The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
We’re all well. My niece, Amos’s little Catherine, is her grandmother’s joy as well as everybody’s.196 Charlotte stays in NY. working on some vast novel we’re not allowed to see. Isabel’ found a good reception for her 3rd.197 Janet is at the University of Chicago, all absorbed in Biology and moving on to a PhD. Mama doesn’t look a day older to me; but she claims she’s an old lady. She’s active and diverted, and still serves as dog on whom her writing children (Charlotte excepted) try their stuff.
The summer abroad taught me regular work and solitude. I was 2 ½ months in a little hotel five Zürich.
And as soon as the present flurry is over I’m going to try and recreate the same hideaway somewhere in America: Quebec or Arizona, and write plays #3 and #4.198 (No #2 is practically finished and Max Reinhardt is very interested in it.)
I hope you’re all fine, and would love to hear from you on the details. I thought of you all with particuliar affection when I spent a day in Lawrenceville last Spring. It takes an hour or two to recover our Lawrenceville among the smart new buildings and plantings but it’s there … and especially in the Chapel.
My new play is full of the sentiment of past time and old friends—though it’s laid in a New Hampshire village—and I think you’ll like it. I’m not having it published for the general public until I’ve done a lot more; but I shall probably have a number of copies printed off for my friends, and I specially hope it will give you pleasure.199
All my best to your household; my deepest interest and affection to Emily; and I hope you’ll think of me always as
Your devoted friend
Thornton
157. TO SIBYL COLEFAX. ALS 8 pp. (Stationery embossed Century Club / 7 West Forty-third Street / New York) NYU
January 2 1938
(the first time I’ve written the date of the new year.)
Dear Sibyl:
Day after day has gone by and I’ve kept putting off my report of these new developements.
The first thing to tell is that On the Whole everything has been pleasant, exciting and friendly.
There was one night when under an angry insomnia I planned a long letter, practically withdrawing my play from the producer’s hands; but the thoughts of 3:00 a.m are very unreasonable things and in the morning I knew it had been nonsense.
Jed had made some admirable alterations in the order of the scenes, and some deletions that I would have arrived at anyway, and proposed the writing of a transitional episode that seems quite right. He has inserted a number of tasteless little jokes into the web, but they don’t do much harm and they give him that sensation of having written the play which is so so important to him. The main tendency of his treatment is to make the play “smoother” and more civilized, and the edge of boldness is being worn down, that character of a “primitive” with its disdain of lesser verisimilitude; but I guess the play remains bold enough still.
Rehearsals began last Wednesday. (today is Sunday). When the actors (sitting about a table) first read the Third Act to one another they all wept so that pauses had to be made so that they could collect themselves. Frank Craven will be superb as the Stage-manager; and he loves the part. The chief danger is that the mothers are being played by experienced and well-known “character women” who seem unable to get the dry understatement of a New Hampshire housewife. They drip sweetness, and cannot understand anything between the extremes of nagging mean old rural women and ministring angels. Jed keeps saying: “No, darling, dryer, dryer.”200
We’re having trouble putting the Second Act (“Love and Marriage”) into good shape. The difficulty doesn’t seem to be where I expected it: in the wedding ceremony and the “hallucinatory” episodes, but in the scenes that lead up to it. Undoubtedly that Act is the least solid of the three; but it has some good moments. It now opens thus:
Stage manager
Three years have gone by in Grover’s Corners.
Yes, the sun’s come up over a thousand times.
Winters and Summer have cracked the mountain a little more and the rains have brought some of the dirt down into the valley.
Some children who weren’t born before have begun to speak regular sentences; and a few people who thought they were mighty young and spry have found they can’t bound up a flight of stairs like they use-ta, without their heart flutterin’ a little.
Some older sons are settin’ at the head of the table; and some people I know are now having their meat cut up for them.
All that can happen in a thousand days.
Nature’s been pushing and contriving in other ways, too. Yes, the mountain’s been reduced a few fractions of an inch; and millions of gallons of water have gone by the mill; and some young people have fallen in love, and got married, and here and there a new home has been set up under a roof.
Almost everybody in the world gets married,—you know what I mean? In our town there aren’t hardly any exceptions. Almost everybody climbs into their grave married.201
etc. etc.
That’s setting it in the frame of “cosmic reference”, yes?
The opening night of Doll’s House was very brilliant. Attention close; applause emphatic. Jed disappeared and I went home with Ruth (ushered from the theatre by two detectives, because of an autograph-crowd at the stage-door) in a taxi loaded with boxes of flowers.
All the signs of a smash.
So everybody was surprised to find a very mixed reception in the press. Some said Ibsen’s stage technique creaked; some that Ruth had not been able to harmonize the frivolous Norah at the beginning with the raisonneuse202 Norah at the close.
But Wednesday did $1800 in two performances, very good.
However there’s some doubt. The expensive orchestra seats are sparse; and the balcony is always sold out. So the rear seats downstairs are sold out at balcony prices; but the $3:30’s won’t go. The Four-star cast doesn’t permit Jed to lower the prices through-out and make it a frankly economical intellectual’s play. We don’t know what’ll happen. The two performances yesterday—New Year’s day, were damaged by an ice-blizzard.
