Thornton Wilder (116 page)

33.
TNW,
Shadow of a Doubt,
in McClatchy,
Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater
, 747. The script for
Shadow of a Doubt
is published in full in this volume, with background notes by Geoffrey O'Brien.

34.
TNW to Robert Hutchins, June 16, 1942,
SL
, 400–402.

35.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 30, 1940, New York University.

36.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, May 26, [1942?],
SL
, 395–97.

37.
Ibid.

38.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, June 10, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781H), HLH.

39.
Ibid.

40.
TNW to Ruth Gordon, June 11, [1942?],
SL
, 398–99.

41.
John Russell Taylor,
Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 185–86. For additional commentary on the film, see Martin Blank, “Wilder, Hitchcock, and Shadow of a Doubt,” in Martin Blank, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer, and David Garrett Izzo, eds.,
Thornton Wilder: New Essays
( West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999), 409–16.

42.
TNW to Sol Lesser, February 14, 1943, UCLA, Los Angeles. Their collaboration on the motion picture version of
Our Town
remained the only time the two men worked together.

43.
Isabella Niven Wilder to ANW, May 13, 1942, ANW Papers, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

44.
TNW to Robert Hutchins, June 16, 1942,
SL
, 400–402.

45.
Paul Horgan, “Captain Wilder, T. N.,” [June 16, 1987?], TS, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers. Paul Horgan's twenty-page manuscript concentrates on his first meeting with TNW in Miami in July 1942, and recounts their ensuing friendship. Quotations herein come from the unpublished typescript, which varies slightly from the essay published in Paul Horgan,
Tracings: A Book of Partial Portraits
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993), 121–34.

46.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, February 2, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781E), HLH.

47.
Paul Horgan, “Captain Wilder, T. N.,” TS, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.

48.
TNW to Family, July 5, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

49.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, August 16, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781I), HLH.

50.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [July 1942?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781H), HLH.

51.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, August 16, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781I), HLH.

52.
TNW to Robert Maynard Hutchins, June 16, 1942,
SL
, 400–402.

53.
Ibid.

54.
TNW to Amos Wilder, [Summer 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

55.
TNW to Amos Wilder, [July 20 or 28, 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

56.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, August 24, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

57.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, [September 13, 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

58.
TNW, “Notes Toward a History and Historical Records of the 328th Fighter Group,” First Draft, holograph manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

59.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, September 28, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781I), HLH.

60.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, October 9, 1942,
SL
, 405–7.

61.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, October 7, 1942,
SL
, 403–5.

62.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, October 9, 1942,
SL
, 405–7.

63.
TNW to Jed Harris, “Sketch of Letter Sent,” January 29, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

64.
TNW,
The Skin of Our Teeth,
act 3, 103–12.

65.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, April 11, [1943?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

66.
Richard Maney,
Fanfare: The Confessions of a Press Agent
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 330–31.

67.
“Wilder (Adjective, Not Noun) Reaction Grows to ‘Skin of Our Teeth,' ”
Variety
, February 24, 1943, 1.

68.
Maney,
Fanfare
, 329–30.

69.
TNW to Michael Myerberg, copy of letter sent to Isabel Wilder, [October 21, 1942?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

70.
TNW to Michael Myerberg, October 27, 1942,
SL
, 409–10.

71.
Alexander Woollcott to Sibyl Colefax, September 1, 1942, in Kaufman and Hennessey,
The Letters of Alexander Woollcott,
357.

72.
Alexander Woollcott to TNW, November 4, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

73.
Ibid.

74.
Tappan Wilder, afterword to
The Skin of Our Teeth
, 127.

75.
TNW to Harold Freedman, November 24, 1942, Private Collection.

76.
Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, “The Skin of Whose Teeth?—The Strange Case of Mr. Wilder's New Play and
Finnegans Wake,
”
Saturday Review of Literature
, December 19, 1942, 3–4.

77.
TNW to Benjamin W. Huebsch, June 28, 1940, Library of Congress.

78.
Benjamin W. Huebsch to TNW, July 12, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.

79.
“Fourth Estate: Finnegan Reawakened,”
Newsweek
, December 28, 1942, 41. This article noted that Wilder would “answer his critics later.”

80.
Bennett Cerf, “Trade Winds,”
Saturday Review of Literature
, January 9, 1943, 12.

81.
Draft of letter to the editor,
Saturday Review of Literature,
enclosed in TNW to Isabel Wilder, December 17, 1942, Private Collection. TNW enclosed his letter to the editor of the
Saturday Review
in this letter to Isabel, telling her to “erase this note.” The letter was never mailed, and, fortunately, never “erased.” The entire letter may be found in
SL
, 412–15. In May 1943, before going overseas, TNW prepared a list of possible defenses for his attorneys, should there be litigation in the matter, but that did not occur. His detailed analysis of the Campbell-Robinson charges was headed “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth.” TNW, May 13, 1943, Private Collection.

