66. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 25, 1942, YCAL.
67. Dr. — Cheney to the Wilder Family, January 13, 1942, ANW, Wilder Family Record, Private Collection.
30: “THE CLOSING OF THE DOOR” (1940S)
1. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, January 9, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781E), HLH.
2. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, October 9, 1942, SL, 405–7.
3. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 25, 1942, YCAL.
4. Ibid.
5. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, February 18, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781E), HLH.
6. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 25, 1942, YCAL.
7. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, February 2, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781E), HLH.
8. TNW to Harold Freedman, February 20, 1942, SL, 392–95.
9. TNW to Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, February 5, 1942, SL, 391–93.
10. Ibid.
11. TNW to Dwight Dana, January 29, 1942, SL, 389–90.
12. Ibid.
13. TNW to Harold Freedman, February 20, 1942, SL, 391–95.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. TNW to Ruth Gordon, June 11, [1942?], SL, 398–99.
17. Tallulah Bankhead, Tallulah: My Autobiography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 251.
18. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, August 12, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781I), HLH.
19. TNW to Michael Kahn, November 8, 1973, SL, 691–92.
20. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, May 6, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781G), HLH. TNW wrote to Isabel as he was preparing the text of The Skin of Our Teeth for publication that the published text would not “vary from the acted text as much as ‘Our Town’s’ does; but I shall go on making ‘a’ version without regard to what’s being acted. And I want to write in more stage directions to aid the reader’s imagination.” He hoped the published text would be ready for the Christmas trade. TNW to Isabel Wilder, October 26, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
21. TNW to Harold Freedman, February 20, 1942, SL, 393–94.
22. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, May 12, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781G), HLH.
23. “Hitchcock Technique Prevails Even in the Birth of a Script,” New York Herald Tribune, December 13, 1942.
24. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, May 12, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781G), HLH.
25. Ibid.
26. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, May 17, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781G), HLH.
27. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, May 23, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781G), HLH.
28. Skirball was an ordained rabbi who had become a movie producer in 1938, and worked as an independent producer as well as a studio producer, an officer at Grand National Pictures, and later a president of Arcadia Pictures. Skirball was interested in Broadway as well, and produced S. N. Behrman’s Jacobowsky and the Colonel on Broadway with Jed Harris in 1944.
29. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, [May 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
30. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, [May 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL; George Cukor dinner details: TNW to Ruth Gordon, June 11, [1942?], SL, 398–99.
31. TNW to Isabel Wilder, May 26, [1942?], SL, 395–97.
32. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, May 23, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781G), HLH.
33. TNW, Shadow of a Doubt, in McClatchy, Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 747. The script for Shadow of a Doubt is published in full in this volume, with background notes by Geoffrey O’Brien.
34. TNW to Robert Hutchins, June 16, 1942, SL, 400–402.
35. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 30, 1940, New York University.
36. TNW to Isabel Wilder, May 26, [1942?], SL, 395–97.
37. Ibid.
38. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, June 10, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781H), HLH.
39. Ibid.
40. TNW to Ruth Gordon, June 11, [1942?], SL, 398–99.
41. John Russell Taylor, Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 185–86. For additional commentary on the film, see Martin Blank, “Wilder, Hitchcock, and Shadow of a Doubt,” in Martin Blank, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer, and David Garrett Izzo, eds., Thornton Wilder: New Essays ( West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999), 409–16.
42. TNW to Sol Lesser, February 14, 1943, UCLA, Los Angeles. Their collaboration on the motion picture version of Our Town remained the only time the two men worked together.
43. Isabella Niven Wilder to ANW, May 13, 1942, ANW Papers, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
44. TNW to Robert Hutchins, June 16, 1942, SL, 400–402.
45. Paul Horgan, “Captain Wilder, T. N.,” [June 16, 1987?], TS, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers. Paul Horgan’s twenty-page manuscript concentrates on his first meeting with TNW in Miami in July 1942, and recounts their ensuing friendship. Quotations herein come from the unpublished typescript, which varies slightly from the essay published in Paul Horgan, Tracings: A Book of Partial Portraits (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993), 121–34.
46. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, February 2, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781E), HLH.
47. Paul Horgan, “Captain Wilder, T. N.,” TS, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
48. TNW to Family, July 5, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
49. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, August 16, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781I), HLH.
50. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [July 1942?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781H), HLH.
51. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, August 16, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781I), HLH.
52. TNW to Robert Maynard Hutchins, June 16, 1942, SL, 400–402.
53. Ibid.
54. TNW to Amos Wilder, [Summer 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. TNW to Amos Wilder, [July 20 or 28, 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
56. TNW to Isabel Wilder, August 24, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
57. TNW to Isabel Wilder, [September 13, 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
58. TNW, “Notes Toward a History and Historical Records of the 328th Fighter Group,” First Draft, holograph manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
59. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, September 28, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781I), HLH.
60. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, October 9, 1942, SL, 405–7.
61. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, October 7, 1942, SL, 403–5.
62. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, October 9, 1942, SL, 405–7.
63. TNW to Jed Harris, “Sketch of Letter Sent,” January 29, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. TNW, The Skin of Our Teeth, act 3, 103–12.
65. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, April 11, [1943?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
66. Richard Maney, Fanfare: The Confessions of a Press Agent (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 330–31.
67. “Wilder (Adjective, Not Noun) Reaction Grows to ‘Skin of Our Teeth,’ ” Variety, February 24, 1943, 1.
68. Maney, Fanfare, 329–30.
69. TNW to Michael Myerberg, copy of letter sent to Isabel Wilder, [October 21, 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
70. TNW to Michael Myerberg, October 27, 1942, SL, 409–10.
71. Alexander Woollcott to Sibyl Colefax, September 1, 1942, in Kaufman and Hennessey, The Letters of Alexander Woollcott, 357.
72. Alexander Woollcott to TNW, November 4, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
73. Ibid.
74. Tappan Wilder, afterword to The Skin of Our Teeth, 127.
75. TNW to Harold Freedman, November 24, 1942, Private Collection.
76. Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, “The Skin of Whose Teeth?—The Strange Case of Mr. Wilder’s New Play and Finnegans Wake,” Saturday Review of Literature, December 19, 1942, 3–4.
77. TNW to Benjamin W. Huebsch, June 28, 1940, Library of Congress.
78. Benjamin W. Huebsch to TNW, July 12, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
79. “Fourth Estate: Finnegan Reawakened,” Newsweek, December 28, 1942, 41. This article noted that Wilder would “answer his critics later.”
80. Bennett Cerf,
“Trade Winds,” Saturday Review of Literature, January 9, 1943, 12.
81. Draft of letter to the editor, Saturday Review of Literature, enclosed in TNW to Isabel Wilder, December 17, 1942, Private Collection. TNW enclosed his letter to the editor of the Saturday Review in this letter to Isabel, telling her to “erase this note.” The letter was never mailed, and, fortunately, never “erased.” The entire letter may be found in SL, 412–15. In May 1943, before going overseas, TNW prepared a list of possible defenses for his attorneys, should there be litigation in the matter, but that did not occur. His detailed analysis of the Campbell-Robinson charges was headed “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth.” TNW, May 13, 1943, Private Collection.
82. Draft of a letter to the editor, the Saturday Review of Literature, enclosed in TNW to Isabel Wilder, December 17, 1942, Private Collection.
83. Ibid.
84. Bankhead, Tallulah: My Autobiography, 257.
85. TNW, preface to Three Plays, xxxii.
86. TNW to Zoë Akins Rumbold, November 18, 1940, SL, 382.
31: “WARTIME” (1940S)
1. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 2, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
2. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, October [no day], 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
3. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, December 8, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781J), HLH.
4. Ibid.
5. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, September 17, [1942?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781J), HLH.
6. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 2, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, January 1, [1943?], TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW wrote 1942 on this letter, but its contents clearly place it in 1943.
8. Woollcott’s As You Were: A Portable Library of American Prose and Poetry Assembled for Members of The Armed Forces and The Merchant Marine was published by Viking Press in 1943. It was 657 pages long and measured 4.24 inches by 6.5—sturdy and convenient packaging for people who, Woollcott said, were on the move and had to travel light. TNW’s play was not included in the final publication, apparently because the decision was made to publish only poetry and fiction. Woollcott’s idea and his anthology launched Viking’s series of “portable” books, including, during World War II, a portable Bible, a portable Shakespeare, and portable editions of authors such as Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway.
9. Alexander Woollcott to TNW, November 13, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
10. Alexander Woollcott to TNW, December 29, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
11. TNW, “Five Thousand Letters to Alexander Woollcott,” 1951, edited by Donald Gallup and first printed in the Harvard Library Bulletin 32, no. 4 (Fall 1984): 401–7.
12. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [1933?], SL, 268–71.
13. TNW to ANW, April [no day], 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.
14. TNW to Dwight Dana, Easter [April 25?], 1943, Private Collection.
15. TNW to ANW, April [no day], 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.
16. TNW to Michael Myerberg, May 21, 1943, SL, 416–18.
17. TNW, “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth,” May 13, 1942, Private Collection.
18. For a detailed discussion of TNW’s letter and legal memorandum, as well as publication of the complete texts of these documents, see Tappan Wilder, “A Footnote to The Skin of Our Teeth,” Yale Review, no. 4 (October 1999): 66–76.
19. TNW, “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth,” May 13, 1942, Private Collection.
20. Ibid.
21. Dwight Dana to TNW, telegram, December 18, 1942, Private Collection.
22. TNW, “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth,” May 13, 1942, Private Collection.
23. TNW to Dwight Dana, April 6, 1944, Private Collection.
24. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 15, 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.
25. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 15, 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL; TNW to Family, December 20, [1943?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
26. TNW to Family, June 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.
27. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 26, 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.
28. TNW to ANW, September 1, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
29. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 24, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781J), HLH.
30. Isabel Wilder, “About Charlotte Wilder,” October 15, 1961, Private Collection.
31. TNW to Evelyn Scott Metcalfe, July 28, 1944, SL, 422–23.
32. TNW to William Layton, April 9, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
33. TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 25, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
34. TNW to William Layton, April 9, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
35. TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 25, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
36. TNW to William Layton, April 9, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL. This three-week run at New York’s City Center began on January 19, 1944, also starring Martha Scott. Montgomery Clift played George Gibbs. After the war, in May 1946, Harris took the revival production to London, with Marc Connelly as the Stage Manager. According to TNW, all those in the New York production donated their services except Frank Craven, who “asked 1200 a week and 10% of the gross”; that was why Connelly was asked to step in.
37. TNW to Dwight Dana, April 6, 1944, Private Collection. TNW intentionally differentiated between the terms “WAAC [Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps]” and “WAC [Women’s Army Corps].” The WAACs dated from World War I when women could work with the army but not as personnel in the army. In 1943 the Women’s Army Corps was established by an act of Congress so that women could serve as members of the armed forces, with equitable pay and benefits, including disability benefits.
38. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, June 7, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
39. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, October 17, 1944, SL, 423–25.
40. TNW to Family, October 29, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
41. John Hobart, “Grover’s Corners, Italy,” Theatre Arts 29 (April 1945): 234–39.
42. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, November 19, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
43. TNW to Joseph Still, November 13, [1944?], YCAL.
44. TNW to Family, October 29, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW noted in this letter that he was free, a year and a half after the fact, to give details of his movements in North Africa.
45. TNW to Family, December 15, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.
46. TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
47. Ibid.
48. TNW to Family, December 15, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL. Isabella Niven Wilder translated Carducci’s poems, including, we can speculate, his sonnet beginning “T’amo Pio Bove,” his ode to an ox grazing in a field in Italy.
49. TNW to Laurence Olivier, February 18, 1945, TS carbon copy, SL, 429–31.
50. Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont to Harold Freedman, March 22, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
51. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, February 19, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL, regarding this donation in Italy. See also TNW to Philip G. Hodge, December 10, 1945, TS carbon copy, TNW Collection, regarding this donation in Yugoslavia.
52. TNW to Amos and Catharine Wilder, February 1, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
54. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, March 29, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. Ibid.
56. TNW to Family, April 14, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
57. TNW to Harry J. Traugott, May 20, 1945, Private Collection.
58. “Citation: Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton H. [sic] Wilder, U.S. Army Air Forces, Honorary Member of the Military Division
of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,” n.d. [1946 written on document], TNW Collection, YCAL.
59. TNW to William Layton, August 16, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
60. Adjutant General Owen Elliot, U. S. War Department, to TNW, August 28, 1947, TNW Collection, YCAL.
61. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, August 20, 1945, SL, 433–36.
62. TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
63. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, July 20, 1945, YCAL.
64. TNW to Alice B. Toklas, October 8, 1946, SL, 446–48.
65. Isabel Wilder to Sol Lesser, October 1, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
66. Isabel Wilder to Sibyl Colefax, TS carbon, July 23, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 99–100.
70. Quoted ibid., 99.
71. Isabel Wilder to Sibyl Colefax, TS carbon, July 23, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL
72. Ibid.
73. Isabel Wilder, foreword to TNW, The Alcestiad or A Life in the Sun with a Satyr Play, The Drunken Sisters (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 10.
74. TNW, The Alcestiad, holograph manuscript, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW’s note ends after “Dec” and gives no day or year.
75. Isabel Wilder to Sibyl Colefax, TS carbon, July 23, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
76. Ibid.
77. TNW to Eliza [Elizabeth (Mrs. Boris) Artzybasheff], June 26, [1945?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
78. TNW to Eliza [Elizabeth (Mrs. Boris) Artzybasheff], August 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
79. TNW to William Layton, August 16, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW wrote: “Night before last was having dinner here with my married sister and the news broke.”
80. Ibid.
81. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, August 20, 1945, SL, 433–36. “Numinous”: Sprititual belief based on ancient Roman animism.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid.
85. Isabella Niven Wilder to TNW, May 15, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.
86. Army of the United States Certificate of Service for Lt. Col. Thornton N. Wilder, issued at the Separation Center, Fort Devens, Massachusetts, September 19, 1945, Private Collection.
32: “POST-WAR ADJUSTMENT EXERCISE” (1940S)
Penelope Niven Page 92