Maxwell Anderson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Maxwell Anderson
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| Born | James Maxwell Anderson December 15, 1888 Atlantic, Pennsylvania, US |
| Died | February 28, 1959 (aged 70) Stamford, Connecticut, US |
| Pen name | John Nairne Michaelson |
| Occupation | Playwright |
| Alma mater | University of North Dakota Stanford University |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1933) |
| Spouse |
Margaret Haskett
(m. 1911; Gilda Hazard
(m. 1954) |
| Partner | Gertrude Higger (1933–1953; her death) |
| Children | 4 (including Quentin) |
| Relatives | Maxwell L. Anderson (grandson) |
James Maxwell Anderson (December 15, 1888 – February 28, 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist, and lyricist.
Contents
Background
Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela ('Premely') Stephenson, both of Scotch-Irish descent. His family initially lived on his maternal grandmother Sheperd's farm in Atlantic, then moved to Andover, Ohio, where his father became a railroad fireman while studying to become a minister. They moved often, to follow their father's ministerial posts, and Maxwell was frequently sick, missing a great deal of school. He used his time sick in bed to read voraciously, and both his parents and Aunt Emma were storytellers, which contributed to Anderson's love of literature.
In 1907, Anderson began attending Jamestown High School in Jamestown, North Dakota, graduating in 1908.
Career
Journalist
As an undergraduate, he waited tables and worked at the night copy desk of the Grand Forks Herald, and was active in the school's literary and dramatic societies. He obtained a BA in English Literature from the University of North Dakota in 1911. He became the principal of a high school in Minnewaukan, North Dakota, also teaching English there, but was fired in 1913 for making pacifist statements to his students. He then entered Stanford University, obtaining an M.A. in English Literature in 1914. He became a high school English teacher in San Francisco: after three years he became chairman of the English department at Whittier College in 1917. He was fired after a year for public statements supporting Arthur Camp, a jailed student seeking status as a conscientious objector.
Anderson moved to Palo Alto to write for the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, but was fired for writing an editorial stating that it would be impossible for Germany to pay off its war debt. So he moved to San Francisco to write for the San Francisco Chronicle, but was fired after contracting the Spanish flu and missing work. Alvin Johnson hired Anderson to move to New York City and write about politics for The New Republic in 1918, but he was fired after an argument with Editor-in-Chief Herbert David Croly.
Anderson found work at The New York Globe, and the New York World. In 1921, he founded The Measure: A Journal of Poetry, a magazine devoted to verse. He wrote his first play, White Desert, in 1923; it ran only twelve performances, but was well-reviewed by the book reviewer for the New York World, Laurence Stallings, who collaborated with him on his next play, What Price Glory?, which was successfully produced in 1924 in New York City. Afterwards he resigned from the World, launching his career as a dramatist.
Dramatist
His plays are in widely varying styles, and Anderson was one of the few modern playwrights to make extensive use of blank verse. Some of these were adapted as films, and Anderson wrote the screenplays of other authors' plays and novels – All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Death Takes a Holiday (1934) – in addition to books of poetry and essays. His first Broadway hit was the 1924 World War I comedy-drama, What Price Glory, written with Laurence Stallings.
The only one of his plays that he himself adapted to the screen was Joan of Lorraine, which became the film Joan of Arc (1948) starring Ingrid Bergman, with a screenplay by Anderson and Andrew Solt. Anderson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his political drama Both Your Houses, and twice received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, for Winterset, and High Tor.
Anderson enjoyed great commercial success with a series of plays set during the reign of the Tudor family, who ruled England, Wales and Ireland from 1485 until 1603. One play in particular – Anne of the Thousand Days – the story of Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn – was a hit on the stage in 1948, but did not reach movie screens for 21 years. It opened on Broadway starring Rex Harrison and Joyce Redman, and became a 1969 movie with Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold. Margaret Furse won an Oscar for the film's costume designs.
