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Robert E. Sherwood

January 01, 1970

Robert Emmet Sherwood (April 4, 1896 – November 14, 1955) was an American playwright and screenwriter.

Robert E. Sherwood
Sherwood in 1928
BornRobert Emmet Sherwood
(1896-04-04)April 4, 1896
New Rochelle, New York, U.S.
DiedNovember 14, 1955(1955-11-14) (aged 59)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • playwright
  • screenwriter
  • historian
EducationHarvard University (BA)
Notable worksWaterloo Bridge
Idiot's Delight
Abe Lincoln in Illinois
Rebecca
There Shall Be No Night
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Bishop's Wife
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize for Drama (1936, 1939, 1941)
Academy Award for Best Screenplay (1947)
Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1948)
SpouseMary Brandon (m.1922–div.1934)
Madeline Hurlock (m.1935)
Cover of Sherwood's play There Shall Be No Night

He is the author of Waterloo Bridge, Idiot's Delight, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Rebecca, There Shall Be No Night, The Best Years of Our Lives and The Bishop's Wife.

He received Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1936, 1939, 1941), an Academy Award for Best Screenplay (1947) and a Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1948).

Early life and family edit

Born in 1896 in New Rochelle, New York, Robert was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a highly accomplished illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood.[1] His paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood, was an author and social leader. He was a great-great-grandson of the former New York State Attorney General Thomas Addis Emmet and a great-grandnephew of the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet, who was executed for high treason after leading the Irish rebellion of 1803, one of a series of attempts to dislodge British rule in Ireland, in 1803. His relatives also included three other notable American portrait artists: his aunts, Lydia Field Emmet and Jane Emmet de Glehn, and his first cousin, once removed, Ellen Emmet Rand. Sherwood was educated at Fay School,[2] Milton Academy and then Harvard University.

He fought with the Royal Highlanders of Canada, CEF in Europe during World War I and was wounded. After his return to the United States, he began working as a movie critic for magazines, including Life and Vanity Fair.[3] Sherwood's career as a critic in the 1920s is discussed in the 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. In this film Time critic Richard Schickel discusses, among other topics, how Sherwood was the first New York critic invited to Hollywood by cross-country train to meet the stars and directors.

Writing career edit

Sherwood was one of the original members of the Algonquin Round Table. He was close friends with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, who were on the staff of Vanity Fair with Sherwood when the Round Table began meeting in 1919. Author Edna Ferber was also a good friend. Sherwood stood 6 feet 8 inches (2.03 m) tall. Dorothy Parker, who was 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m), once commented that when she, Sherwood, and Robert Benchley (6 feet (1.8 m)) walked down the street together, they resembled "a walking pipe organ." When asked at a party how long he had known Sherwood, Benchley stood on a chair, raised his hand to the ceiling, and said "I knew Bob Sherwood back when he was only this tall."[4]

In 1949, comedian Groucho Marx also commented about Sherwood's height during a filmed radio broadcast of the quiz show You Bet Your Life. Groucho, who hosted the popular series, interviewed in one episode American football player Howard Scala, a member of the NFL's Green Bay Packers. Impressed by Scala's own considerable height, Marx shared the following anecdote with the show's audience:

Reminds me of Bob Sherwood, the playwright, he's an old friend of mine; and he's six-foot-five and very thin. I said to him one day 'Bob, what do you say to people when they ask you how the weather is up there?' He said 'I spit in their eye and tell ‘em it's raining.'[5][6]

Sherwood's first Broadway play, The Road to Rome (1927), a comedy concerning Hannibal's botched invasion of Rome, introduced one of his favorite themes: the futility of war. Many of his later dramatic works employed variations of this theme, including Idiot's Delight (1936), which won Sherwood the first of four Pulitzer Prizes. According to legend, he once admitted to the gossip columnist Lucius Beebe: “The trouble with me is that I start with a big message and end up with nothing but good entertainment.”[7]

Sherwood was actively engaged with the advocacy for writers' rights within the theatre world. From 1937 to 1939, Sherwood served as the seventh president of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Sherwood's Broadway success soon attracted the attention of Hollywood; he began writing for movies in 1926. While some of his work went uncredited, his films included many adaptations of his plays. He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock and Joan Harrison in writing the screenplay for Rebecca (1940).

