All the Drama: The Old Maid, 1935 Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Summary

BroadwayRadio Podcast Summary
Episode: All the Drama: The Old Maid, 1935 Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Release Date: February 8, 2025

---

Introduction and Historical Context

The episode opens with host Jan Simpson setting the stage for 1935, a tumultuous year marked by significant global and domestic events. Adolf Hitler's announcement of Germany's military rearmament sparked unease across Europe, while in the United States, President Franklin Roosevelt introduced the Social Security Act, establishing a foundational safety net for widows and orphans. Concurrently, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt championed women's roles in American society through her radio series "It's a Woman's World." Amid these societal shifts, Zoe Akins' play "The Old Maid" triumphed, earning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Jan Simpson [00:10]: "In that year of 1935, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to Zoe Aiken's The Old Maid, an adaptation of a novella by Edith Wharton..."

Zoe Akins: Life and Career

Jan Simpson delves into the life of Zoe Akins, a prolific playwright and screenwriter active from the 1920s to the 1940s. Born on October 30, 1886, in Humansville, Missouri, Akins moved to St. Louis during her teenage years, where her literary talents blossomed. Her early works included poetry, criticism, and her first play—a parody of a Greek tragedy. A romantic relationship with influential editor William Marion Reedy further propelled her career.

Akins' move to New York in her early twenties marked a pivotal moment. Inspired by Ethel Barrymore's stage presence, Akins vowed to write plays that would feature prominent actresses. Her first full-length play, "Papa," had a brief run of 12 performances but garnered critical attention, encouraging her to persevere. By 1919, Akins fulfilled her promise when Ethel Barrymore starred in "Declassee," a play that became a significant hit.

Over the next fifteen years, Akins produced 11 Broadway shows, often showcasing leading female stars like Tallulah Bankhead and Laurette Taylor. Notably, her 1930 comedy "The Greeks Had a Word For It" later inspired the beloved 1953 film How to Marry a Millionaire.

The Old Maid: Plot Overview

"The Old Maid" centers on two cousins in 19th-century New York: Delia, the outgoing cousin who marries a wealthy man over her true love, artist Clem Spencer, and Charlotte, the quieter cousin who also loves Clem. After a complicated romantic entanglement leads Charlotte to become pregnant out of wedlock—a significant social stigma at the time—she secretly raises her daughter, Clementina (Tina). As Tina grows, she adores Delia, unknowingly viewing her as a mother figure. Tragedy and societal pressures culminate in Charlotte being labeled the "old maid," unable to find happiness or acceptance.

Jan Simpson [08:15]: "The rivalry between Charlotte and Delia had been a subtext in both Wharton's story and the play."

Production and Critical Reception

The idea to adapt Edith Wharton's novella into a play originated with actress Josephine Victor, who envisioned it as a vehicle for her talents. After initial production struggles and a five-year stall, Akins secured producer Harry Moses and director Guthrie McClintock. Renowned actress Judith Anderson portrayed Delia, while Helen Menken took on Charlotte.

Upon its Broadway debut, "The Old Maid" received mixed reviews. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson remarked, "The Old Maid ought to be a masterpiece. This reviewer cannot pretend to know exactly why. It is a good deal less than that." Some critics dismissed it as an outdated melodrama. Nevertheless, the play gained popularity over time, eventually winning the Pulitzer Prize, albeit amidst controversy due to competing plays like Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour."

The Pulitzer decision sparked discontent among supporters of Hellman's play, which tackled lesbian themes—a bold subject that some jury members found "morally disgusting."

Alan Kresenbeck [16:28]: "...the Pulitzer, at least in those days, was more concerned with moral values... of family and fidelity, more, I guess, Judeo-Christian values..."

Alan Kresenbeck Interview: Analysis and Insights

The episode features an insightful interview with Alan Kresenbeck, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland and author of "Zoe, Broadway Playwright." Kresenbeck discusses his journey in uncovering Zoe Akins' legacy, highlighting her peak popularity and subsequent decline.

He explores the reasons behind the Pulitzer jury's selection of "The Old Maid," emphasizing the committee's preference for plays that adhered to middle-class puritan morality over more avant-garde or socially challenging works like "The Children's Hour." Kresenbeck notes that the Pulitzer process involved expert jurors and an advisory board, ultimately reflecting the tastes and biases of its time.

Alan Kresenbeck [15:46]: "I don't know if other people have been through this for your broadcast or not, but the misconception is that the Pulitzer Prize is awarded to the best play produced... during that year..."

