Penelope Niven

by Thornton Wilder

  37. Isabel Wilder to Janet Wilder [Dakin], May 3, 1937, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

  38. Ibid.

  39. TNW to Isabel Wilder, August 25, 1937, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  40. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 26, 1937, SL, 319–20. Years later TNW would use this scenario, with slight changes, in his semiautobiographical, semifictional early manuscript drafts for Theophilus North.

  41. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 3, 1937, YCAL.

  42. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 9, 1937, YCAL.

  43. TNW to Samuel Steward, [September 9, 1937?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

  44. Samuel Steward, Chapters from an Autobiography (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1981), 75.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Ibid., 45.

  47. Ibid., 46.

  48. Ibid., 73.

  49. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 13, 1937, YCAL.

  50. Steward to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 15, 1937, YCAL.

  51. Steward, Chapters from an Autobiography, 74.

  52. Ibid., 75.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Owen Keehnen, “A Very Magical Life: Talking with Samuel Steward,” Summer 1993, http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Keehnen/Steward.html.

  55. Samuel Steward, Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 32.

  56. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, June 24, 1937, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1776), HLH, quoted in part above, and TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 2, 1938, SL, 328–31.

  57. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, September “16 or 17,” 1937, YCAL. Steward gives this account in Chapters from an Autobiography, 74, in the section titled “Thornton and the Touch of Eros,” 70–77. In a slightly different, thirdhand account in his earlier book, Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, 32, Steward quotes Alice B. Toklas, repeating what she said that Gertrude Stein said to her: “And Sammy, do you know he [Wilder] liked you? He was writing Our Town in Zurich and was stuck at the end of the second act, and you walked all night in the rain with him and he struck a match on you, he said, and wrote the whole third act the next day while you were sleeping.”

  58. TNW to Georg Wagner, “A ‘European in the New World’: A Conversation with Thornton Wilder,” Freude an Beuchem (Vienna) 4 (June 1953): 126–28; reprinted in Bryer, Conversations with Thornton Wilder, 59.

  59. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  60. TNW to Edward Howard Marsh, [June 1, 1931?], Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

  61. TNW, Journal, February 9, 1939, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  62. Steward, Chapters from an Autobiography, 76–77. Steward’s recollections about Wilder were first published in a slightly different version as “The Secret Citizen of ‘Our Town’: Thornton Wilder: Sam Steward Remembers the Man,” The Advocate, May 29, 1980, 24–27, 59. Steward later wrote pornographic novels under a pseudonym—Phil Andros, one of many pseudonyms he used as a writer. He also had a long, colorful career as a tattoo artist under the name Phil Sparrow. He was interviewed and filmed as part of the studies of homosexuality conducted by Dr. Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research in Bloomington, Indiana. Late in his life, using his real name, Steward wrote two mystery novels starring Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas as detectives. He died in 1993. For a full-length biography of Steward, see Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010).

  63. Quoted in Jerry Rosco, Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 143.

  64. PEN conversation with Arthur Laurents, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, May 2007; Paul Gregory to PEN, November 19, 2010. Jerome Kilty is quoted as saying, “I would have heard rumors and I heard none; he was a most fastidious man.” See Harrison, The Enthusiast, 168–69. See Acocella, Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism, for a relevant and astute discussion of the literary implications of sex and gender and the critical perspectives thereof.

  65. TNW, Journal, Entry 649, July 20, 1953, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  66. TNW, Journal, Entry 33, October 29, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  67. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 13, 1937, YCAL.

  68. Quoted in TNW, introduction to Stein, Four in America.

  69. TNW, The Woman of Andros, 197.

  70. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 22, 1937, YCAL.

  71. Gilles Deleuze, “Commentary,” in Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, 858.

  72. Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (London: Dalkey Archive Press, 1995), 743.

  73. TNW, The Woman of Andros, 148–49.

  74. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, “September 15th or 16th 1937,” TNW Collection, YCAL.

  75. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, September 25, 1937, New York University.

  76. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 24, 1937, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1776), HLH.

  26: “CHALK . . . OR FIRE” (LATE 1930S)

  1. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, October 28, 1937, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  2. Ruth Gordon to TNW, August 18, [1937?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

  3. Bibi Gaston, The Loveliest Woman in America (New York: William Morrow, 2008). Bibi Gaston is the granddaughter of Rosamund Pinchot (Gaston).

  4. TNW to Max Reinhardt, December 9, 1937, SL, 323–24.

  5. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, November 24, 1937, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  6. TNW to J. Dwight Dana, December 20, 1937, SL, 324–26.

  7. Ruth Gordon to TNW, August 18, [1937?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

  8. TNW to J. Dwight Dana, December 20, 1937, SL, 324–26.

  9. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 2, 1938, SL, 328–31.

  10. Ibid.

  11. TNW to J. Dwight Dana, December 20, 1937, SL, 324–26.

  12. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 2, 1938, SL, 328–31.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Readers interested in seeing these variations can read the entire letter from TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 2, 1938, in SL, 328–31, and compare it with the text of the play in TNW, Our Town (New York: HarperPerennial, 2003), 47–48.

