The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

by Thornton Wilder

  Never mentioned it, however, as such to her or Jed.

  Never mentioned money.

  Similarly Ned Sheldon gave his translations of The Jest and Tolstoi’s Redemption to John Barrymore; his adaptation of Camille to Ethel Barrymore.

  If Doll’s House really turns into a big hit now, maybe I’ll be able to move toward some payments.

  At present it’s turn for the better has enabled Jed to make some daring expenditures on my play. Our Town looks cheap but is very expensive. 45 actors; and not two but five electric switchboards.

  T

  161. TO J. DWIGHT DANA. ALS 3 pp. (Stationery embossed The Graduates Club / New Haven, Connecticut) Private

  Sunday night.

 

  Dear Dwight:

  Funny thing’s happened.

  Ruth phoned down it’s already broken a house record.

  In spite of the mixed reviews when the box office opened Saturday morning there were 26 people in line; the line continued all day, and the police had to close it for ten minutes so that the audience could get into the matinee; and that $6,500 was taken in on that day—the two performances and the advance sale.

  Imagine that!

  Friday night both Sam Goldwyn and Bea Lillie were seen to be weeping. Honest!

  It was very expensive being a dramatist.

  Three opening-nights—telegrams to some of the actors, bouquets to leading ladies; a humidor to Frank Craven; gift of seats to a few friends; hotel expenses at Princeton & Boston (the contract says Jed should have paid.)

  Now I’m going to be momentarily expensive—leaving for Arizona about the 17th, with a week in Chicago—and after that, very economical.

  Isn’t it astonishing, and fun, and exhausting?

  Ever

  Thornton

  162. TO ERNEST HEMINGWAY. ALS 8 pp. (Stationery embossed Century Club / 7 West Forty-Third Street / New York) JFK

  March 1 1938

  Dear Earnest:

  Should’ve written you long ago; but it would only have been repeating what I said over the phone.

  However something new has come up.

  Jed told me he was stipulating that if he does this play, he must ask you to accord him first option on your next three.217

  Don’t do that.

  You’ve seen him now, and know that extraordinary bundle of lightning flash intuitions into the organization of a play; vivid psychological realism; and intelligence, devious intelligence.

  But maybe you don’t know the rest: tormented, jealous egotism; latent hatred of all engaged in creative work; and so on.

  Use him for his great gifts—one play at a time only. But don’t presuppose a long happy collaboration.

  My distrust of him is bad enough, but others go far farther than I do and insist on a malignant daemonic force to destruction in him. Anyway, his professional career is one long series of repeated patterns: trampling on the friendship, gifts and love of anybody who’s been associated with him.

  I feel something like a piker to write such a letter as this. Because he has done, in many places, a fine job on my work. But the friendship’s over all right. He’s the best in NY, Ernest, but after this I’m ready to work with duller managers, if only I can get reliability, truthfulness, old-fashioned character, and coöperation at the same time.

  So … one play at a time.

  This afternoon I’m leaving for 2 ½ months in Tucson. Long walks, solitude and work. Perhaps some amateur Indian-remains archaeology on the side.

  All my best to you. The play is stunning. Jed’s suggestions sounded good—only arrive at the moment when you think the text is set and then stick to it. Be sure you get a Dramatist Guild contract; that gives you full power over the “words”.

  The best agent—and with Jed you must have an agent (I haven’t rec’d a red cent yet! I will—its not dishonesty on his part; its just bad mental habits of deviousness) is Harold Freedman<,> Brandt & Brandt, 101. Park Ave.—agent for Sidney Howard, Phil Barry<,> Sam Behrman etc.

  All my best to Mrs Hemingway; salute Capt. Dart218 for me.

  Regard & admiration

  Thornton

  163. TO CHRISTINA HOPKINSON BAKER.219 ALS 7 pp. Yale

  General Delivery.

  Tucson Arizona

  March 27 1938

  Dear Mrs. Baker:

  Many thanks for your kind and helpful letter.