Kresenbeck also touches upon Akins' struggle between artistic expression and commercial success. He suggests that Akins prioritized pleasing her audience—primarily upper-middle-class women affiliated with groups like the Theater Club—over pushing artistic boundaries, which may have contributed to her eventual obscurity.

Alan Kresenbeck [24:31]: "She defined her audience as women playgoers... She considered women to be a more sympathetic kind of audience that would rather cease a playwright or a play succeed..."

Legacy of The Old Maid and Zoe Akins

Despite its initial success and Pulitzer accolade, "The Old Maid" has faded from contemporary theatrical repertoires. The play's focus on upper-middle-class women's romantic struggles, without broader societal engagement, rendered it less relevant to evolving theatrical tastes that began embracing more diverse and socially conscious narratives.

Zoe Akins continued to work in Hollywood after her Broadway endeavors, penning successful scripts like the 1936 film "Camille," which earned Greta Garbo critical acclaim. However, her later years were marked by personal tragedies and financial decline, leading to her quiet passing in 1958.

Today, Akins' legacy persists primarily through her Pulitzer-winning play and its film adaptation starring Bette Davis. As Kresenbeck remarks, while Akins may not be a household name, her contributions to American theater remain officially recognized.

Alan Kresenbeck [29:21]: "Right. Exactly. She and the Old Maid are still Pulitzer winners."

Conclusion

All the Drama: The Old Maid provides a comprehensive exploration of Zoe Akins' notable yet often overlooked contribution to American theater. Through historical context, detailed narrative, and expert analysis, the episode sheds light on a playwright whose work once captivated audiences and critics alike, earning prestigious accolades that have since faded into obscurity. The conversation between Jan Simpson and Alan Kresenbeck underscores the complexities of artistic legacy, societal norms, and the ever-evolving landscape of theater.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Jan Simpson [00:10]: "In that year of 1935, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to Zoe Aiken's The Old Maid..."

• Alan Kresenbeck [16:28]: "...the Pulitzer, at least in those days, was more concerned with moral values..."

• Alan Kresenbeck [24:31]: "She defined her audience as women playgoers..."

• Alan Kresenbeck [29:21]: "Right. Exactly. She and the Old Maid are still Pulitzer winners."

Transcript

[Jan Simpson]