I love the money side of the theatre; just disinterestedly love it.
Ruth’s fine, gay and gallant and throws herself into every performance—and what an exacting part; on the stage almost every minute—only one short scene in the IIIrd Act when she isn’t there—and that Tarantella!203
Behind Jed’s back I’ve been working on the play for Reinhardt. I promised him the First Two Acts by today.
It’s going to be very good. And full of riotous acting opportunities.
And now I long to retire into some hinterland—Quebec or Arizona—and get down to Baghdad. My play opens 3 weeks from last night in Princeton, New Jersey; perhaps an advance performance in New Haven, too. Probably for New York in the Henry Miller’s. (all wrong; that’s a drawing-room theatre; my play should be in a high old-fashioned echoing barn of a place with an enormous yawning stage on which is built the diaphanous “Town”.)
I’ve scarcely seen a soul. Aleck is entering the Sam Behrman play, to play the role based on the character of Rudolph Kommer—(ungraciously described in the advance publicity as a “Long Island parasite”). He was to have played it for the first time in Philadelphia a few night’s ago, but Miriam Hopkins illness has postponed the opening. Rumors from the Chicago tryout say the play is so ill-constructed that rewriting has been very drastic; and maybe the whole venture is to be discarded.204
I’m a New Yorker now. Only three nights at Deepwood Drive since I came back. Mother’s fine; but Isabel is shaken; surprises herself by bursting into tears too often. She’s coming up to New York for a week next Sunday and maybe convalescence can be hastened with a complete change of place and tempo.
What you tell me about the repercussions of our Recession on the English retail trade makes me wince and cry out; but I’d rather be told bad news than not.
Jan 3 1938
An entire day up in my room at the Club. Polished off Act
One of the Nestroy play (still no title) for the typist. It’s just glänzend205 now. I wasn’t “needed” at rehearsal; they’re still reading around a table. As soon as they get on their feet, I’m going to be present.
Now I’m going to walk almost down to the Battery to get some air and exercize. Oh, to be a long way off, but I did have a fine day of working even here.
I’m coming over to read to you late next Summer. If the Bagdad play is good, it’s going to be dedicated to you,—so you’ll want to be hearing your own play. Stay well; and count me as your devoted friend
Thornton
158. TO JED HARRIS. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed The Copley-Plaza / Boston Massachusetts) Morgan
Dear Jed:
Now it’s time for me to retire for the play for a while and get a “fresh eye.”
My eye has become so jaundiced that I can no longer catch what’s good or bad.
I’m going to New Haven tonight and sleep for a couple of days.
I’ve got a whole set of Nature’s Warnings = twitches, and stutterings and head aches. I’ll rejoin whenever you think best and when I’m pepped up again. Did you see me trying to hold on to consciousness during Marc’s play?206 You seemed as fit as a fiddle, and fresh as a daisy.
Ever
P.S. Friday afternoon—
I shall be at the hotel from 6-8 working on some closing lines. Shall bring them to the theatre at 8.20. I hope to take the 9:00 train. If you feel seriously that I can be useful here of course I shall stay—Leave word at hotel or theatre. If I go Ed. Goodnow207 will notify me by telegram of where we are next week so I can rejoin.
T.
Jed Harris, Frank Craven (the Stage Manager in the original Our Town production), and TNW.
Jed Harris, Frank Craven (the Stage Manager in the original Our Town production), and TNW. Culver Pictures, Inc.
159. TO ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT. ALS 7 pp. Harvard
Boston, Copley-Plaza, Jan. 27 1938
Dear Aleck:
To me it’s quite simple.
Success is accorded to a work of art when the central intention is felt in every part of it, and intention and execution are good.
Jed lost courage about my central intention and moved the production over to a different set of emphases. The result is that the vestiges of my central attention that remain stick out as timid and awkward excrescences.
Our reviews say that it is a nostalgic, unpretentious play with charm.
But what I wrote was damned pretentious.
The subject of the play now is: homely, humorous, touching aspects of a village life; of a wedding there; on to which is added a sad and all but harrowing last act. At the matinee yesterday there were storms of nose-blowings and sobs. A lady who called for a friend at five o’clock saw emerging a crowd of red eyes, swollen faces and mascara stains.
That can be attended to. And one of the reasons that it is so abrupt a change of tone is that all the strength of the earlier acts has been devitalized.
The subject of the play I wrote is: the trivial details of human life in reference to a vast perspective of time, of social history and of religious ideas.
It’s too late to change it into a genre play. The succession of brief scenes can only be justified against the larger frame; if it had been written as a picture of rural manners it would have been written differently.
The First Act (“A day in our Town”) has two interruptions—columns, pillars, set there throwing lights of “cosmic reference” on to the surrounding scenes.
“We want to know more about our town. I’ve asked Prof Walton of our State University—”
And we get the Geological position—Devonian Basalt—two to three hundred million years old …. The Anthropological report: Early Amerindian stock … tenth century of this era … Migration 17th Century English brachiocephalic blue-eyed stock … Some Slav and Mediterranean. Then from Editor Webb: the Sociological “Middletown.”: 85% Republic. 10% Democratic etc. Not long, but trenchant. Then questions from the audience.