  16. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 12, 1938, YCAL.

  17. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, January 27, 1938, SL, 333–37.

  18. TNW to Edward Sheldon, quoted in Eric Wollencott Barnes, The Man Who Lived Twice: The Biography of Edward Sheldon (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956), 219.

  19. Ibid.

  20. TNW, 1926 Journal, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  21. Edward Sheldon to TNW, quoted in Barnes, The Man Who Lived Twice: The Biography of Edward Sheldon, 220.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid.

  24. TNW to Jed Harris, [January 1938?], SL, 332.

  25. TNW, Note on “Elements in the Production of ‘Our Town,’ ” January 22, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  26. TNW to Dwight Dana, January 23, 1938, Private Collection.

  27. [—] Rosen, “Plays Out of Town: Our Town,” Variety, January 26, 1938, 58.

  28. For detailed accounts of the Harris-Pinchot relationship, see Martin Gottfried, Jed Harris: The Curse of Genius (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984); and Gaston, The Loveliest Woman in America.

  29. Gaston, The Loveliest Woman in America, 240–43.

  30. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, January 27, 1938, SL, 333–37.

  31. “Miss Pinchot’s Suicide Follows New Play Theme,”New York Daily News, January 25, 1938, 1.

  32. For various accounts of Rosamund Pinchot’s death, see Gaston, The Loveliest Woman in America, 200–58; Gottfried, Jed Harris: The Curse of Genius, 163–74; Marc Connelly, Voices Offstage: A Book of Memoirs (Chicago, New York, and San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968), 232–33;
Donald Haberman, Our Town: An American Play (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989), 99; Tappan Wilder, afterword to Our Town, 122–24.

  33. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, January 27, 1938, SL, 333–37.

  34. Alexander Woollcott to TNW, January 26, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  35. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, January 27, 1938, SL, 333–37.

  36. Alexander Woollcott to TNW, January 28, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  37. Ibid.

  38. “Thornton Wilder Presented with a Gavel,” Boston Evening Transcript, January 26, 1938.

  39. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, January 27, 1938, SL, 333–37. The Boston Evening Transcript report on the gavel presentation on January 26, 1938, indicated that there were fifty members rather than the forty-one cited by TNW in his letter.

  40. TNW to Dwight Dana, January 29, 1938, SL, 337–38.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Connelly, Voices Offstage: A Book of Memoirs, 233–34.

  45. Ibid., 234–35.

  46. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, Feb. 2, [1938?], YCAL.

  47. TNW to Dwight Dana, [February 6, 1938?], SL, 339.

  48. Tappan Wilder to PEN, May 6, 2010.

  49. Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” New York World-Telegram, March 2, 1938.

  50. Brooks Atkinson, “Standards in Drama Criticism: Mrs. Roosevelt’s Dissatisfaction with the Comments on the Stage in This Newspaper and One Other,” New York Times, March 13, 1938, p. 1, sec. 9.

  51. TNW to Harry Luce, February 14, 1938, Henry Luce Papers, LC.

  52. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, [late February 1938?], YCAL.

  53. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, February 1, 1938, YCAL.

  54. TNW to Ernest Hemingway, March 1, 1938, SL, 340–41.

  55. Quoted by TNW in a letter to his family, [March 10, 1938?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

  56. Charlotte Wilder to ANW, [1938?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.

  57. Isabella Niven Wilder to Isabel Wilder, April 29, [1938?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers. Net income tax figures provided by Tappan Wilder and used by permission.

  58. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 2, 1938, SL, 328–38.

  59. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 27, 1938, YCAL.

  60. TNW to Family, March 11, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  61. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 27, 1938, YCAL.

  62. Ibid.

  63. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, April 23, 1938, YCAL.

  64. TNW to Family, March 16, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  65. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, April 23, 1938, YCAL.

  66. TNW to Family, March 21, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  67. TNW to Christina Hopkinson Baker, March 27, 1938, YCAL.

  68. Ibid.

  69. TNW to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, April 27, 1938, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

  70. TNW to Christina Hopkinson Baker, March 27, 1938, SL, 341–42.

  71. Isabella Niven Wilder to Isabel Wilder, April 29, [1938?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

  72. Isabella Niven Wilder to Charlotte Wilder, [1938?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

  73. Isabella Niven Wilder to Isabel Wilder, April 29, [1938?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

  74. TNW to Sam Steward, May 18, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  75. TNW to Sam Steward, March 28, [1938], TNW Collection, YCAL.

  76. TNW to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, April 27, 1938, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

  77. TNW to Family, March 21, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL.

  78. Ibid.

  79. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, May 17, 1938, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1777), HLH.

  80. TNW to Ruth Gordon, [no day] 1938, Private Collection.

  81. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, June 17, 1938, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1777), HLH.

  82. For background on Max Reinhardt, see Gottfried Reinhardt, The Genius: A Memoir of Max Reinhardt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979).

  83. TNW to Max Reinhardt, May 12, 1938, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  84. TNW to Ruth Gordon, June 21, 1938, SL, 345–47.