  I never foresaw for a minute that the Last Act would, for some people, approach the harrowing, nor that it would even seem to so many to be a fairly “new” point of view.

  Lordy. I’d built my house with those ideas so long that they seemed to have the character of simple self evidence.

  I suppose that I got it from Dante. I had to teach the Inferno and the first half of the Purgatorio at Chicago. I had in mind especially the Valley of the repentent Kings in about the 8th Canto of the Purgatorio. Same patience, waiting; same muted pain; same oblique side-glances back to earth. Dante has an angel descend nightly and after slaying a serpent who tries to enter the Valley every evening, stands guard the rest of the night. Most commentators agree that the allegory means: from now on the Dead must be guarded from memories of their earthly existence and from irruptions of the old human nature associations.

  Catholic doctrine holds that, I think, though the custom of prayers for the dead has been built up to a shade of If-we-think-urgently-of them, they-will-think-gratefully-of-us.

  At all events I do not mind from critics the charge of immaturity, confusion, and even pretentiousness. It’s a first play; it’s a first sally into deep waters. I hope to do many more—and better—and even more pretentious. I write as I choose; and I learn as I go; and I’m very happy when the public pays the bills.

  At present in this wonderful desert air and penetrating sun light I am finishing a big long four-act low comedy. To me it seems just as hard to do and just as exciting. Max Reinhardt is very pleased with the first two acts I sent him and says that he wants to put it on.

  I hope to be back in New Haven in the early weeks of May. There’s another aspect of Our Town I’d like to ask you about,—some people find in it an embittered pessimism about human nature and its “being in the dark.” Maybe that did slip into it without my noticing it; and then Jed Harris heightened it by certain cuts he made in the text.

  I wish the great and good Professor were still alive—there are so many things I’d like to ask him, too.

  In the meantime, my thanks again for your word.

  Sincerely yours

  Thornton Wilder

  164. TO J. DWIGHT DANA. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed Santa Rita Hotel / Tucson, Arizona) Private

  General Delivery. Tucson, Arizona, April 4 1938

  Dear Dwight:

  I was about to mail you the enclosed card, when your second letter arrived with the contract.

  Item (I) in my letter is now taken care of.

  I think the contract is fine, an exemplary contract. I shall return it as soon as I can find someone to witness my signature.

  Now I have a very interesting thing to lay before you:

  A letter from Richard Aldrich, last Summer’s director of the festival at Central City, Colorado, that presented “A Doll’s House.”

  “Dear Thornton,

  I’ve just heard from Denver that a check for $450 made out to you personally on July 25th was endorsed “Thornton Wilder, for deposit, Jed Harris,” and deposited in the Irving Trust Company, New York. In other words, Harris or his manager must have forged your name and stolen this money which was due you for three weeks royalties on “A Doll’s House” at Central City.

  This is, of course, a prison offense and I suggest that you turn the matter over to your lawyer here in New York provided Harris does not pay you $450 immediately.

  We have all stood a great deal from Jed Harris but I don’t feel that any of us need stand for outright thievery as this appears to be.

  If I can help in any way please feel free to call on
me.

  As yet I have not heard from Harold Freedman so I think I shall telephone him today. All good wishes.

  Sincerely yours

  Dick Aldrich

  (The Cape Playhouse, Inc. 67 West 44th St. NYC)

  I telegraphed at once:

  Dear Dick, for former friendship’s sake I don’t want to challenge Jed on this yet & will approach indirectly through Sidney Hirsch.220 Thanks and Regards.

  And I have just written Sidney Hirsch:

  “Dear Sidney, An unpleasant thing has come up which we can smooth over by acting as quickly and quietly as possible. ¶ For the sake of my long friendship with Jed, I want it to be cleared up as soon as it’s possible and before the other people start to make any noise about it. ¶ The people in charge of a Doll’s House Festival at Central City last Summer have found out that I never rec’d any royalties. ¶ They say that a cheque ….. for $450 was made out in my name and that it was endorsed and deposited in the Irving Trust Co, N.Y. ¶ God knows I never endorsed it. ¶ They are very angry and might raise a serious charge. ¶ I just telegraphed them asking them not to do anything about it and saying that I would approach you on the matter. ¶ If it were merely a matter of my money I’d let the matter run until you and the office felt it was convenient, but now the only way to quiet it down would be to pay it to Dwight Dana of New Haven. Sorry, Sid, to have to write you a letter that sounds so ill-natured, but you can see how much worse things are at stake. ¶ Cordially ever, Thornton.”