The year is 1935. Adolf Hitler announces that Germany is rearming and expanding its military, violating the agreements it signed after World War I and stirring up unease throughout Europe. In the U.S. franklin Roosevelt proposes the Social Security act, which lays the foundation for a safety net that, among other things, will provide aid for widows and orphans. Meanwhile, the feminist first lady Eleanor Roosevelt launches a series of radio broadcasts about the role of women in American society called It's a Woman's World. And in that year of 1935, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to Zoe Aiken's The Old Maid, an adaptation of a novella by Edith Wharton about an unwed mother who has to make difficult choices in order to protect her child at a time when American society cruelly shunned women who had sex before marriage and children born out of wedlock. My name is Jan Simpson. Welcome to all of the Drama, a podcast about the plays and musicals that have won American theater's highest accolade, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Neither the Old Maid nor its author are much remembered nowadays, except maybe when the movie version starring Bette Davis pops up on Turner Classic Movies. But the original stage production ran for a then impressive 305 performances and Akins was a well known and prolific playwright and screenwriter from the 1920s into the 40s. She was born on October 30, 1886 in Humansville, Missouri, the second of three children born to Sarah Elizabeth Green Akins and Thomas Jasper Akins, a banker, a friend of Teddy Roosevelt's and a power broker in Republican politics who served for a time as the party chair of his state. The family moved to St. Louis when Zoe was in her teens and she went to a well regarded local private school there, where she wrote her first play, a parody of a Greek tragedy. By the time she graduated, she was not only publishing poetry and criticism in local magazines and newspapers, but had formed a romantic relationship with the influential editor William Marion reedy. He was 24 years older than she was and had a reputation for promoting the works of such up and coming Midwestern writers as Carl Sandburg and Sarah Teasdale. But Zooey was most smitten by the stage. She'd done a little acting in school and in some local productions around town, and she dreamed of playing the heroines in Henrik Ibsen's plays. But she knew she was neither pretty enough nor talented enough to be cast in anything other than small character roles. So Eakins doubled down on her writing. When she moved to New York in her early 20s and after seeing Ethel Barrymore perform Akins promised herself that one day the actress, widely acknowledged to be one of the leading theatrical talents of her day, would perform in a play that Akins wrote. Akins first full length play, a comedy called Papa, only ran for 12 performances, but it impressed the influential critic George G. Nathan, who encouraged her to keep at it. And in 1919, three weeks before she turned 33, Akins fulfilled the promise she'd made to herself when Ethel Barrymore starred in her play Declassee, a drama about a British aristocrat whose life unravels when she becomes romantically involved with a commoner. It was a big hit for both the actress and the authority. Over the next decade and a half, Aikens had 11 shows on Broadway, most of them featuring big roles for big female stars like Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead and Laurette Taylor. In 1930, she wrote the Greeks Had a Word For It, a comedy about three chorus girls on the prowl for rich husbands. Two decades later, it would be adapted into the 1953 movie how to Marry a Millionaire, with Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe playing the lovable gold diggers. The Old Maid was very different from that one. It centers on two cousins in 19th century New York, the more outgoing of the two. Delia opts to marry a wealthy man instead of a less well off artist named Clem Spencer, who she really loves. The quieter cousin Charlotte, has also secretly loved Clem, and when he turns to her on the rebound, she breaks all taboos of the time and becomes pregnant by him. Charlotte secretly has the baby, who she names Clementina, and then she starts up a nursery for poor and orphaned children, so that without anyone knowing that they're related, she can stay close to the girl whom everyone adores and calls Tina. But when Delia discovers that Tina is the child of the man she still loves, she destroys Charlotte's chance to marry someone else, adopt Tina and live a happy life instead. When her own husband dies unexpectedly, Delia insists that it makes sense for both Charlotte and Tina to move into her home. But there, Tina grows up regarding Delia as a beloved mother figure and Charlotte as just an annoying spinster aunt, the old maid of the title. The idea to dramatize the story first came from an actress named Josephine Victor, who had read the original Edith Wharton novella and thought it could make a good vehicle for her. Victor persuaded a producer to buy the rights to the story and to sign up Akins to turn it into a play. But Akins and the producer clashed and the project stalled for five years. Until Akins showed the script to her friend, the actress Helen Menken, who thought the character of Charlotte would be a good role for her. And so she helped Akins find another producer in Harry Moses, who'd recently had a commercial hit with the original production of Grand Hotel and a critical one with Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson's avant garde opera Four Saints in three acts. They then recruited Guthrie McClintock to direct the play and Judith Anderson to play Delia opposite Menken's Charlotte. The critical reviews for the Old Maid were mixed. The Old Maid ought to be a masterpiece. This reviewer cannot pretend to know exactly why. It is a good deal less than that, wrote the New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson. Others just dismissed the play as an old fashioned melodrama. Still, although the box office started off slowly, it grew. And then the play won the Pulitzer. But that divided the critics too. The competition that year was particularly fierce. Contenders included Lillian Hellman's the Children's Hour, George S. Kaufman and Marse Hart's Merrily We Roll Along, Robert E. Sherwood's the Petrified Forest, and two plays by Clifford Odettes, Awake and Sing and Waiting for Lefty, all of those titles far more familiar today than the Old Maid is. Hellman's partisans were particularly outraged by the Pulitzer decision. They felt that her play, the Children's Hour, had been sidelined because it dealt with lesbianism. Despite the grumbling, the Wind delighted Akins. It also boosted ticket sales for the Old Maid, which later successfully toured the country. Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights for $40,000, but the studio held off from making the film. Uncertain about how to handle Tina's illegitimacy, Paramount finally sold the rights to the scrappier Warner Bros. Studio. And although Eakins had a long and successful track record as a screenwriter, Warner's hired Casey Robinson, a veteran screenwriter who had a reputation for being particularly good with women's pictures, to write the script. Robinson made several changes designed to make the film less controversial, including changing the lover Clem, from an artist who, after making love to Charlotte, callously goes off to Paris where he marries someone else, to a union soldier who dutifully goes off to fight in the war and dies before he can make it home to marry Charlotte. The rivalry between Charlotte and Delia had been a subtext in both Wharton's story and the play. But Robinson brought those tensions right to the surface. And the studio's marketing team highlighted them even more by trading on the real life animosity between Bette Davis, who played Charlotte, and Miriam Hopkins. Who played Delia. It was widely whispered around Hollywood that Hopkins resented the fact that Davis had become a bigger movie star than she was and that she suspected that Davis had had an affair with with her husband. Regardless, it all worked out for the Old Maid movie. It became one of the top 20 grossing films in that magic year of 1939 that included the wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith, goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights and Gone with the Wind. Akins only wrote a few more plays after the Old Maid and none of them had long run. But she continued working in Hollywood and in 1936 she wrote the script for the movie Camille which won Greta Garbo a New York Film Critics Award and an Oscar nomination for playing the tragic courtesan. But Aiken's personal life began to unravel on 3-12-1932 at the age of 45. She had married the British set designer Hugo Rumbold, but he died just seven months later. And the actress Gerbena Howland, who was rumored to have been in a years long and very tempestuous love affair with Akins, died from a heart attack in 1936, even though she was just 56. Meanwhile, Eakins grand style of writing slowly began to fall out of favor in her Hayden. She had kept an apartment at the Ritz Carlton in New York and a large house in Pasadena where she entertained such close friends as Anita Luce and Willa cather. But by 1947 Akins could no longer afford either of those homes and had to move into a small apartment in Los Angeles. She did a few TV jobs here and there over the next decade, but her glory days were behind her and she died in her sleep on October 29, 1958, the day before her 72nd birthday. Today Zoe Akins is best known, if she's known at all, for being the grandaunt of the actress Laurie Metcalfe. But as regular listeners know, I love rediscovering the the award winning playwrights who have fallen out of favor. And helping me to do that this time out is someone who literally wrote the book on Zoe Akins. Alan Kresenbeck, an associate professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the book Zoe, Broadway Playwright. Hello Alan Kresenbeck. Welcome to all the drama.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Thank you. I'm very pleased to be here.

