The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

by Thornton Wilder

  60 During the first few months of 1942, TNW wrote the scripts for two army training films, Manuelito Becomes an Air Cadet and Your Community and the War Effort, an assignment arranged by Archibald MacLeish, who was assistant director of the Office of War Information.

  61 French: fundamentally.

  62 TNW is probably referring to Tallulah Bankhead, who did play Sabina in the original production.

  63 At this time, TNW was working with Hitchcock on the screenplay for Shadow of a Doubt.

  64 American dramatist and screenwriter Robert Ardrey had been TNW’Sm student at the University of Chicago, and TNW was his mentor thereafter. Ardrey’s wife was Helen. The play mentioned may be Jeb (1946).

  65 Rosalie Stewart.

  66 Herman Weissman was one of two people credited with the adaptation for the 1944 film of The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

  67 Jack H. Skirball was the producer of Shadow of a Doubt.

  68 Italian: Let’s hope.

  69 Elia Kazan’s nickname was “Gadge.”

  70 There was some discussion of Gordon playing Sabina, and she may well have been the actress TNW had in mind for the part when he wrote the play; but she was not offered the role. In December 1942, she opened in New York in a production of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, playing Natalya Ivanovna.

  71 Patricia Collinge played Birdie Hubbard in the film The Little Foxes (1941), as well as the role of Emma Newton in Shadow of a Doubt. Ruth Gordon played Hedwig Ehrlich in the 1940 film Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet.

  72 From September 10 to 13, 1941, TNW and John Dos Passos attended a conference in London of the International Committee of PEN, the writers’ organization. TNW stayed past the end of the conference and was able to witness the war firsthand, not only in London but also as he traveled around the country visiting friends, military bases, bombed cities, and addressing meetings as far north as Glasgow. He returned to the United States on October 18.

  73 German: world history (German is Welgeschichtliche).

  74 German: In the beginning was the deed. (TNW misquotes Goethe’s line from Faust:: (“Im Anfang war die Tat!”)

  75 German: Beginning and end, old and new.

  76 The postcard was postmarked June 30, 1942, which was a Tuesday.

  77 Winthrop Saltonstall Dakin (1906-1982), who had married TNW’s sister Janet on March 22, 1941, before entering the U.S. Army Air Force.

  78 French: drudgeries.

  79 Novel (1926).

  80 Maude Hutchins published four poems—“I Asked Her,” “Absent-Minded Poet in Washington,” “Suitor,” and “Gold”—in the September 1942 issue of Poetry.

  81 Latin: God is concealed.

  82 TNW is probably referring to “The Hell of the Vizier Kabäar” (see letter number 156).

  83 When The Skin of Our Teeth was published in 1943, it appeared with no dedication.

  84 Ruth Gordon appeared in two movies that were released in 1943, Edge of Darkness and Action in the North Atlantic.

  85Shortly after The Skin of Our Teeth began its pre-Broadway run in New Haven on September 15, TNW received telegrams from both Reed and Bankhead telling him that Myerberg had fired three actors and was sabotaging the play.

  86Frohman was a well-known Broadway producer.

  87The Skin of Our Teeth had one-week runs in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., after New Haven and before its New York opening.

  88Apparently, Frost had wanted to attend the New York opening of The Skin of Our Teeth on November 18.

  89A 1928 poem by Frost.

  90The date and the place of origin appear at the end of the original letter.

  91In its issues dated December 19 and February 13, 1943, The Saturday Review of Literature published a two-part article by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, “The Skin of Whose Teeth?” The authors called TNW’s play not an entirely original creation, but an Americanized re-creation, thinly disguised, of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake.’ Not wanting to dignify the accusations by answering them and further inflaming passions, his attorney and family advised against replying; TNW’s letter in response to the December 19 article was never mailed. Either TNW saw an advance copy of the article or the issue appeared before December 19.

  92 Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744).

