Word: gassner
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Minnie and Mr. Williams (by Richard Hughes; produced by John Gassner & David Dietz) reached Broadway 25 years after it was written, and ran for less than a week. In it the author of A High Wind in Jamaica had written a folksy Welsh fantasy involving a virtuous village clergyman (Eddie Dowling), his wooden-legged wife Minnie (Josephine Hull), a young girl in the employ of the Devil, and the high-kicking flesh & blood leg that Minnie suddenly sprouted. The whole thing was a frisky parable in which good & evil did not wrestle so much as tickle each other with straws...
Germany under Hitler had changed unrecognizably. Sebold got a job in a turbine factory, tried to settle down. When he got a letter from a Dr. Gassner (Heil Hitler!) asking him to dinner "to talk over old times" he laughed. Friends told him it was no laughing matter, urged him to take the letter to Gestapo headquarters. He did so, found the Gestapo cool, suspicious. Presently another letter came, threatening him unless he met Gassner. He went to the U.S. consul, was advised to leave Germany. But his passport had been stolen. At last William Sebold wrote Gassner: "I accept...