[Jan Simpson]

I'm going to start off by asking you how you first encountered Zoe Akins and the Old Maid.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

I was a graduate student in the PhD program at New York University and they put a great deal of emphasis on original research and so Part of my process of getting my PhD was trying to discover people, places, events that hadn't been written about before or hadn't been written about very extensively. And I just happened onto Zoe Aiken's name. I don't really remember how. And then I started looking into her a bit more and got sort of interested in her thought process and how she evolved. And then one thing sort of led to another and I got a grant to go to the Huntington Library in California, where all her papers were, and spent some time there. And that's sort of it. It was just no real, you know, burning desire to write about pioneering women playwrights. Just a desire to write about somebody who was interesting to me.

[Jan Simpson]

What interested you? What grabbed you about her?

[Alan Kresenbeck]

She had a very, you know, you could. You could really take her career in a series of peaks and valleys, mostly ending up with a lot of valleys. But for a time, she was one of the most popular playwrigh on Broadway, which I thought was interesting being a woman, because that was a rarity, for sure. And then she won the Pulitzer Prize. She had, you know, did a couple films, scripts for films that were famous and ended up sort of nearly destitute, as far as I know.

[Jan Simpson]

Yeah, yeah, we'll get into that a little bit a little later. But I want to jump in now to the Old Maid, which is the subject of this whole episode, and ask you, what do you think attracted the Pulitzer jury and board to this play? Why did they give the prize to the Old Maid?

[Alan Kresenbeck]

I don't know if other people have been through this for your broadcast or not, but the misconception is that the Pulitzer Prize is awarded to the best play produced, I guess, during the New York season still during any particular year. And that's not really true. The Pulitzer, at least in those days, was more concerned with moral values, I would say, of being adhering to sort of the middle class puritan morality in some sense, of reaffirming values of family and fidelity, more, I guess, Judeo Christian values and where it seemed to be one of the prime things about it. I mean, it was really instructive to me that, you know, the Children's Hour was produced during that same year.

[Jan Simpson]