  85. Ibid.

  86. Ibid.

  87. The Pilgrimage Theatre in Hollywood is now known as the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. It was built in 1920, destroyed by fire in 1929, and rebuilt in 1931. It was constructed to resemble the gates of Jerusalem because it was used for an annual pilgrimage play.

  88. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, July 20, 1938, AWC, MS Am (1777), HLH.

  89. Ibid.

  90. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [September 1938?], SL, 347–48. I have dated this letter September because Jed Harris asked TNW to step into the Stage Manager’s role on September 6, 1938, according to TNW’s September 20, [1938?], letter to his mother.

  91. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 20, [1938?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

  92. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 23, 1938, YCAL.

  93. “ ‘Mice and Men’ Gets Award of Drama Critics,” New York Herald Tribune, April 17, 1938.

  94. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [September 1938?], SL, 347–48.

  27: “PERSEVERANCE” (1938–1940)

  1. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, March 28, 1938, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1777), HLH.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Tappan Wilder to PEN, June 4, 2010.

  4. TNW to Albert Einstein, September 19, 1938, SL, 351–52.

  5. TNW to John Hobart, “Thoughts from a Novelist in the Throes of Stage Fever,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 11, 1938, 17, 21; reprinted in Bryer, Conversations with Thornton Wilder, 27–20.

  6. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [September 1938?], SL, 347–48; and TNW to Alexander Woollcott, September 30, 1938, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1778), HLH.

  7. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, September 30, 1938, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1778), HLH.

  8. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 22, 1938, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1778), HLH.

  9. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 9, 1938, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1779), HLH.

  10. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 2, [1938?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1778), HLH.

  11. TNW to Bobsy Goodspeed [later Mrs. Gilbert Chapman], November 4, 1938, YCAL.

  12. TNW to Dr. Sergei Bertensson, October 24, 1938, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  13. TNW to Bobsy Goodspeed, November 4, 1938, YCAL.

  14. Ibid.

  15. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 2, [1938?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1778), HLH.

  16. TNW to Dr. Sergei Bertensson, October 24, 1938, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  17. Ibid.

  18. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 2, [1938?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1778), HLH.

  19. TNW to Helene Thimig Reinhardt, November 20, 1938, SL, 352–54.

  20. TNW to Helene Thimig Reinhardt, November 15, 1938, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  21. Alexander Woollcott to Robert Maynard Hutchins, December 19, 1938, published in Beatrice Kaufman and Joseph Hennessey, eds., The Letters of Alexander Woollcott (New York: Viking Press, 1944), 215.

  22. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, December 6, [1938?], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1779), HLH.

  23. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 2, 1939, YCAL.

  24. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, February 7, 1939, SL, 363–66.

  25. TNW to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, January 9, 1939, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

  26. TNW to Max and Helene Thimig Reinhardt, January 13, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  27. Talcott B. Clapp, “Thornton Wilder Writing New Play,” Waterbury (Connecticut) Republican, June 19, 1949; reprinted in Bryer, Conversations with Thornton Wilder, 49.

  28. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 28, 1939, YCAL.

  29. TNW to Max and Helene Thimig Reinhardt, February 11, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna. By “both my pla
ys,” TNW was referring to Our Town and The Merchant of Yonkers.

  30. Ibid.

  31. TNW to Max Reinhardt, August 2, 1938, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  32. TNW to Max and Helene Thimig Reinhardt, January 13, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  33. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, February 7, 1939, SL, 363–66.

  34. TNW to Max and Helene Thimig Reinhardt, February 11, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  35. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, February 7, 1939, NYU [SL, 364].

  36. Ibid.

  37. Ibid.

  38. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, February 8, 1939, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1779), HLH.

  39. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, February 25, 1939, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1779), HLH.

  40. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 2, 1939, YCAL.

  41. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, February 7, 1939, SL, 363–66.

  42. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, March 21, 1939, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1780), HLH.

  43. Ibid.

  44. TNW to Max Reinhardt, April 26, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  45. Ibid.

  46. TNW, “Sophocles’s [sic] Oedipus Rex,” introduction to Francis Storr, ed., Oedipus the King (New York: Heritage Press, 1955); reprinted in Gallup, American Characteristics, 77–87, and McClatchy, ed. Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 710–19.

  47. TNW to Max Reinhardt, April 26, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  48. TNW to Professor and Mrs. Max Reinhardt, July 28, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  49. TNW to Dwight Dana, April 26, 1939, Private Collection.

  50. TNW to Professor and Mrs. Max Reinhardt, July 28, 1939, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.

  51. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, [June 24, 1939?], YCAL.

  52. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, August 15, 1939, Private Collection.

  53. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, [August 20, 1939?], YCAL.

  54. Ibid.

  55. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 11, 1939, YCAL.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Gertrude Stein to TNW, [postmarked October 1, 1939], TNW Collection, YCAL.

  58. TNW to Dwight Dana, September 23, 1939, Private Collection.

  59. TNW to Wilson Lehr, September 29, 1939, YCAL. Wilson Lehr was a 1939 graduate of the drama program at Yale. Cheryl Crawford was an organizing founder with Lee Strasberg and Howard Clurman of the Group Theatre on Broadway.