  That’s all pretty sweet and diplomatic, but I can imagine that Jed caught in the Lie Direct might be a very violent fellow, and the other uncontracted royalties of Doll’s House may still be saved from the fire.

  Now, I’ve got to apologize to you for writing long letters, but damme I wager this one isn’t boring.

  Ever

  Thornton

  165. TO RUTH GORDON. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed The Beverly-Wilshire / Beverly Hills, California) Private

  June 21 1938

  Tues. at 5:15 p.m.

  sitting upstairs waiting for the telephone call to say that Rosalie Stewart221 has come to tea with me.

  Dear Ruth:

  I keep wondering how are you, whether you’re enjoying yourself. I see you at Wilton, at Qualigno’s, at the Moat House in Kent, at St. Tropez with the René Clair’s, at “Le Corsaire”. Here’s hoping that you’ve blown all the layers of fatigue from Doll’s House.

  I got here Sunday afternoon and saw that Helen Hayes was giving her only performance of The Merchant of Venice that night,—so I went.

  Well, Ruthie, to begin with: the production and picture in it was that of a fatigued 1899 Baltimore stock company. Tasteless, empty-conventional. Doublets and hose picked out of the costumers just after they’d been returned from serving at a Masquerade at the Masonic Temple. Tasteless, tasteless. The moonlight slept upon the bank in the shape of a disk of green light down Stage Right. The supporting company—the Salanios, Gratianos<,> Jessicas and Nerissas were bad beyond belief.

  Helen spoke distinctly, a fact which stood out so conspicuously that you knew at once that she had been on the stage before. But her charm, and her six graceful comedy gestures were so thin, so little-girl, and so far from breadth and womanliness and deep inner spontaneity, her love for Bassanio was so smiling-matter-of-course, her assumption of bossy authority in the Court room was so snippety, that all you could say was: she has no imagination, she has no music, she has no mature woman-nature.

  Forgive me, Ruth, I just tell you what I think. Destroy this letter.

  And Shylock.

  He looked well, and spoke clearly.

  But imagine a Shylock without hysteria, without understandable forgivable fury. A Shylock in his senses.

  The pound of flesh exaction becomes a hateful ugly cold calculating bitchiness. And an audience 70% Jewish, with the headlines from Europe burned into their minds could only sit in horrified grief. A Shylock who is not frantic with his wrongs and eloquent, is an insult to a 1938 audience. Sofaer222 was so afraid of ranting that he sold his race down the river.

  And yet, Ruth, I was glad I went. Shakespeare is wonderful, wonderful. Next to Homer the greatest natural storyteller that ever lived. Under all those obstacles the scenes would each begin to collect its eternal vitality. Even there as each scene came to a close I’d sigh with intellectual pleasure.

  You’ll be surprised to hear that the best acting of the evening came from Pedro de Cordoba223 who as the Prince of Morroco deliberated over the caskets, you could see him thinking, spoke richly, paused significantly, and took his departure with manly regret and Renaissance breadth and the audience burst into grateful applause.

  Had dinner at the Reinhardts last night and read them the play.

  Helene Thimig called for me here, driving her car. That dear wonderful face and exquisite voice.