Exactly.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Yet one of the jury members of the Pulitzer committee actually walked out of the performance because he found it morally disgusting. And so that pretty much doomed Children's Hour for being even considered. But it sort of shows you how the Pulitzer Award was done. And secondly, the. It's sort of a convoluted process, but Pulitzer Prizes, there's usually a jury of experts, three or four experts. By this time, they were making a short list. And we go to a Pulitzer advisory board, which was consisted of the president of Columbia University and then 12 editors or publishers of Pulitzer papers from across the country. Now, these people, maybe the president of Columbia, saw the plays, but certainly these other people probably did not. And they may have, in fact, read them, which might have helped Aikens in the long run because her play is very, very literate. And then that their decision goes on to the Columbia Board of Trustees, who usually just rubber stamp it. So it's a complicated process. Well, in Akin's case, the jury members were William Lyon Phelps, John Erskine and Stark Young. Lyon Phelps probably being the most published, but they had all written the reviews of. Particularly Erskine and Phelps had written reviews of modern drama, contemporary drama, and Stark Young was actually only practicing critic among the group. He wrote for the New Republic, I believe. So anyway, these three gentlemen made their choices and moved their choices onto the advisory board. Now, their choices, the finalists might be interesting. Valley Forge, which is a historical. Actually, it's a romance in the guise of a historical drama. Merrily We Roll along, which is, I guess, better known now from Stephen Sondheim's adaptation. And then Personal Appearances, which was a pretty light comedy, but had a really good actress in this leading role. And then the Old Maid. So it was none of the plays that we would consider now to be, you know, sort of icons of American dramatic literature, like the Children's Hour, like Awaken Sing, like Waiting for Lefty.

[Jan Simpson]

Yeah, I was noticing that Clifford Odettes wasn't even on the short list. And he had two plays that still, at least the titles resonate today.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Sure, sure. Waiting for Lefty was, you know, that was originally done as a. Oh, what would you call it? I guess a communal drama for taxi strike drivers, which you, you know, an amazing response to that play when it was produced, but had, you know, limited. Limited appeal and never really went. I mean, it went a lot of places, but it never really went to Broadway. Awakened Sing. I don't know. Maybe they just didn't like it. I have no idea.

[Jan Simpson]

Well, I. I was also struck, though, when you were talking about moral values, because that's also a little dicey, a little tricky with the Old Maid, because Charlotte does have a child out of wedlock.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

That's really interesting you brought that up. That's one of the reasons why it was going to be made into a movie in Hollywood after it got its award and was very successful run. But no Studio would touch it for several years because of that fact, because she had a child out of wedlock. They thought that was immoral. And it wasn't till 1939 that the film version actually got made. And even then there was some trepidation about how the audience would accept that.

[Jan Simpson]

But the movie did fairly well. The Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins movie.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Yeah. And it was one of the top 20 grocers and one of the top. Top 20 films of the year. So that kind of drama still resonated with. With audiences.

[Jan Simpson]

Why do you think then the play doesn't resonate today? Because I couldn't see that it gets done very much.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

It doesn't. Every once in a while I hear from somebody, you know, wants to know something about the Old Maid. I don't know. From all of Aiken's dramas, it's. It's probably the most modern and it's got.

[Jan Simpson]

It's got two great roles for women.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Jan Simpson]

So that's a little surprising that it doesn't get done. I was thinking maybe it was the time period, but the play, the Heiress gets done.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

You're right. You're right. I don't really know. I think because she's sort of unknown, it's actually kind of hard to find the copies of her plays. And even, you know, even. I mean, the guy who wrote the book, wrote a book about the Pulitzer plays. This was probably the worst choice they ever made. You sort of have to disagree with him on that. But, you know, she has this reputation of writing for, and deservedly of writing of a certain class of people, mostly women, usually at least upper middle class, mostly involved in romantic entanglements, not dealing too much, if ever, with outside society, what's going on in the world, which sort of damned her in the. In the 30s, at least in the critics eyes. So she is a throwback. But, you know, I agree with you. I don't know why it's not done either. I think just accessibility might be a problem.

[Jan Simpson]

You were saying how the critics in the 30s responded to her. And I was wondering, she did a lot of plays, but was she ever truly accepted by the theater establishment?

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Yeah, that's a really good question. And you have to sort of define what the establishment is. If it's mostly male critics and the Algonquin Roundtable group. No, she was definitely not accepted. Is the general public and playgoers. And I would really like to talk about her perception of the audience and how that affected her. Playwriting too, was. Yeah, I mean, she was. She was Featured in Vogue magazine. A little caricature in Vogue magazine. More of the. More in the twenties, really. I would say the. Probably the mid twenties to. And then by the late twenties, maybe 1929 even, she was fed up with her. The way she was treated by. By the critics, and her plays were hit or miss. So she was established, but she wasn't a consistent performer at the box office. She did well, but not, you know, she wasn't knocking it out of the park with every play. So she left and she went to Hollywood and she came back really to Broadway with the Old Maid and had another play that opened pretty much after the Old Maid closed, opening to capitalize on that, and it failed and she went back to Hollywood. So I would say it's part of the establishment, but, you know, defining what kind of establishment it is. Her desire was to be, in what I talk about in my book a lot is to be a Broadway playwright, to be recognized as a professional writer who could please an audience. And that was her goal. And she struggled back and forth, back and forth between her personal point of view, which wasn't really all that different than expressed in her plays, and what to write that the audience would really go for, would really pay money to see her conflict. She was a poet also, and one of her main poems concerned has the line, what should a woman be? What should a woman do? And I think that defines her as much as anything else of trying to give her credit. I would say she tried to express her personal viewpoint, but her personal viewpoint was fairly conservative and fairly steeped in tradition.

