1956 Pacific Players -Theatre Program - The Skin Of Our Teeth - Thornton Wilder

Description

An original 1956 program for the Pulitzer-Prize winning play "The Skin of our Teeth" by Thornton Wilder performed by the Palisades Players , Inc. The location was the Ebsen Playhouse in Pacific Palisades, California - the location would now appear to be a vacant site (15240 La Cruz) and the theatre group seems to have been disbanded.
This was included in a collection of memorabilia collected by Anthony Scott , the Assistant Director for this performance, which included several letters and postcards from Thornton Wilder himself - see Seller's Other Items
Two pages, folding, size 8.5 x 5.5 inches. Good condition. A nice piece of theatre memorabilia.
Thornton Wilder
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Thornton Wilder
Wilder in 1948
Born
Thornton Niven Wilder
April 17, 1897
Madison, Wisconsin
, United States
Died
December 7, 1975 (aged 78)
Hamden, Connecticut
, United States
Occupation
Playwright, novelist
Notable works
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(1927)
Our Town
(1938)
The Skin of Our Teeth
(1942)
Notable awards
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
(1927),
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
(1938, 1942),
National Book Award
for Fiction (1968)
Thornton Niven Wilder
(April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three
Pulitzer Prizes
—for the novel
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
, and for the plays
Our Town
and
The Skin of Our Teeth
— and a U.S.
National Book Award
for the novel
The Eighth Day
.
Contents
1
Early years
2
Education
3
Career
4
Personal life
5
Death
6
Bibliography
6.1
Plays
6.2
Films
6.3
Novels
6.4
Collections
7
Further reading
8
Footnotes
9
References
10
External links
Thornton Wilder with his two sisters and their father Amos at family cottage in
Maple Bluff, Wisconsin
(1900)
Wilder was born in
Madison, Wisconsin
, the son of Amos Parker Wilder, a newspaper editor
[1]
and U.S. diplomat, and Isabella Niven Wilder. All of the Wilder children spent part of their childhood in China. His older brother,
Amos Niven Wilder
, became Hollis Professor of Divinity at the
Harvard Divinity School
, was a noted poet, and was instrumental in developing the field of
theopoetics
. His sister, Isabel, was an accomplished writer. Both of his other sisters,
Charlotte Wilder
, a poet, and
Janet Wilder Dakin
, a zoologist, attended
Mount Holyoke College
.
[2]
Wilder in his
Yale College
graduation
photo
(1920)
Wilder began writing plays while at
The Thacher School
in
Ojai, California
, where he did not fit in and was teased by classmates as overly
intellectual
. According to a classmate, "We left him alone, just left him alone. And he would retire at the library, his hideaway, learning to distance himself from humiliation and indifference." His family lived for a time in China, where his sister Janet was born in 1910. He attended the English
China Inland Mission
Chefoo School
at
Yantai
but returned with his mother and siblings to California in 1912 because of the unstable political conditions in China at the time.
[3]
Thornton also attended Creekside Middle School in
Berkeley
, and graduated from
Berkeley High School
in 1915.
[4]
After having served a three-month enlistment in the Army's
Coast Artillery Corps
at
Fort Adams
, Rhode Island, in
World War I
(rising to the rank of
corporal
), he attended
Oberlin College
before earning his Bachelor of Arts degree at
Yale University
in 1920, where he refined his writing skills as a member of the
Alpha Delta Phi
fraternity, a literary society. He earned his
Master of Arts
degree in French literature from
Princeton University
in 1926.
[5]
After graduating, Wilder studied in
archaeology
and Italian in Rome, Italy (1920–21), and then taught French at the
Lawrenceville School
in
Lawrenceville, New Jersey
beginning in 1921.
[6]
His first novel,
The Cabala
, was published in 1926. In 1927,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
brought him commercial success, and his first
Pulitzer Prize
(1928).
[7]
He resigned from the Lawrenceville School in 1928. From 1930 to 1937 he taught at the
University of Chicago
, during which time he published his translation of André Obey's own adaptation of the tale, "Le Viol de Lucrece" (1931) under the title "Lucrece" (Longmans Green, 1933).