Another of his Tudor plays, Elizabeth the Queen opened in 1930 with Lynn Fontanne as Elizabeth and Alfred Lunt as Lord Essex. It was later adapted to the screen as The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. Directed by John Ford, Mary of Scotland (1936) was an adaptation of his play of the same name involving Elizabeth I, starring Katharine Hepburn as Mary, Queen of Scots, Fredric March as the Earl of Bothwell, and Florence Eldridge as Elizabeth. The original play had been a hit on Broadway starring Helen Hayes in the title role.
His play The Wingless Victory was written in verse and premiered in 1936 with Broadway actress Katharine Cornell in the lead role. It received mixed reviews.
Adaptations
Two of Anderson's other historical plays, Valley Forge, about George Washington's winter there with the Continental Army, and Barefoot in Athens, concerning the trial of Socrates, were adapted for television. Valley Forge was adapted for television on three occasions – in 1950, 1951 and 1975. Anderson wrote book and lyrics for two successful musicals with composer Kurt Weill. Knickerbocker Holiday, about the early Dutch settlers of New York, featured Walter Huston as Peter Stuyvesant. The show's standout number, "September Song", became a popular standard. So did the title song of Anderson and Weill's Lost in the Stars, a story of South Africa based on the Alan Paton novel Cry, The Beloved Country. In 1950, Anderson and Weill began collaboration on a musical adaptation of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, but Weill died when only a few songs had been completed for it.
Anderson's long-running 1927 comedy-drama about married life, Saturday's Children, in which Humphrey Bogart made an early appearance, was filmed three times – in 1929 as a part-talkie, in 1935 (in almost unrecognizable form) as a B-film Maybe It's Love and once again in 1940 under its original title, starring John Garfield in one of his few romantic comedies, along with Anne Shirley and Claude Rains. The play was also adapted for television in three condensed versions in 1950, 1952 and 1962.
His last successful Broadway stage play was 1954's The Bad Seed, Anderson's adaption of the William March novel. He was hired by Alfred Hitchcock to write the screenplay for Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1957). Hitchcock also contracted with Anderson to write the screenplay for what became Vertigo (1958), but Hitchcock rejected his screenplay Darkling, I Listen.
Personal life and death
Anderson married Margaret Haskett, a classmate, on August 1, 1911 in Bottineau, North Dakota. They had three sons, Quentin, Alan, and Terence.
Anderson split with Haskett around 1930. She later died in 1931 following a car accident and stroke.
Anderson started a relationship with Mab Maynard. They were never married. Their daughter, Hesper, was born August 1934.
Anderson married once more, to ABC's TV Celanese Theater Production Assistant, Gilda Hazard, on June 6, 1954. This final marriage was a happy one, lasting until Anderson's 1959 death.
Anderson was an atheist.
He died in Stamford, Connecticut, on February 28, 1959, two days after suffering a stroke, aged 70. He was cremated. Half of his ashes were scattered by the sea near his home in Stamford. The other half was buried in Anderson Cemetery near his birthplace in rural northwestern Pennsylvania.
Awards
Honorary awards include the gold medal in Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954, an honorary doctor of literature degree from Columbia University in 1946, and an honorary doctor of humanities degree from the University of North Dakota in 1958.
Archive
The largest collection of Maxwell Anderson's papers – over sixty boxes – is housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin and includes published and unpublished manuscript materials for plays, poems, and essays, as well as over 2,000 letters, diaries, financial papers, nearly 1,500 family photographs, and personal memorabilia are preserved along with 160 books from the playwright's library. The archive was placed at the Ransom Center in 1961 by Anderson's widow, Mrs. Gilda Hazard Anderson. Smaller collections of Anderson's papers can be found at institutions around the world including the Chester Fritz Library, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Works
Stage productions
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Filmography
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Lyrics
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Poetry and essays
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See also
In Spanish: Maxwell Anderson para niños