[Jan Simpson]

It sounds as though in that eternal competition between art and commerce, that she was comfortable on the side of commerce.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Absolutely. Yeah. She said the playwright's primary job is to please the audience. And she just. She defined her audience as. As women playgoers, which has had some validity, actually. The social fabric of the time that she was writing in was that there were more and more women going to universities, more and more women becoming well educated, more and more women sort of stepping out of the household into the outside world, and more and more women sort of looking at the problems of the world and trying to do something about them. So, you know, particularly in the late, late teens, probably early 20s, and, you know, we can argue dates, but roughly around then, there were lots of organizations founded by women for social betterment and improvement. Some of these got taken over by state, local, federal government agencies or just got assimilated into other organizations. So Aiken's theory and a theory, some others too, was that there were A lot of women who were sort of freed from household chores, be it because of wealth or because, you know, appliances. And so they formed study groups and they formed groups for. In other words, they went from social improvement into more like self improvement. Maybe book clubs started around here and psychological clubs. Anyway, and to make a long story short, in New York, there was a group of women, upper middle class to wealthy women, that formed an organization called the Theater Club. And they would, you know, select a play a week or so and go see the play and then come back and talk about it. And that was the audience she wrote for. She considered women to be a more sympathetic kind of audience that would rather. Rather cease a playwright or a play succeed, rather than become overly critical of it, of every aspect of it, which was how she viewed a lot of the male critics. She considered women to be more generally sympathetic and I guess, more attuned to her sensibilities.

[Jan Simpson]

So then, if we judge her by that, by wanting to please the audience, being comfortable with being considered a commercial artist, what happened? Because as you said at the beginning, by the end, she sort of died. Maybe. Maybe not completely in poverty, but diminished circumstances. So what happened?

[Alan Kresenbeck]

I think her style just went out of style. I mean, when I just looked this up. But from 1928 to 1935, so that encompasses her parts of her career and the Old Maid, there are hundreds of plays produced on Broadway. Plays, musicals, revivals. Out of Those, less than 30 dealt with poverty, war or the rise of totalitarianism. So that's a pretty small percentage. Nonetheless, the perception, the critical perception was that those plays were really the important plays because they moved out of characters, private lives, mostly romantic entanglements, and into a larger scope. Made more. Made more acquaintance with the world, I would say, of what's really happening on the outside world. So the plays we think about in the 30s are, you know, the plays you mentioned, Clifford Odets, John Philip Lawson, some of those writers. But in fact, they were a very small minority of the plays produced on Broadway at the time.

[Jan Simpson]

Well, then that makes me ask you, do you think the jury made the right choice?

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Well, I don't know. You really have to look at these guys that made the choice. You know, their choices were reflections of their personalities and what their backgrounds. I mean, they were, you know, Yale and Columbia professors and steeped in the kind of tradition. I mean, if I think back on it, you know, I was sort of imagining this when I was thinking about this. It's undoubtedly pretty impossible that if Ibsen had written a play, American play, during that time period they written the Doll's House or some of his other works, had a Gobbler would have never won the award. You know, Chekhov would have been too damn confusing. All the great writers we think of just would not have passed muster. So it's. It's not unusual that they pick this play out of all the plays. Certainly not my choice, but out of all the plays that year, you can see why they picked this one.

[Jan Simpson]

And, well, you know, rightly or wrongly, whether we remember her in the roster of great playwrights or not, she and the Old Maid are still Pulitzer winners.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

Right. Exactly.

[Jan Simpson]

I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us a bit about it.

[Alan Kresenbeck]

That's my pleasure. It's good for me to revisit this and look at this and think about this again. So I really enjoyed it.

[Jan Simpson]

And thank you for listening. I hope you'll come back next time. And if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please send them to [e-mail].