[8]
In 1938 he won the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
for his play
Our Town
, and he won the prize again in 1943 for his play
The Skin of Our Teeth
.
[9]
World War II
saw him rise to the rank of
lieutenant colonel
in the
U.S. Army Air Force
Intelligence, first in Africa, then in Italy until 1945. He received several awards for his military service.
[fn 1]
He went on to be a visiting professor at
Harvard University
, where he served for a year as the
Charles Eliot Norton professor
. Though he considered himself a teacher first and a writer second, he continued to write all his life, receiving the
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
in 1957 and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom
in 1963. In 1968 he won the National Book Award for his novel
The Eighth Day
.
[10]
Being proficient in four languages,
[6]
Wilder translated plays by
André Obey
and
Jean-Paul Sartre
, and wrote the
libretti
to two operas,
The Long Christmas Dinner
, composed by
Paul Hindemith
, and
The Alcestiad
, composed by
Louise Talma
and based on his own play. Also,
Alfred Hitchcock
, whom he admired, asked him to write the screenplay to his thriller,
Shadow of a Doubt
.
[11]
He completed the first draft of the screenplay for Hitchcock.
[6]
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(1927) tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on a bridge in
Peru
when it collapses, killing them. Philosophically, the book explores the question of why unfortunate events occur to people who seem "innocent" or "undeserving". It won the Pulitzer Prize
[1]
in 1928, and in 1998 it was selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century. The book was quoted by
British Prime Minister
Tony Blair
during the memorial service for victims of the
September 11 attacks
in 2001.
[12]
Since then its popularity has grown enormously. The book is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature and
film-making
, where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks to events before the disaster.
[
citation needed
]
Frank Craven
,
Martha Scott
and
John Craven
in the original Broadway production of
Our Town
(1938), winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Wilder wrote
Our Town
, a popular play (and later film) set in fictional Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. It was inspired by his friend
Gertrude Stein
's novel
The Making of Americans
, and many elements of Stein's
modernist
style can be found in the play. Wilder suffered from
writer's block
while writing the final act.
Our Town
employs a choric narrator called the
Stage Manager
and a
minimalist
set to underscore the human experience. Wilder played the Stage Manager on Broadway for two weeks and later in
summer stock
productions. Following the daily lives of the Gibbs and Webb families, as well as the other inhabitants of Grover's Corners, the play illustrates the importance of the universality of the simple, yet meaningful lives of all people in the world in order to demonstrate the value of appreciating life. The play won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize.
[13]
Wilder as Mr. Antrobus in
The Skin of Our Teeth
, 1948
In 1938,
Max Reinhardt
directed a Broadway production of
The Merchant of Yonkers
, which Wilder had adapted from
Austrian
playwright
Johann Nestroy
's
Einen Jux will er sich machen
(1842). It was a failure, closing after 39 performances.
[14]
His play
The Skin of Our Teeth
opened in New York on November 18, 1942, featuring
Fredric March
and
Tallulah Bankhead
. Again, the themes are familiar – the timeless human condition; history as progressive, cyclical, or entropic; literature, philosophy, and religion as the touchstones of civilization. Three acts dramatize the travails of the Antrobus family, allegorizing the
alternate history
of mankind. It was claimed by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, authors of
A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake
, that much of the play was the result of unacknowledged borrowing from
James Joyce
's last work.
[fn 2]
[15]
In his novel,
The Ides of March
(1948), dedicated to an anti-fascist Italian writer,
Lauro De Bosis
, Wilder reflected on parallels between
Benito Mussolini
and
Julius Caesar
. He had met
Jean-Paul Sartre
on a U.S. lecture tour after the war, and was under the influence of
existentialism
, although rejecting its
atheist
implications.
[16]
In 1954,
Tyrone Guthrie
encouraged Wilder to rework
The Merchant of Yonkers
into
The Matchmaker
. This time the play opened in 1955 and enjoyed a healthy Broadway run of 486 performances with
Ruth Gordon
in the title role, winning a
Tony Award
for Guthrie, its director. It became the basis for the hit 1964 musical
Hello, Dolly!
, with a book by
Michael Stewart
and score by
Jerry Herman
.