With Europe in the midst of World War II, Sherwood set aside his anti-war stance to support the fight against the Third Reich. There Shall Be No Night, his 1940 play about the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland, was produced by the Playwright's Company that he co-founded, and it starred Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Montgomery Clift. Katharine Cornell produced and starred in a 1957 TV adaptation on TV.[8] Sherwood publicly ridiculed isolationist Charles Lindbergh as a "Nazi with a Nazi's Olympian contempt for all democratic processes".[9]

During this period Sherwood also served as a speechwriter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He recounted the experience in his book Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History,[10] which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and a 1949 Bancroft Prize.[11] Sherwood is credited with originating the phrase that eventually evolved to "arsenal of democracy", a frequent catchphrase in Roosevelt's wartime speeches. Sherwood was quoted on May 12, 1940, by The New York Times, "This country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies."[12]

After serving as director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information from 1943 until the conclusion of the war,[13] he returned to dramatic writing with the movie The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler. The 1946 film, which explores changes in the lives of three soldiers after they return home from war, earned Sherwood an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.[14]

Death and legacy edit

Sherwood died of a heart attack in New York City in 1955. A production of Small War on Murray Hill, his final work, debuted on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on January 3, 1957.[15]

Sherwood was portrayed by actor Nick Cassavetes in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a 1994 movie about the Algonquin Round Table.[16]

Plays edit

Nonfiction edit

  • Sherwood, Robert E. (1948). Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (First ed.). New York: Harper. OCLC 908375. 1949 Pulitzer Prize (Biography)
  • Sherwood, Robert E. (1923). The Best Moving Pictures of 1922-1923, Also Who's Who in the Movies and the Yearbook of the American Screen (First ed.). Boston: Small, Maynard & Company.

References edit

  1. ^ "Robert E. Sherwood Biography - eNotes.com". eNotes. Retrieved 12 January 2019.
  2. ^ Fischer, H.D. (2002). Complete Biographical Encyclopedia of Pulitzer Prize Winners 1917 - 2000: Journalists, writers and composers on their way to the coveted awards. De Gruyter. p. 221. ISBN 9783110955743. Retrieved 2015-05-15.
  3. ^ "Robert E. Sherwood - Writer - Films as Writer:, Publications". www.filmreference.com.
  4. ^ Wallace, D. Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties. Lyons Press (2011), p. 175. ISBN 0762770104.
  5. ^ "You Bet Your Life #49-13 Unaired test film (Secret word 'Name', never aired on TV)", episode of You Bet Your Life originally broadcast on CBS Radio on December 28, 1949. Full episode available for viewing on YouTube, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc., Mountain View, California. Retrieved August 18, 2017.
  6. ^ Groucho Marx in his anecdote understated Sherwood's true height, which more reliable sources cite was between six feet seven inches and six feet eight inches.
  7. ^ Meserve, Walter J. (1970). Robert E. Sherwood: Reluctant Moralist. New York: Pegasus. p. 14.
  8. ^ "The Paley Center for Media". paleycenter.org. Retrieved 2015-05-15.
  9. ^ "Calls Lindbergh 'a Nazi'". The New York Times. Retrieved Jan 10, 2020.
  10. ^ "ROOSEVELT AND HOPKINS AN INTIMATE HISTORY". THE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY. Jan 10, 1948. Retrieved Jan 10, 2020 – via Internet Archive.
  11. ^ Alonso, HH. Robert E. Sherwood: The Playwright in Peace and War. Univ. of Mass. Press (2007), pp. 88-91. ISBN 978-1-55849-619-4
  12. ^ Gould, Jack (May 12, 1940). The Broadway Stage Has Its First War Play. The New York Times. Quoting Robert Emmet Sherwood, "this country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies."
  13. ^ "OWI Dispute Ended With Davis Ousting 3 Sherwood Aides". The New York Times. February 8, 1944.
  14. ^ Alonso (2007), p.143.
  15. ^ Small War on Murray Hill by Robert E. Sherwood, Playbill, January 3–12, 1957, cast and production details; Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, New York. Retrieved August 18, 2017.
  16. ^ "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)", overview with synopsis as well as cast and crew listings, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Turner Broadcasting System, a subsidiary of Time Warner, Inc., New York, New York. Retrieved August 18, 2017.

