Word: playwrighting
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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High Tor (by Maxwell Anderson; Guthrie McClintic, producer). Playwright Anderson went as far away in time and space as 16th Century England to set the scene of his two best known works, Elizabeth the Queen and Mary of Scotland. Period of High Tor, his first verse comedy, is largely contemporary. Locale is just three miles down South Mountain Road from Maxwell Anderson's home near New City...
Above the broad Tappan Zee, above Haverstraw, above the ledge-hugging concrete strip of U. S. Route 9 W rises a palisade actually called High Tor. Storms lash it furiously. And Playwright Anderson believes that the airplane beacon on its top was twice bowled over by stormy Dutchmen marooned for three centuries on High Tor, waiting for a ship to take them back to Amsterdam from the dark side of the world...
...less ambitious feat of imagination, Playwright Anderson has given High Tor a young owner named Van Dorn (Burgess Meredith, who also lives within a couple of rifle shots of the hill). "Van's" problem is to keep High Tor, which a traprock company is eager to buy and gut, and at the same time keep his sweetheart Judy (Phyllis Welch), who thinks he ought to quit living in a cabin, make some money and behave like other people. Their problem is resolved in a wild night during which Van meets a 17th Century Dutch girl named Lise (Peggy Ashcroft...
Packed with more downright charm and fun than any other show on Broadway, High Tor droops only occasionally when Miss Ashcroft or an incidental Indian has to declaim some of Playwright Anderson's indefatigable verse. As to acting, more important theft than the stage bank robbery is Actor Charles D. Brown's outright steal of the whole show in the part of De Witt, the oldest and saltiest Dutchman. For years cast as a theatrical cop or robber, Actor Brown comes into his own at last when, in pantaloons and a huge hat, he comes to grips with...
...Henry Bernstein's first Broadway production, The Thief, featured the late Kyrle Bellew, ran for nine months. His Melo, presented in 1931, gave Basil Rathbone two months' employment. Never the author of a distinguished play, Henry Bernstein in his native France is nevertheless a distinguished playwright, an able literary psychologist, a sensitive observer, a careful craftsman. It takes a little something more, however, to make a good play, and that, unanimously decided Manhattan reviewers, is what Promise...