Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1940s

Voices, Documents, New Interpretations

Felicia Hardison Londré

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350017498
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama
• Index: Literature

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their works to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include:
* Eugene O'Neill: The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947), Long Day's Journey Into Night (written 1941, produced 1956), and A Touch of the Poet (written 1942, produced 1958);
* Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948);
* Arthur Miller: All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), and The Crucible (1953);
* Thornton Wilder: Our Town (1938), The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and The Alcestiad (written 1940s).

1

Introduction to the 1940s

Felicia Hardison Londré

Decades are often subjected to neatly-packaged characterization, and this may be more true of the United States in the first part of the twentieth century than in any other time or place. In the 1900s our immigrant nation came to awareness of its ‘melting-pot’ cohesiveness and larger identity in the world. The 1910s were our ragtime decade that segued into jazz along with our involvement in the First World War. Prohibition actually fuelled the free-spirited gaiety of the Roaring ’20s until the fun and prosperity came to an abrupt end with the stock-market crash of 1929. Economic depression and social unrest dominated the 1930s, followed by the Second World War’s indelible imprint on the 1940s. The 1950s brought rampant consumerism and conformity. The Vietnam conflict and youth rebellion put their stamp on the 1960s. After that, the increasing complexities and fragmented views of life tend to thwart attempts at applying simple labels to the decades.

Yet all historical constructs are more complex than what is readily apparent. The Second World War is indeed the defining feature of the 1940s, but that war and the attitudes it shaped must be tracked back to the second half of the 1930s decade, for the rumblings were heard and feared as early as 1935, as Thornton Wilder noted during his European travels.¹ Thus our inclusion of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town as belonging to the 1940s can be justified. Some effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s also lingered on into the 1940s, even as the wartime stimulus to the economy brought steady progress toward the prosperity of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Psychologically the 1930s left their mark on a generation that distrusted financial institutions and tolerated government expansion. One might describe the 1940s as a two-part decade: war and post-war. Many cultural manifestations discussed here will reflect that dichotomy.

PRELUDE TO THE SECOND WORLD WAR

In retrospect, some significant stepping stones toward the Second World War can be identified in the two preceding decades.

1919: Mussolini’s formation of the Fascist party in Italy. Humiliation of Germany at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

1920: Adolf Hitler’s programme of anti-Semitism adopted by the German Workers’ Party.

1921: Excessive war reparations demanded of Germany by the Allies.

1922: Fascist march to Rome culminating in Mussolini becoming prime minister of Italy. French occupation of the Ruhr in response to German failure to pay reparations.

1923: The first National Socialist (Nazi) party congress in January and its failed Munich beer-hall putsch in November.

1926: Decline of the French franc.

1927: Growing power of General Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist party in China. Arson and looting by communists in Vienna.

1928: Kellogg–Briand Treaty to outlaw war signed by fifteen nations.

1930: Riots in India after Ghandi’s arrest. Nazi party’s gain of 95 Reichstag seats in German elections, making them the second biggest party, with 107 seats. Widespread starvation in the USSR in the wake of Stalin’s farm collectivization.

1931: Closing of German banks. Japanese attacks on China and seizure of Manchuria.

1932: Japanese occupation of parts of China.

1933: Adolf Hitler’s accession to chancellorship of Germany. Nazi consolidation of power by blaming Reichstag fire on communists. Japanese withdrawal from the League of Nations, later followed by Germany. Nazi boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Nazi arrests of labour union leaders. Nazi book-burning.

1934: Riots in Paris following revelations about the Stavisky affair involving French government financial corruption. Worker uprisings and martial law in Vienna. Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss established as dictator in Austria in April and assassinated by Nazis in July. Heinrich Himmler overseeing concentration camps and executions to suppress opposition to Hitler. Chancellor Hitler’s increased power with his accession to the presidency. Assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia. Beginning of Mao Tse-tung’s ‘long march’ in China. Continuing Stalinist purges in the USSR. Johnson Act passed by United States Congress to prohibit loans to nations that had not repaid First World War debts.

1935: German violations of the Treaty of Versailles. Nuremburg Laws ending citizenship for German Jews. Italian military build-up and invasion of Ethiopia.

