An American Playwright

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31119, 23 July 1966, Page 4

An American Playwright

The Worlds of Robert E. Sherwood. By John Mason Brown. Hamish Hamilton. 386 pp. Bibliography and Index.

It was a perpetual complaint by the playwright Robert E. Sherwood, when his earlier plays were produced, that the critics and audience only noticed the comedy and ignored the serious ideas he was trying to express. Mr Mason Brown has the same trouble with this book. For the greater part his serious subject, the character of Robert Sherwood, is overwhelmed by the glittering setting and it begins to stand out at the period when Sherwood achieved recognition as a significant writer. The first half, at least, could, with little alteration stand apart as a witty, lively account of some aspects of American society between 1900 and the later 19205. Towards the end Sherwood becomes more interesting and by the close, one is eager to know „hat happened to him next. This is a good augury for the second volume which is to follow, but the imbalance of the book in hand is mildly exasperating.

Robert Emmett Sherwood was born in 1896, in New York. His father’s family had had a distinguished history since the early days of the Republic, and through his mother he was descended from the ebullient, artistic Emmetts from Ireland. From early childhood he was interested in play-writing, and at school and later Harvard it was debating, drama and writing that wholly claimed him. In fact his school could not award him a diploma on leaving, only a certificate of attendance, and at Harvard he was perpetually under a threat of expulsion. Precisely, he resigned in 1917 to join the Canadian Black Watch, but he would not have been allowed to return in any case. It was the ensuing period of service in France, and six months in hospital after gassing and shrapnel wounds, that gave him the disgust of war that was to permeate his later writing. Although Sherwood emerges fairly clearly as a child, and again in the period covered by the end of this book, from about 1934 to 1938, the picture of him during the 1920 s when he was working mainly on film reviews and scripts remains oddly insubstantial. There is such a galaxy of other characters, detailed with care and admiration, from Dorothy Parker to Will Rogers and Mary Pickford, that Sherwood can only be seen looming in the back row. (He was six feet seven inches tall.) The only person whom Mr Mason obviously disliked was Sherwood’s first wife, Mary Brandon and this dislike evidently stems from his deep conviction that Sherwood could do no wrong. Certainly she appears to have been an unsatisfactory mother to their daughter and an embarrassment to her husband with her tantrums, but it is clear that Sherwood and she were hopelessly mismatched in temperament. She was an extrovert, fond of playing up to an audience with emotional storms, and Sherwood reacted by passively ignoring her scenes. Doubtless she found such behaviour infuriating. The narrative of Sherwood’s first enchantment by Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a certain interest Apparently Sherwood was sceptical about Roosevelt though he voted Democrat in the election of 1932, until he heard Roosevelt’s broadcast speech after inauguration and was immediately captured by the magnetic quality of the resonant voice. It is clear that Mr Mason Brown was equally

devoted to the “handsome patrician . . . resolute in dedication.” The feeling and the expression of it are remarkably similar to those shown by Upton Sinclair in his novel series “World’s End.” Roosevelt, like Churchill some years later, won much popular goodwill as dis-

tinct from support within the party and government by the quality of his public speaking. Whether a comparison may be drawn with that other dominant figure Adolf Hitler this reviewer will not venture to judge, but the subject provokes reflection. It was not till 1938, when Roosevelt was in his second

term, that Sherwood came in contact with the White House circle, through Harry Hopkins. By then Sherwood was an established playwright with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit The first was for “Idiot’s Delight” a highly topical condemnation of war which was first produced in 1936, and by 1939 had been made into a film which the “New York Times" called “as timely as tomorrow’s front page.” The second prize was for “Abe Lincoln in Illinois." which won great enthusiasm from the critics, with the notable exception of Mr Mason Brown himself, who was reviewing for the “New York Post” It hardly seems necessary at this distance in time to apologise for having disliked a popular play, but Mr Brown does apologise at length, with much breastbeating. The one significant point he does make is that this play marked a great development in Sherwood's character as he brought himself, like Lincoln, to admit that though war was detestable it might nevertheless be the only way to defend the freedom he believed in. Because he had made himself the mouthpiece of Lincoln’s democratic values, Sherwood found himself drawn into’ the circle of Roosevelt’s helpers to restate those values in a new crisis. But that story will doubtless be told in the next volume.