[17]
In 1962 and 1963, Wilder lived twenty months in the small town of
Douglas, Arizona
, apart from family and friends. There he started his longest novel,
The Eighth Day
, which went on to win the National Book Award.
[10]
According to Harold Augenbraum in 2009, it "attack[ed] the big questions head on, ... [embedded] in the story of small-town America".
[18]
His last novel,
Theophilus North
, was published in 1973, and made into the film
Mr. North
in 1988.
[19]
The Library of America republished all of Wilder's plays in 2007, together with some of his writings on the theater and the screenplay of
Shadow of a Doubt
.
[20]
In 2009, a second volume was released, containing his first five novels, six early stories, and four essays on fiction.
[21]
Finally, the third and final volume in the Library of America series on Wilder was released in 2011, containing his last two novels
The Eighth Day
and
Theophilus North
, as well as four autobiographical sketches.
[22]
Although Wilder never discussed being homosexual publicly or in his writings,
Samuel Steward
wrote in his autobiography that he had sexual relations with him.
[23]
Wilder was introduced to Steward by
Gertrude Stein
, who at the time regularly corresponded with both of them. The third act of
Our Town
was allegedly drafted after a long walk, during a brief affair with Steward in
Zürich
, Switzerland.
[24]
In Penelope Niven's biography,
Thornton Wilder: A Life
, she provides considerable epistolary evidence that the third act of "Our Town" was not written in response to any walk, conversation or affair with
Samuel Steward
but was begun before Wilder ever met Steward and was not finished until several months afterward. Niven also raises doubts about Steward's uncorroborated and unsubstantiated claims of having been Wilder's lover.
[25]
Wilder had a wide circle of friends and enjoyed mingling with other famous people,
[1]
including
Ernest Hemingway
,
Russel Wright
,
Willa Cather
and
Montgomery Clift
.
[
citation needed
]
From the earnings of
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
, in 1930 Wilder built a house for his family in
Hamden, Connecticut
. His sister Isabel lived there for the rest of her life. This became his home base, although he traveled extensively and lived away for significant periods. He died in that house on 7 December 1975, of
heart failure
.
[6]
He was interred at Mount Carmel Cemetery,
Hamden, Connecticut
.
[26]
The Trumpet Shall Sound
(1926)
The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays
(1928):
[27]
"Nascuntur Poetae"
"Proserpina and the Devil"
"Fanny Otcott"
"Brother Fire"
"The Penny That Beauty Spent"
"The Angel on the Ship"
"The Message and Jehanne"
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
"Centaurs"
"Leviathan"
"And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead"
"The Servant's Name Was Malchus"
"Mozart and the Gray Steward"
"Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job?"
"The Flight Into Egypt"
"The Angel That Troubled the Waters"
The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act
(1931):
The Long Christmas Dinner
Queens of France
Pullman Car Hiawatha
Love and How to Cure It
Such Things Only Happen in Books
The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden
Our Town
(1938)—won the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
[13]
The Merchant of Yonkers
(1938)
The Skin of Our Teeth
(1942)—won the Pulitzer Prize
[13]
The Matchmaker
(1954)—revised from
The Merchant of Yonkers
The Alcestiad: Or, a Life in the Sun
(1955)
Childhood
(1960)
Infancy
(1960)
Plays for Bleecker Street
(1962)
The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder Volume I
(1997):
The Long Christmas Dinner
Queens of France
Pullman Car Hiawatha
Love and How to Cure It
Such Things Only Happen in Books
The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden
The Drunken Sisters
Bernice
The Wreck on the Five-Twenty-Five
A Ringing of Doorbells
In Shakespeare and the Bible
Someone from Assisi
Cement Hands
Infancy
Childhood
Youth
The Rivers Under the Earth
Shadow of a Doubt
(1943)
The Cabala
(1926)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(1927)—won the
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
[7]
The Woman of Andros
(1930)—based on
Andria
, a comedy by
Terence
Heaven's My Destination
(1935)
Ides of March
(1948)
The Eighth Day
(1967)—won the
National Book Award for Fiction
[10]
Theophilus North
(1973)—reprinted as
Mr. North
following the appearance of the film of the same name