bertholt. Brecht 9n Theatre. Ed. John Willett.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.

Brown, John Mason. The Ordeal of a Playwright: Robert
Sherwood and the Challen e —of’the War. New York:
Harper and Row, —1 70.

 

 

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
Bollengin Series XVII. _an ed. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1968.

Campbell, Joseph and Henry Robinson. "The Skin of Whose
Teeth?" The Saturdangeview of Literature, XXV,
19 December 1942, pp. 3- 4.

 

Chase, Mary. Harvey. In Best Plays of 1944-45. Ed. Burns
Mantle. New York: Dodd, Mead—and Co., 1945,
pp. 176-189.

Clurman, Harold. "Theatre: Maxwell Anderson." The New
Republic, CXIX, 27 December 1948, p. 29.

 

Conkle, E. P. Prolog_e to Glogy. In Federal Theatre Plays.
Ed. Pierre de Rohan. New York: Random House,
1938, pp. 5- 81.

 

 

347

Donald, David. Lincoln Reconsidered. 2nd ed. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.

 

Dreiblatt, Martha. "Words on the Theatre and War." New
York Times, 16 May 1943, II, p. 1, col. 4.

Eells, George. The Life that Late He Led. New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons, 1967.

Ewen, David. The Story 9: America's Musical Theatre. New
York: Chilton Corporation, 1961.

 

Fenton, John M. 32 Your Opinion. Boston: Little, Brown,
1960.

Flanagan, Hallie. Arena. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1965.
Flexnor, Eleanor. American Playwrights, 1918-1938: The

Theatre Retreatg from Reality. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1938.

 

 

The Forties: Fiction, Poetgy, Drama. Ed. Warren French.

Deland, Flor1da: Everett7Edwards, 1969.

Frye, Northrup. Anatom of Criticism: Four Essays. New
York: At eneum, T970.

 

. "Myth, Fiction, and Displacement." In Fables pg
Identit . New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
1963, pp. 21-38.

 

Gassner, John. "The War in the Theatre." Current History,
3, December 1942, pp. 360-363.

Gelb, Arthur and Barbara. O'Neill. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1962.

Greenberger, Richard. The 12-Year Reich. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1971.

Greene, Patterson. Papa ii All. New York: Samuel French,
1942.

Halline, Allan G. "Maxwell Anderson's Dramatic Theory."
American Literature, XVI, 1944, pp. 63-81.

 

Hammerstein, Oscar II, and Richard Rodgers. Six Plays py.
Rod ers and Hammerstein. New York: Random House,
195%.

 

348

Hellman, Lillian. "Back of those Foxes." New York Times,
26 February 1939, IX, p. 1, col. 4.

 

 

. Four Plays b Lillian Hellman. New York:
Random House, 1942.

. The Searching Wind. New York: Viking Press,

1944.

 

. Ag Unfinished Woman. New York: Little, Brown
and Co., 1969.

 

 

 

Isaacs, Edith J. R. "Where Do We Go From Here?" Theatre
Arts, XXIII, July 1939, pp. 477-485.

, and Rosamond Gilder. "American Musical Comedy."
Theatre Arts, XXIX, August 1945, pp. 452-493.

 

Kingsley, Sidney. The Patriots. New York: Random House,
1943.

 

Kluckhohn, Clyde. "Myths and Rituals: A General Theory."
The Harvard Theological Review, XXXV, January, 1942,
pp. 45-79.

 

Krutch, Joseph Wood. Modernism ip_Modern Drama. New York:
Russell and Russell, 1962.

 

. "The Theatre and the War." The Nation, XLIII,
8 November 1941, p. 462.

 

Kuner, M. C. Thorton Wilder: The Bri ht and the Dark.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1952.

Lahr, John. Notes on a Cowardly Lion. New York: Alfred

A. Knopf , 1569'?

. Up'A ainst the Fourth Wall. New York: Grove
Press, 1955. .

 

Lampbell, Millard. "The Lonesome Train," In Radio Drama
ip Action. Ed. Erik Barnouw. New York: Farrar
and Rinehart, 1945, pp. 240-250.

Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1955.

Lindsay, Howard, and Russell Crouse. State pg the Union.
New York: Random House, 1946.

 

Lingeman, Richard R. Don't You Know There's §_War 93?
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349

Macdonald, Dwight. Against the American Grain. New York:
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Mantle, Burns. Contemporary American Playwrights. New
York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1938?:

Marx, Leo. The Machine 12 the Garden. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1964.

Nannes, Caspar H. Politics in the American Drama. Washing-
ton, D.C.: The Catholic University of American
Press, 1960.

 

 

 

 

 

F-a
Nathan, George Jean. "The Audience Emotion." In Art 9:.

the Ni ht. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928,

PP- ' .

. "The Inspiration of the Current Drama." The

American Mercury, LIV, March 1942, pp. 360-365.

. "Ivory Towers to Let." The American Mercury, ;3
LIII, October 1941, pp. 425-430. '"

. "The Status of Male Playwrights." In The
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Farleigh Dickinson Un1v. Press, 1969, pp. 3-33.

 

. The Theatre Book of the Year, 1941-42, 1942-43,

etc. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, I942.

 

Nichols, Lewis. "More on Vaudeville." New York Times, 19
September 1943, II, p. 1, col. 1.

. "Note on the War Plays." New York Times, 3
October 1943, II, p. 1, col. 3.

 

. "Of War Plays." New York Times, 3 December
1942, VIII, p. 1, col. 1.

 

. "Theatre at War." New York Times, 11 March
1945, II, p. 1, col. 1.

 

O'Hara, John. Pal Joey. New York: Random House, 1952.

O‘Neill, Eugene. The Iceman Cometh. New York: Random
House Vintage Books, 1946.

Peery, William. "American Folk Drama Comes of Age." The
American Scholar, 11, Spring 1942, pp. 149-157.

Pemberton, Brock. "Crisis over Broadway." New York Times,
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Rodgers, Richard. "Theatre Music." The American Mercury,
LIX, September 1944, pp. 279- 282.

Ryerson, Francis and Colin Clements. Harriet. New York:
Random House, 1943.

Shaw, Irwin. Bury the Dead. New York: Random House, 1936.

 

. The Gentle Peo 1e: A_Brook1yn Fable. New York:
Random House, 1939 -

. "Notes of Bury the Dead." New York Times, 3 May
1936, X, p. 1, col. 6.

 

Sherwood, Robert. Abe Lincoln ip Illinois. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939.

 

 

. Idiot' s Delight. In Famous American Pla s of
the 1930's. Ed. Harold Clurman. New York D311,
fiz'f— pp. 203-296.

. The Rugged Path. In The Best Pla s of 1945-46.
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. There Shall pg No Night. New York: Charles
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