“All right now we’ll go back to the life in Grover’s Corners. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon … and so on.
Jed has done that without conviction. The Professor (adored by the audience and always clapped to the echo) is a caricature. Editor Webb, instead of a shrewd ironic Yankee … is a garrulous Irish mugger, Tommy Ross.208
The afternoon goes by. Boy and girl back from High School. Mother and Daughter. “Mama, am I good looking?”
Then the Second Interruption.
Now we want to look back on it from the future.
What became of some of these people. The Milkman. The Druggist.
What shall we put in the corner stone of the new bank for people to read a thousand years from now. “Y’know, Babylon once had 2,000,000 people and all we know is the names of the royal family. There the father came home from work. The smoke rose from the chimney, same as here. We’re putting a copy of this play in so people’ll know more about us than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh Flight….. This is the way we were in our living and our doctoring and our marrying and our dying.”
Jed says those things interrupt the affectionate interest in the family lives before us.
Frank Craven is embarrassed by them.
But that’s the central intention of the play. And it is picked up everywhere.
At the height of the Wedding Scene, the company freezes while the minister (Frank Craven) says over their heads:
“I’ve married 200 couples in my day.
Do I believe in it? I don’t know.
M marries N. Millions of them.
The cottage, the go-cart, the Sunday afternoon rides in the Ford, the first rheumatism, the grandchildren, the second rheumatism, the deathbed … etc.
Once in a thousand times it’s interesting. Let’s have Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.
Yes, Alec it’s a great play. And all good people are deeply rejoiced by it. But from what’s there now they have to guess and grope for that side of it.
The first mistake was in the casting of Frank Craven, Tommy Ross, and the Professor.
The dangers of Irish blood.
Frank is lovable and we’re grateful for that. But oh, for that deep New England stoic irony that’s grasped the iron of life and shares it with the house.
The rest of the play is beautifully cast and superbly produced.
A great packed house in Princeton was deeply absorbed. Applause interrupted scene after scene. Laughter swept the house. Here, too, that is happening tho’ to thin business. And always something is the matter at the heart of the play.
Jed didn’t sleep or eat for days. Rosamond Pinchot’s death209 fell like a bomb into the middle of everything. She had loved the play and was at rehearsals. Jed has been kind and controlled to all the actors, except in overtiring them with interminable rehearsals, delays and all night work. The girl Martha Scott will be the next great actress in America.210
I’m all right.
I fight for the restoration of lines and for the removal of Jed’s happy interpolations of New Jersey-New Hampshire.
Lord, I’m remote from it many ways—wrapped up in Play #2, a beauty; reading, walking.
Until last night at 1:30 Jed wouldn’t listen to a suggestion from me.
Ishkabibble.
But I continue fighting.
But I’d rather have it die on the road than come into New York as an aimless series of little jokes, with a painful last act.
At the opening night here a deputation of 41 small-town people from the skirts of Mount Monadnock—from Peterboro and Jaffrey and Keene—came down and presented me with a gavel of Cherry Wood and an eternal membership in the Mt. Monadnock Association. The faces. And they’d seen a play that was about something they knew.
Jed’s thinking of closing here Saturday night; rehearsing again, and picking up the New Haven dates that you abandoned.211
It’s f
ine that you feel that your play is now all right.
In Vermont we will look back on these unrests.
As soon as this is on or off I shall dash out to Tuscson, Arizona; recreate the solitude, long walks, and happy work which I knew in Zürich; plays no #3 and #4 are coming in sight.
How proud I was to be told by Ned212 that I had the resources of a playwright well in hand. And I learn. I am an apprenti sorcier.213 That’s all the matters.
love, dear Alec, as ever,
Thornton
160. TO J. DWIGHT DANA. ALS 3 pp. (Stationery embossed The Graduates Club / New Haven, Connecticut) Private
Jan 29 1938
Sat. morning.
Dear Dwight:
Enclosed the first cheque—$100.00 advance-money.
Boston reviews cautious but not unfavorable.
“Variety” has (I’m told) a ferocious review of the play, from the Princeton opening.214
Business in Boston very bad; but even so better than Julius Caesar215 which had rave reviews.
Curious situation.
Many enthusiasts. My fan mail. Charles R. Codman216 (whom I don’t know): In thirty years of playgoing one of the most absorbing plays I ever saw. Edmund Wilson: last act the most terrific thing I ever saw in the theatre.
Marc Connolly came down and told Jed it was magnificent.
So with all those plus and minus marks Jed cancelled the second week in Boston (losing, he says, ‘2500 on the two weeks) and opens at the Henry Miller Theater in New York on Thursday.
I suffered plenty this week in Boston, over cuts and alterations.
But it was a lot of fun, too.
Came back to New Haven to rest.
In any event, my pulse is calm, and I’m learning plenty.
Ever
Thornton.
P.S.
Rê Doll’s House
You see I thought I was making the translation as a present to Ruth Gordon.