1936: German occupation of demilitarized Rhineland. Italian annexation of Ethiopia. Outbreak of civil war in Spain. German– Italian pact to form Axis.

1937: Nuremburg rally of 600,000 in a show of Nazi power. Japanese full-scale war against China. Italy, Germany and Japan ally in the Anti-Comintern Pact.

1938: Hitler’s self-promotion to Supreme Commander of German Armed Forces with control of foreign policy. Show trials and executions in the USSR. German–Austrian ‘Anschluss’ placing Hitler in power over both nations. British and French acquiescence in transfer of Sudetenland from Czech to German control. Night of terror known as Kristallnacht against Jewish people in Germany.

1939: German advance into Czechoslovakia beyond Sudetenland. Poland assured of British and French aid in case of aggression. German–Soviet non-aggression treaty. Nazi invasion of Poland resulting in British and French declaration of war on Germany. Soviet invasion of Finland. End of American trade agreement with Japan.

1940: Germany’s attack and quick defeat of Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. German invasion of France. Disastrous British withdrawal at Dunkirk. Battle of Britain repulsion of German air raids over the English Channel. United States’s authorization of peacetime draft and rearmament programme. Tripartite Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.

1941: Beginning of American Lend-Lease programme to aid Britain without violating American neutrality or the 1934 Johnson Act. German advances in North Africa and the Balkans. German invasion of the USSR in violation of the 1939 non-aggression pact. Increasing Nazi submarine attacks on merchant ships. Japanese occupation of Vietnam. Japanese invasion of Indochina. Japanese attack on American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Prelude to the Second World War

The Great War (1914–18), later known as the First World War, largely unravelled American isolationism. Europe had endured three years of the horrors of trench warfare fought most devastatingly on French and Belgian soil (plus torpedo-launching submarines that menaced Atlantic Ocean passenger liners and commercial shipping as well as battleships) when the United States finally ended its neutrality with a declaration of war against Germany on 6 April 1917. By June the first contingents of American doughboys arrived in Europe to serve under the leadership of General John Jack Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). The United States was virtually starting from scratch in its overseas military efforts, but that experience of recruiting, training and transporting soldiers, and supporting them on a foreign front, would serve the nation well when it all had to be done again a quarter of a century later. From the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 until the day German tanks swept into Poland (1 September 1939), the United States mirrored Europe in partying hard to ignore sporadic eruptions of social unrest during the 1920s that by the 1930s could no longer be ignored, as the partying gave way to belt-tightening. With the Bolsheviks entrenched in Russia, communist ideology spread inexorably among disaffected intellectuals and workers in the USA as in Europe. In the United States during the inter-war years there were strikes, anarchist bomb plots and race riots in counterpoint to flappers, bootleggers, lounge lizards, nightclub habitués, silent and talking picture stars, radio personalities and marathon dancers. After 1939 the continuing brazenness of aggression by the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) began to coalesce American public opinion in favour of the Allies.

Ever conscious of public opinion (which long remained isolationist), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved cautiously to find covert ways to aid Britain and to enhance preparedness of the American armed forces even before Germany’s conquest of Poland in September 1939. The president’s 1940 State of the Union address asked Congress to fund what would amount to the largest peacetime military build-up in American history. Indeed, the United States Army lagged behind 16 other countries in weapons and manpower.² On 16 September 1940, Congress passed the first peacetime draft in the nation’s history. Potential involvement of the United States in the wars that were engulfing both Europe and Asia was a dominant theme in the presidential campaign that year. The public played it safe with the leadership they knew by electing Roosevelt to an unprecedented third term over Republican Wendell L. Willkie. In March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized shipment of food, weapons and tanks to Britain by a system of payment that would not negate American neutrality. The American people did not want war, but when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a surprise attack on 7 December 1941 that killed 2,403 people, nearly half of them on the battleship Arizona, one of eight ships that were sunk or incapacitated, the nation was quick to rally. On 8 December 1941, President Roosevelt spoke to the nation about the hostilities of 7 December, a date that would ‘live in infamy’. With over 81 per cent of American homes tuned in, it was radio’s largest audience until then.³ Suddenly the United States was at war on two fronts, one in the Pacific and one in Europe. The next four years would have a profound impact on almost all aspects of American life for the remainder of the decade and beyond: women in the workforce, the rise of the teenager, the baby boom, education, popular culture, consumerism, business and the economy, technology, politics, foreign affairs and atomic energy.