  93 This is a transcription of TNW’s letter; the original has not been located.

  94 Clift played the role of Henry Antrobus in the premiere production of The Skin of Our Teeth.

  95 This is a transcription of TNW’S letter; the letter has not been located.

  96 In June 1943, Tallulah Bankhead, Fredric March, and Florence Eldridge took advantage of clauses in their contracts and left the play. They were replaced by, respectively, Miriam Hopkins, Conrad Nagel, and Margalo Gillmore. The play ran through the summer, to decreasing audiences, and closed on September 25. The next week, it opened in Boston, prior to a planned national tour; but after one week of a two-week run, now with Lizabeth Scott as Sabina, it closed and there was no tour.

  97 Gordon was a theatrical producer.

  98 Tallulah Bankhead starred in the premiere production of Lillian Hellman’s play The Little Foxes (1939).

  99 Harold Freedman.

  100 TNW means hegira.

  101 French: a housekeeper.

  102 French: a pearl.

  103 Delia Lyman Porter’s inspirational gift books, published in the early 1900s, offered quotations for every week of the year.

  104 Evelyn Scott (1893-1963), a Southern novelist, poet, and essayist, met Charlotte Wilder at Yaddo in 1933, corresponded with her thereafter, and was one of the two women to whom Charlotte dedicated her first book of poetry, Phases of the Moon.

  105 In late February 1941, Charlotte Wilder had had a mental breakdown in New York City. She was hospitalized in private hospitals in New York City and White Plains, New York, for several months, where she received the accepted treatment of the day—electric-shock and insulin-shock therapy. When she did not show any improvement, it was decided that she had a deep-seated condition that would require continued hospitalization. She was transferred to the Harlem Valley State Hospital in Wingdale, New York, where she received drug therapy. After an initial positive response to the drug she was being given, Charlotte became depressed and distant. In January 1945, the family would move her to a smaller, private facility in Amityville, New York.

  106 TNW’S British intelligence counterpart, Roland Le Grand, was married in Rome in October 1944; TNW served as the best man.

  107 Douglas Southall Freeman’s Lee’s Lieutenants, a three-volume work, was published in the 1940s. Italian historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) was born in Naples and lived there for most of his life.

  108 Rebekah Higginson met TNW when he was in Arizona in 1936-1937. She had three children, none of whom was named Eliza. TNW may have meant her daughter Sally, with whom he became a close friend and correspondent.

  109 TNW may be referring to film actress Helen Hawley.

  110 TNW is probably referring to Little Coquette: The Story of a French Girlhood (1944), by Renée de Fontarce McCormick. In referring to tepid linden tea (tilleul), TNW means uninspiring reading material.

  111 Probably Margaret MacDonald, a friend of the Le Grands.

  112 Julian Le Grand was born on May 29, 1945; TNW was his godfather.

  113 This is a transcription of TNW’s letter; the original has not been located.

  114 In 1943, Michael Myerberg made a secret deal for the British stage rights to The Skin of Our Teeth with a little-known English actress and producer without informing TNW’S agent. This option expired in July 1944, and Myerberg resold the British rights, this time with TNW’S knowledge and enthusiastic approval, to Vivien Leigh, Olivier’s wife.

  115 For various contractual reasons and because rehearsals were too far advanced, this arrangement did not take place.

  116 The English production of The Skin of Our Teeth, directed by Olivier and starring Leigh as
Sabina, ran at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh in March 1945 and opened in London at the Phoenix Theatre in May 1945, receiving favorable reviews.

  117 Traugott had met TNW in North Africa in 1943, when he, as an enlisted man in the air force, was assigned to be TNW’s clerk. He went to Italy with TNW in 1944 as his chief clerk. At the time of this letter, Traugott was in Italy, awaiting reassignment and hoping to be promoted to the rank of staff sergeant.

  118 Other clerks with whom TNW and Traugott worked in Italy.

  119 French: obligatory scenes.

  120 For earlier references to this unfinished play, see letters numbers 156 and 194.

  121 Wartime prime minister Winston Churchill and his Conservative party had been defeated in the national election in July 1945 by the Labour party and its leader, Clement Attlee.

  122 The title was Philosophical Fragments.

  123 Farwell met TNW in Capri during the war. In 1946, he was beginning his studies for an M.A. in English at the University of Chicago.