  They’ve lost everything, live frugally. Obstacles arrive every day. The Chamber of Commerce has just vetoed the Blue Bird224 in Hollywood Bowl and may cancel the Faust. Only my play will be left. The Max Reinhard Workshop opens next Monday (Faculty includes Paul Muni, Walter Huston, etc). Difficulties there every moment. Think of what their daily mail must bring them as news of Vienna every day. Think of what they once knew, the palace on the Tiergarten in Berlin. But they never wince or sigh or allude to all that. I simply love them. He made a few suggestions: the stolen supper party in Act III should come to a moment of hilarity and abandon; when the stage is divided by the screen with two plots going on simultaneously there should be one more moment at which both halves are related. In some trembling I read him the (new) monologue that Mrs Levi has in Act IV and asked him whether it was not too earnest for the play. When I was finished he looked at his wife and said in German: You see, he is a poet and turned to me and said: No, I have always said that in a comedy—and near the end—there should always be one moment of complete seriousness and by that the audience can see that also the comedy parts are not just pastime.

  Well, I’ll report to you, best of soldiers, from time to time. Don’t trouble to answer; enjoy yourself.

  Ever your old

  Thornton

  166. TO ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed The Chief / Santa Fe) Harvard

  Texas in a small way

 

  Dear Aleck:

  You shall be the first to know.

  I’m entering into a very tender union and both of us think that you should be the first to know.

  I’m going on the stage.

  I’m replacing Frank Craven for 2 weeks.225

  That is to say: I’m memorizing the lines. I’m insisting on two days’ rehearsal with the stage-manager before Jed sees me. (You can imagine how even the most shy and considerate suggestion from Jed would dry up my hypothetical art).

  [Besides I have a far better and more experienced and congenial coach in Dr. Otto Ludwig Preminger of Vienna’s Josefstadt226 who is waiting at the Ambassador Hotel to encourage & guide me.—Confidential]

  I’m going to make Jed pay me 300 a week which I shall give to the Actors Fund.

  Of course, maybe I can’t and won’t do it. But there’s a chance that I can transfer the best of the lecturing experience and the result might be a pleasure to me and to them.

  The memory hazards are immense.

  Anyway: what’s life if it isn’t risk, venture, taxes on the will-power, diversity, and fun?

  My only real fear is that I may make the play spineless and boring and Dr. Preminger—honest as the day—will tell me, if I do.

  = I leave The Merchant of Yonkers during its casting week. And I dote on you

  Thornton

  TNW as the Stage Manager in Our Town.

  TNW as the Stage Manager in Our Town. Courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

  167. TO J. DWIGHT DANA. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / New Haven, Connecticut) Private

  5959 Frank
lin Ave

  Hollywood, Calif.

  Aug. 18 1938

  Dear Dwight:

  Many thanks for the good long letter and the enheartening statistics.

  Yes, here I am still sitting around.

  However the Faust opens on Tuesday, and then the Professor can give his attention to my play.

  Delos Chappell (of Denver; Yale, about <’>17; producer of Father Malachy’s Miracle) is flying to town to see me and Reinhardt; perhaps he will be the Manager of Reinhardt’s production of the play. It will be a great help,—financially, and personally.

  You will be interested to know that I have been turning down many offers to write for the movies. Harry Cohn of Columbia offered me $5000 a week (sic) to finish off the script of “Golden Boy” and De Mille today wanted me to do some work on “Union Pacific.”227

  It’s good to know that those monies are still a possibility, but it’s better to know that one doesn’t have to call on them yet.

  For I certainly have been spending,—life here, the summoning of Isabel, the trip to New Mexico, and just now (to Mother’s violent protests) I sent Mother $500 for her trip to Scotland with Janet. I am especially glad to do that, because Mother has not budged from Deepwood Drive for many years and Janet, winter and summer, has leaned over microscopes in the fumes of a laboratory.

  And now my clothes are falling to pieces and next week I am going to get a suit of clothes.

  However I have faith that there will be considerable income next year and nothing I do (except an occasional dinner at these dazzling restaurants) is really wasteful.

  My friends tell me that all the expenses of this trip can be deducted from income-tax as necessary concomittents of a professional course. The other day a typist made six copies of my play and when I paid the bill ($25) he automatically leaned over, receipted it, and said: “For your income-tax report.” And now others tell me that I should do the same for the apartment rental. As well as the $25 a week I paid Isabel as my secretary; and all our combined transportation.