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The New Playwrights: Theatrical Insurgency in Pre-Depression America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Malcolm Goldstein
Malcolm Goldstein
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of English, Stanford University.
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Extract

The New Playwrights' theatre, a non-commercial company founded by Michael Gold, Em Jo Basshe, John Howard Law-son, John Dos Passos, and Francis Edwards Faragoh, and supported by a series of grants from Otto H. Kahn, produced eight consecutive failures in twenty-four months of feverish activity at the close of the nineteen-twenties. Its works were among the most boisterous and futile ever witnessed in the smaller playhouses of New York, and its record of acid notices and early closings has not been broken in some thirty subsequent seasons of off-Broadway production.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 2 , May 1961 , pp. 35 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1961

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References

NOTES

1. Deutsch, Helen and Hanau, Stella, The Provincetown: a Story of the Theatre (New York, 1931), p. 139.Google Scholar

2. A.L.S., Basshe to Otto H. Kahn, January 5, 1926, in Kahn Papers, Princeton University Library. I am grateful to Mr. Gilbert W. Kahn for permission to read the documents in his father's files relating to the New Playwrights' Theatre–hereafter referred to as “Kahn Papers, Princeton.”

3. “Plan Workers' Theatre,” The New York Times, May 22, 1926, p. 23; “Workers to Stage ‘Strike,’“The New York Times, May 25, 1926, p. 25.

4. Gold, Michael, “Strike,” The New Masses, July 1926, pp. 19–21.Google Scholar

5. Ben Blake, the early historian of the militant drama of the thirties, refers to this group as the Workers Drama League and attributes to it the production of Karl Wittfogel's The Biggest Boob in the World. See Blake, , The Awakening of the American Theatre (New York: 1935), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

6. “Workers' Art,” The New Masses, October 1929, p. 29.

7. A.L.S., Basshe to Kahn, January 5, 1926; A.L.S., Kahn to Basshe, January 6, 1926; A.L.S., Gold to Kahn, C. December 1, 1926; A.L.S., Kahn to Gold, December 2, 1926; Gold to Kahn, January 5, 1927. In Kahn Papers, Princeton.

8. A.L.S., Basshe to Kahn, April-August 1927; A.L.S., Kahn to Gold, January 14, 1927. Exchanges between the class enemy and the Emperor, letters 1927–29, passim. On the gossip, see letters of Gold to Kahn, June 16, 1928; July 16, 1929. (Dos Passos was not at the famous luncheon meeting; see letter of Gold and Basshe to Kahn, April 22, 1927.) In Kahn Papers, Princeton.

9. In Kahn Papers, Princeton.

10. Basshe, Em Jo, “The Revolt on Fifty-Second Street,” The New York Times, February 27, 1927, Sec. VII, p. 4.Google Scholar

11. All tabulations of runs given in this essay are taken from the seasonal reckonings of The New York Times, June 5, 1927, Sec. VII, p. 2; June 3, 1928, Sec. VIII, p. 1; June 2, 1929, Sec. VIII, p. 3.

12. Krutch, Joseph Wood, Introduction to John Howard Lawson's Loud Speaker (New York: 1927), p. ix.Google Scholar

13. Atkinson, Brooks, review of Loud Speaker, The New York Times, March 3, 1927, p. 27.Google Scholar

14. Lawson, John Howard, The International (New York: 1927), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 248.

16. Clurman, Harold, The Fervent Years (New York: 1945), pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

17. Atkinson, Brooks, review of Hoboken Blues, The New York Times, February 18, 1928, p. 10.Google Scholar

18. Sifton, Paul, The Belt (New York: 1927), p. 67.Google Scholar

19. Passos, John Dos, “Did the New Playwrights Fail?,” The New Masses, August 1929, p. 13.Google Scholar

20. A.L.S., Basshe to Kahn, March 6, 1929, in Kahn Papers, Princeton.

21. Upton Sinclair, letter to the Editor, The New Republic, February 13, 1929, p. 167.

22. Passos, John Dos, Airways, Inc. (New York: 1929), p. 101.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. 130.

24. Passos, John Dos, “Looking Back on ‘U.S.A.,’” The New York Times, October 25, 1959, Sec. II, p. 5.Google Scholar

25. Howe, Irving and Coser, Lewis, The American Communist Party (Boston: 1959), pp. 240–41.Google Scholar

26. A.L.S., Basshe to Kaihn, March 6, 1929. In Kahn Papers, Princeton. The last sentence refers to the immediate departure of Lawson and Faragoh for Hollywood.

27. A financial statement of the New Playwrights' Theatre as of April 23, 1928, lists a series of seven loans totaling to this amount. The last item is a loan of $5,600 dated December 30, 1927. No other loans were ever recorded. On May 10, 1928, Kahn offered the board another $5,000, but this was never accepted. Financial statements in Kahn Papers, Princeton.

28. Gold, Michael, “A New Masses Theatre,” The New Masses, November 1927, p. 23Google Scholar; Kandel, Aben, letter to the Drama Editor, The New York Times, November 6, 1927, Sec. IX, p. 4.Google Scholar

29. Clurman, Harold, The Fervent Years, p. 16.Google Scholar

30. A.L.S., Dos Passos, Lawson, and Faragoh to Kahn. In Kahn Papers, Princeton.

31. Atkinson, Brooks, review of Loud Speaker, The New York Times, March 3, 1927, p. 27Google Scholar; review of The Belt, ibid., October 20, 1927, p. 33; Young, Stark, “Playwrights and Causes,” The New Republic, December 27, 1927, pp. 139–140Google Scholar; Taggard, Geneviève, “Life Is a Welter,” The New Masses, January 1928, p. 27Google Scholar; Bernard Smith, “Machines and Mobs,” ibid., March 1928, p. 23; Kenneth Fearing, “Hoboken Blues,” ibid., April 1928, p. 27; Lewis Rogers, “Singing Jailbirds,” ibid., January 1929, p. 15; Woollcott cited in Clurman, The Fervent Years, p. 19.

32. A.L.S., Gold to Kahn, C. October 31, 1929. In Kahn Papers, Princeton.

33. A.L.S., Kahn to Basshe, November 21, 1928. In Kahn Papers, Princeton.

34. Blake, , The Awakening of the American Theatre, pp. 11–13.Google Scholar