External links edit

January 01, 1970
robert, sherwood, robert, emmet, sherwood, april, 1896, november, 1955, american, playwright, screenwriter, sherwood, 1928bornrobert, emmet, sherwood, 1896, april, 1896new, rochelle, york, diednovember, 1955, 1955, aged, york, city, occupationauthorplaywrights. Robert Emmet Sherwood April 4 1896 November 14 1955 was an American playwright and screenwriter Robert E SherwoodSherwood in 1928BornRobert Emmet Sherwood 1896 04 04 April 4 1896New Rochelle New York U S DiedNovember 14 1955 1955 11 14 aged 59 New York City U S OccupationAuthorplaywrightscreenwriterhistorianEducationHarvard University BA Notable worksWaterloo BridgeIdiot s DelightAbe Lincoln in IllinoisRebeccaThere Shall Be No NightThe Best Years of Our LivesThe Bishop s WifeNotable awardsPulitzer Prize for Drama 1936 1939 1941 Academy Award for Best Screenplay 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Biography 1948 SpouseMary Brandon m 1922 div 1934 Madeline Hurlock m 1935 Cover of Sherwood s play There Shall Be No Night He is the author of Waterloo Bridge Idiot s Delight Abe Lincoln in Illinois Rebecca There Shall Be No Night The Best Years of Our Lives and The Bishop s Wife He received Pulitzer Prize for Drama 1936 1939 1941 an Academy Award for Best Screenplay 1947 and a Pulitzer Prize for Biography 1948 Contents 1 Early life and family 2 Writing career 3 Death and legacy 4 Plays 5 Nonfiction 6 References 7 External linksEarly life and family editThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed April 2022 Learn how and when to remove this message Born in 1896 in New Rochelle New York Robert was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood a rich stockbroker and his wife the former Rosina Emmet a highly accomplished illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E Sherwood 1 His paternal grandmother Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood was an author and social leader He was a great great grandson of the former New York State Attorney General Thomas Addis Emmet and a great grandnephew of the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet who was executed for high treason after leading the Irish rebellion of 1803 one of a series of attempts to dislodge British rule in Ireland in 1803 His relatives also included three other notable American portrait artists his aunts Lydia Field Emmet and Jane Emmet de Glehn and his first cousin once removed Ellen Emmet Rand Sherwood was educated at Fay School 2 Milton Academy and then Harvard University He fought with the Royal Highlanders of Canada CEF in Europe during World War I and was wounded After his return to the United States he began working as a movie critic for magazines including Life and Vanity Fair 3 Sherwood s career as a critic in the 1920s is discussed in the 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies The Story of American Film Criticism In this film Time critic Richard Schickel discusses among other topics how Sherwood was the first New York critic invited to Hollywood by cross country train to meet the stars and directors Writing career editSherwood was one of the original members of the Algonquin Round Table He was close friends with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley who were on the staff of Vanity Fair with Sherwood when the Round Table began meeting in 1919 Author Edna Ferber was also a good friend Sherwood stood 6 feet 8 inches 2 03 m tall Dorothy Parker who was 5 feet 4 inches 1 63 m once commented that when she Sherwood and Robert Benchley 6 feet 1 8 m walked down the street together they resembled a walking pipe organ When asked at a party how long he had known Sherwood Benchley stood on a chair raised his hand to the ceiling and said I knew Bob Sherwood back when he was only this tall 4 In 1949 comedian Groucho Marx also commented about Sherwood s height during a filmed radio broadcast of the quiz show You Bet Your Life Groucho who hosted the popular series interviewed in one episode American football player Howard Scala a member of the NFL s Green Bay Packers Impressed by Scala s own considerable height Marx shared the following anecdote with the show s audience Reminds me of Bob Sherwood the playwright he s an old friend of mine and he s six foot five and very thin I said to him one day Bob what do you say to people when they ask you how the weather is up there He said I spit in their eye and tell em it s raining 5 6 Sherwood s first Broadway play The Road to Rome 1927 a comedy concerning Hannibal s botched invasion of Rome introduced one of his favorite themes the futility of war Many of his later dramatic works employed variations of this theme including Idiot s Delight 1936 which won Sherwood the first of four Pulitzer Prizes According to legend he once admitted to the gossip columnist Lucius Beebe The trouble with me is that I start with a big message and end up with nothing but good entertainment 7 Sherwood was actively engaged with the advocacy for writers rights within the theatre world From 1937 to 1939 Sherwood served as the seventh president of the Dramatists Guild of America Sherwood s Broadway success soon attracted the attention of Hollywood he began writing for movies in 1926 While some of his work went uncredited his films included many adaptations of his plays He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock and Joan Harrison in writing the screenplay for Rebecca 1940 With Europe in the midst of World War II Sherwood set aside his anti war stance to support the fight against the Third Reich There Shall Be No Night his 1940 play about the Soviet Union s invasion of Finland was