  124 Robert Maynard Hutchins.

  125 TNW is probably referring to American stage actor Emmett Rogers.

  126 Byron Farwell’s wife was Ruth Saxby Farwell.

  127 TNW is referring to what became his novel The Ides of March, published in 1948.

  128 Latin: ennui.

  129 Pank refers to Leonard Thomas Pankhurst, TNW’S commanding officer at the MAAF headquarters. Mike Morgan and Leonard Trolley were RAF servicemen with whom TNW had worked in Italy. Isabel Wilder went to England as her brother’s representative when Our Town opened at London’s New Theatre on April 30, 1946, with Marc Connelly as the Stage Manager. The London production received mixed reviews.

  130 Gordon had married Kanin in 1942.

  131 Sartre asked TNW to translate his play Morts sans sépulture (1946), which opened in Paris in November 1946, to great controversy. After meeting with Sartre in February 1948, TNW did the translation. The play, now titled The Victors, opened in New York on December 26, 1948, and ran until January 22, 1949, Off Broadway at the New Stages Theatre.

  132 United Nations Organization.

  133 Jones Kelly Harris, who was born in 1929, was Ruth Gordon’s son by Jed Harris.

  134 TNW may be referring to a discounted travel ticket for his brother, who was an ordained minister.

  135 German philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973) emigrated to the United States in 1933 and taught at Harvard and then Dartmouth. Amos Wilder may have recommended Rosen-stock-Huessy’s The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun (1946).

  136 Italian: the most serene.

  137 Latin: lust.

  138 TNW is referring to the passage in Matthew 5:22, thereby meaning contempt of others.

  139 Although only thirty-nine, Olivier played Lear in a production he directed. King Lear opened at London’s New Theatre on September 24, 1946.

  140 Isabella Niven Wilder died on June 29, 1946, on Nantucket.

  141 British theater manager Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont.

  142 TNW played the Stage Manager in Our Town at Westport, Connecticut, August 5-10; he played Mr. Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth in Cohasset, Massachusetts, August 19-24; and he played the Stage Manager in East Hampton, New York, August 26-31. Among those with whom he performed, several had been involved in the original stage production of Our Town. Doro Merande had played Mrs. Soames, a role she also played in the film version. Philip Coolidge had played Simon Stimson. Thomas Coley had played a baseball player and had also served as one of the assistant stage managers of the original production.

  143 TNW is referring to Gordon’s autobiographical play, Years Ago, in which Fredric March and Florence Eldridge played Gordon’s parents, Clifton and Annie Jones. The play, directed by Kanin, ran in New York from December 1946 to May 1947.

  144 Several companies performing Kanin’s highly successful stage comedy Born Yesterday (1946) were going to tour the country. Alexander Woollcott had died in 1943. Layton went on to have a successful career as an actor, a director, a teacher, and a writer. He moved to Spain in the 1960s and became important in the theater world there.

  145 During an operation for cancer, Gertrude Stein lapsed into a coma and died on July 27, 1946.

  146 In some of his correspondence from early March through early June 1945, TNW had indicated that he looked forward to an expected assignment as cultural attaché at the U.S. embassy in Paris; however, upon his return from Europe, he was advised by the Wilders’ family physician to rest for a period of six months to a year.

  147 Two days before she died, Stein made a will, in which she directed her executors to provide Carl Van Vechten with the funds that he deemed necessary for the publication of any of her unpublished works.

  148 Four in America was published by Yale University Press in 1947, with an introduction by TNW, which was a contractual precondition to its publication.

  149 TNW wrote the salutation in large letters.

  150 French: partners.

  151 Probably Charles Henry Alexander Paget, earl of Uxbridge (1885-1947).

  152 London hostess Ava Bodley, Lady Anderson (1896-1974), wife of British politician Sir John Anderson.

  153 Leonard “Tom” Trolley served as a clerk to TNW and Roland Le Grand at the MAAF headquarters in Caserta, Italy. He met his future wife, June, while both were acting in the RAF Players group there; and his nickname was taken from the name of a character he played. Since she was an officer and he was not, there were great difficulties regarding their marriage; TNW helped them surmount military red tape, gave away the bride, and arranged the wedding reception.

  154 A production of Priestley’s play An Inspector Calls did have a New York run from October 1947 to January 1948, but it was not produced by John Golden.