Leaders of the decade

The swing in American public opinion from the isolationism of 1940 to broadly united support for the Allied war effort in 1941 was astonishingly rapid. Among the leaders who effectively articulated the importance of saving Europe from Nazi domination were President Franklin D. Roosevelt with his periodic radio broadcasts to the nation, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill whose radio addresses and bestselling books like While England Slept (1938) captivated Americans, and General George Catlett Marshall who was sworn in as Chief of Staff of the United States Army on the very day German forces invaded Poland, 1 September 1939. General Marshall had been warning for many years about the potential dire consequences of American unpreparedness. Thanks to his efforts, American factories belatedly turned to manufacturing armaments, which had the secondary effect of stimulating economic recovery and pulling the country out of the Depression at last. Ultimately, President Roosevelt and Congress learned to respect and trust General Marshall’s vision for first defeating Germany to win the war in Europe and then turning to the Pacific to defeat Japan.

George C. Marshall (1880–1959) was a man of great integrity, honesty and non-partisan patriotism, for he believed that the military should have nothing to do with politics. Asked about his own inclinations, Marshall responded, ‘My father was a Democrat, my mother was a Republican, and I am an Episcopalian’.⁴ Winston Churchill would later recognize General Marshall as ‘the organizer of victory’ in the war, and President Harry Truman called Marshall ‘the greatest living American’. George Marshall five times graced Time magazine’s cover, twice as Man of the Year (for the years 1943 and 1947).⁵ The 3 January 1944 cover story observed, ‘The American people do not, as a general rule, like or trust the military. But they like and trust George Marshall.’ The article cited his devotion to duty, ‘competence and integrity’ and team-building as qualities that would uphold the confidence and morale of the US soldier in combat.⁶ The 1947 recognition underscored the importance of the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan, a staggeringly generous American contribution of money to bring economic and political stability to war-torn Europe while also generating strong returns for American commercial interests and hedging against Soviet initiatives to spread communism abroad. As reported in Time, ‘Europe was broke. Unless the U.S. acted, the whole front of Western democracy was about to collapse.’ To counter ‘starvation and despair in Europe, the cynical and ruthless policies of Joseph Stalin’, Secretary of State George Marshall called upon the better instincts of the American people to enforce through strength their will for peace, and it was then ‘in 1947 that the U.S. people, not quite realizing the full import of their act, perhaps not yet mature enough to accept all its responsibilities, took upon their shoulders the leadership of the world’.⁷

IMPORTANT ACRONYMS OF THE 1940s

AEC	Atomic Energy Commission
AEF	American Expeditionary Forces (First World War)
CIA	Central Intelligence Agency
FBI	Federal Bureau of Investigation
GI	Government Issue, an informal term for an enlisted man in the American military
HUAC	House Un-American Activities Committee
NAACP	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NATO	North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCO	non-commissioned officer
OPA	Office of Price Administration
OWI	Office of War Information
PTA	Parent Teacher Association
RCA	Radio Corporation of America
RFC	Reconstruction Finance Corporation
ROTC	Reserve Officers Training Corps
UFO	unidentified flying object
UN	United Nati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Biographical Note and Notes on Contributors
• General Preface Brenda Murphy and Julia Listengarten
• 1 Introduction to the 1940s Felicia Hardison Londré
• 2 American Theatre in the 1940s Felicia Hardison Londré
• 3 Introducing the Playwrights Felicia Hardison Londré
• 4 Eugene O’Neill: Love and Loss of the Soul Zander Brietzke
• 5 Thornton Wilder: Seeing Beyond Dark Times Felicia Hardison Londré
• 6 Tennessee Williams: Experimentation and ‘The Great American Play’ Thomas Keith
• 7 Arthur Miller: The Individual and Social Responsibility Valleri Robinson
• Afterword Felicia Hardison Londré
• Documents
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• ecopyright