produced by the Playwright s Company that he co founded and it starred Alfred Lunt Lynn Fontanne and Montgomery Clift Katharine Cornell produced and starred in a 1957 TV adaptation on TV 8 Sherwood publicly ridiculed isolationist Charles Lindbergh as a Nazi with a Nazi s Olympian contempt for all democratic processes 9 During this period Sherwood also served as a speechwriter for President Franklin D Roosevelt He recounted the experience in his book Roosevelt and Hopkins An Intimate History 10 which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and a 1949 Bancroft Prize 11 Sherwood is credited with originating the phrase that eventually evolved to arsenal of democracy a frequent catchphrase in Roosevelt s wartime speeches Sherwood was quoted on May 12 1940 by The New York Times This country is already in effect an arsenal for the democratic Allies 12 After serving as director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information from 1943 until the conclusion of the war 13 he returned to dramatic writing with the movie The Best Years of Our Lives directed by William Wyler The 1946 film which explores changes in the lives of three soldiers after they return home from war earned Sherwood an Academy Award for Best Screenplay 14 Death and legacy editSherwood died of a heart attack in New York City in 1955 A production of Small War on Murray Hill his final work debuted on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on January 3 1957 15 Sherwood was portrayed by actor Nick Cassavetes in Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle a 1994 movie about the Algonquin Round Table 16 Plays editThe Road to Rome 1927 The Love Nest 1927 The Queen s Husband 1928 adapted into the 1931 film The Royal Bed Waterloo Bridge 1930 adapted into two American films and two Brazilian soap operas This Is New York 1930 adapted into the 1932 film Two Kinds of Women Reunion in Vienna 1931 adapted into a 1933 film Acropolis 1933 The Petrified Forest 1935 adapted into a 1936 film with Leslie Howard Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart Tovarich 1935 from a French comedy by Jacques Deval adapted into a 1937 film and a 1963 musical with Vivien Leigh and Jean Pierre Aumont Idiot s Delight 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Drama adapted into a 1939 film Abe Lincoln in Illinois 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama adapted into a 1940 film There Shall Be No Night 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Drama The Rugged Path 1945 starring Spencer Tracy Miss Liberty 1949 book for Irving Berlin musical Small War on Murray Hill 1957 produced posthumouslyNonfiction editSherwood Robert E 1948 Roosevelt and Hopkins An Intimate History First ed New York Harper OCLC 908375 1949 Pulitzer Prize Biography Sherwood Robert E 1923 The Best Moving Pictures of 1922 1923 Also Who s Who in the Movies and the Yearbook of the American Screen First ed Boston Small Maynard amp Company References edit Robert E Sherwood Biography eNotes com eNotes Retrieved 12 January 2019 Fischer H D 2002 Complete Biographical Encyclopedia of Pulitzer Prize Winners 1917 2000 Journalists writers and composers on their way to the coveted awards De Gruyter p 221 ISBN 9783110955743 Retrieved 2015 05 15 Robert E Sherwood Writer Films as Writer Publications www filmreference com Wallace D Capital of the World A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties Lyons Press 2011 p 175 ISBN 0762770104 You Bet Your Life 49 13 Unaired test film Secret word Name never aired on TV episode of You Bet Your Life originally broadcast on CBS Radio on December 28 1949 Full episode available for viewing on YouTube a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc Mountain View California Retrieved August 18 2017 Groucho Marx in his anecdote understated Sherwood s true height which more reliable sources cite was between six feet seven inches and six feet eight inches Meserve Walter J 1970 Robert E Sherwood Reluctant Moralist New York Pegasus p 14 The Paley Center for Media paleycenter org Retrieved 2015 05 15 Calls Lindbergh a Nazi The New York Times Retrieved Jan 10 2020 ROOSEVELT AND HOPKINS AN INTIMATE HISTORY THE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY Jan 10 1948 Retrieved Jan 10 2020 via Internet Archive Alonso HH Robert E Sherwood The Playwright in Peace and War Univ of Mass Press 2007 pp 88 91 ISBN 978 1 55849 619 4 Gould Jack May 12 1940 The Broadway Stage Has Its First War Play The New York Times Quoting Robert Emmet Sherwood this country is already in effect an arsenal for the democratic Allies OWI Dispute Ended With Davis Ousting 3 Sherwood Aides The New York Times February 8 1944 Alonso 2007 p 143 Small War on Murray Hill by Robert E Sherwood Playbill January 3 12 1957 cast and production details Ethel Barrymore Theatre New York New York Retrieved August 18 2017 Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle 1994 overview with synopsis as well as cast and crew listings Turner Classic Movies TCM Turner Broadcasting System a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc New York New York Retrieved August 18 2017 External links editRobert E Sherwood papers 1917 1968 Houghton Library Harvard University Works by Robert Emmet Sherwood at Faded Page Canada Works by Robert E Sherwood at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp Robert E Sherwood at the Internet Broadway Database nbsp Robert E Sherwood at IMDb Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Robert E Sherwood amp oldid 1218421707, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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