82.
Draft of a letter to the editor, the
Saturday Review of Literature,
enclosed in TNW to Isabel Wilder, December 17, 1942, Private Collection.

83.
Ibid.

84.
Bankhead,
Tallulah: My Autobiography
, 257.

85.
TNW, preface to
Three Plays
, xxxii.

86.
TNW to Zoë Akins Rumbold, November 18, 1940,
SL
, 382.

 

31: “WARTIME” (1940S)

1.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 2, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

2.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, October [no day], 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

3.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, December 8, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781J), HLH.

4.
Ibid.

5.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, September 17, [1942?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781J), HLH.

6.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 2, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

7.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, January 1, [1943?], TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW wrote 1942 on this letter, but its contents clearly place it in 1943.

8.
Woollcott's
As You Were: A Portable Library of American Prose and Poetry Assembled for Members of The Armed Forces and The Merchant Marine
was published by Viking Press in 1943. It was 657 pages long and measured 4.24 inches by 6.5—sturdy and convenient packaging for people who, Woollcott said, were on the move and had to travel light. TNW's play was not included in the final publication, apparently because the decision was made to publish only poetry and fiction. Woollcott's idea and his anthology launched Viking's series of “portable” books, including, during World War II, a portable Bible, a portable Shakespeare, and portable editions of authors such as Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway.

9.
Alexander Woollcott to TNW, November 13, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

10.
Alexander Woollcott to TNW, December 29, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

11.
TNW, “Five Thousand Letters to Alexander Woollcott,” 1951, edited by Donald Gallup and first printed in the
Harvard Library
Bulletin
32, no. 4 (Fall 1984): 401–7.

12.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [1933?],
SL
, 268–71.

13.
TNW to ANW, April [no day], 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.

14.
TNW to Dwight Dana, Easter [April 25?], 1943, Private Collection.

15.
TNW to ANW, April [no day], 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.

16.
TNW to Michael Myerberg, May 21, 1943,
SL
, 416–18.

17.
TNW, “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth,” May 13, 1942, Private Collection.

18.
For a detailed discussion of TNW's letter and legal memorandum, as well as publication of the complete texts of these documents, see Tappan Wilder, “A Footnote to
The Skin of Our Teeth
,”
Yale Review,
no. 4 (October 1999): 66–76.

19.
TNW, “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth,” May 13, 1942, Private Collection.

20.
Ibid.

21.
Dwight Dana to TNW, telegram, December 18, 1942, Private Collection.

22.
TNW, “MATERIALS To use in my absence if stupidity, malice, envy or avarice should institute a plagiarism suit against The Skin of Our Teeth,” May 13, 1942, Private Collection.

23.
TNW to Dwight Dana, April 6, 1944, Private Collection.

24.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 15, 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.

25.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 15, 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL; TNW to Family, December 20, [1943?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

26.
TNW to Family, June 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.

27.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 26, 1943, TNW Collection, YCAL.

28.
TNW to ANW, September 1, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.

29.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 24, 1942, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781J), HLH.

30.
Isabel Wilder, “About Charlotte Wilder,” October 15, 1961, Private Collection.

31.
TNW to Evelyn Scott Metcalfe, July 28, 1944,
SL
, 422–23.

32.
TNW to William Layton, April 9, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.

33.
TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 25, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.

34.
TNW to William Layton, April 9, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.

35.
TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 25, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.

36.
TNW to William Layton, April 9, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL. This three-week run at New York's City Center began on January 19, 1944, also starring Martha Scott. Montgomery Clift played George Gibbs. After the war, in May 1946, Harris took the revival production to London, with Marc Connelly as the Stage Manager. According to TNW, all those in the New York production donated their services except Frank Craven, who “asked 1200 a week and 10% of the gross”; that was why Connelly was asked to step in.

37.
TNW to Dwight Dana, April 6, 1944, Private Collection. TNW intentionally differentiated between the terms “WAAC [Women's Army Auxiliary Corps]” and “WAC [Women's Army Corps].” The WAACs dated from World War I when women could work
with
the army but not as personnel
in
the army. In 1943 the Women's Army Corps was established by an act of Congress so that women could serve as members of the armed forces, with equitable pay and benefits, including disability benefits.

38.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, June 7, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.

39.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, October 17, 1944,
SL
, 423–25.

40.
TNW to Family, October 29, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.

41.
John Hobart, “Grover's Corners, Italy,”
Theatre Arts
29 (April 1945): 234–39.

42.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, November 19, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.