  155 Arthur “Wilkie” Wilkinson, an RAF flight lieutenant who was instrumental in opening Caserta’s Royal Palace Opera House for repertory plays open to all service branches during the war. He was a professional actor in civilian life.

  156 Gish contacted TNW about doing a film version of his 1930 novel, The Woman of Andros.

  157 Cecil B. DeMille was not involved in either Quo Vadis (1924) or Ben-Hur (1926), but he did direct The Sign of the Cross (1932), in which Laughton portrayed Nero. Claude Rains played Julius Caesar in the film Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).

  158 Traubel was an American opera singer.

  159 American writer and sometime actress; there is no record that Macht’s work was ever published.

  160 Barrault and his wife founded their own acting company in 1946 at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris.

  161 Bérard was a well-known costume and set designer, as well as a painter.

  162 French: make-up.

  163 TNW is responding to Wescott’s praise of The Ides of March, published on January 16, 1948.

  164 TNW misuses the French term exquise esquisse, or exquisite sketch.

  165 French: preconception (French is parti pris).

  166 TNW never published a book about Lope de Vega but he did publish two essays based on his research: “New Aids Toward Dating the Early Plays of Lope de Vega,” which appeared in the book Varia Variorum: Festgabe für Karl Reinhardt (1952), and “Lope, Pinedo, Some Child Actors, and a Lion,” which was published in the journal Romance Philology (1953). Both essays were reprinted in TNW’s American Characteristics and Other Essays, ed. Donald Gallup (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).

  167 Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (ca. 1581-1639) and Tirso de Molina (1584-1648) were Spanish dramatists.

  168 Pound was confined from 1946 to 1958 in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., after having been found psychologically unfit to stand trial for treason.

  169 See letter number 67, which describes this time in 1921, although Pound is not mentioned in that letter.

  170 Professor Courtney Bruerton.

  171 De Sica had expressed interest in collaborating with TNW. In 1952, TNW prepared for him a treatment of a film about Chicago, based on a Ben Hecht story, but th
e project was abandoned. TNW later salvaged some of the script for his one-act play Bernice (1957).

  172 French poet and diplomat Alexis Léger used the pen name Saint-John Perse.

  173 Robert M. Hutchins, who was now chancellor of the University of Chicago, was the chairman of the 1949 Goethe Bicentennial Festival in Aspen, Colorado, one of several worldwide commemorations of the writer’s birth. TNW who was a member of the Goethe Bicentennial Foundation, gave the brief opening address and delivered a formal lecture, “World Literature and the Modern Mind” (reprinted in American Characteristics and Other Essays [1979] as “Goethe and World Literature”). Ernest R. Curtius was a German literary scholar and critic; Werner Jaeger was a German philologist and classicist.

  174 Hutchins, who was now divorced from Maude, married Vesta Sutton and adopted her daughter, Barbara.

  175 TNW attempted, with the support of Rudolf Bing, to establish such a festival in Newport, Rhode Island, but he did not succeed.

  176 Under postwar occupation currency regulations, TNW’s German money earned from royalties could only be spent there.

  177 Maynor was an African-American opera singer.

  178 TNW is referring to Albert Schweitzer. TNW’s brother was a graduate student in theology at Mansfield College, Oxford, when Schweitzer went there in February 1922 to deliver the Dale Memorial Lectures. Because Amos Wilder knew French and Schweitzer’s English was not strong, Amos helped him with his correspondence.

  179 Scholar, critic, and painter Barker Fairley and educator and philosopher Ernst Simon.

  180 TNW’s translation of this passage appears in “Goethe and World Literature” in American Characteristics (1979).

  181 Chicago businessman and philanthropist Walter Paepcke (1896-1960), chairman of the Container Corporation of America, made Aspen, Colorado, the site of the Goethe Festival. In 1950, Paepcke and his wife, Elizabeth “Pussy” Paepcke, created the Aspen Institute; Elizabeth was the sister of Paul Nitze, who held major positions in several presidential administrations and was instrumental in establishing Cold War policy. His wife was Phyllis Pratt Nitze.

  182 TNW is referring to the poem “Abou Ben Adhem” (1838) by James Leigh Hunt. TNW obviously means his brother and the latter’s family in this regard.