Sherwood, Robert (Emmet)

Sherwood, Robert [Emmet] (1896–1955),New York dramatist, after graduation from Harvard (1918) and service in World War I became a drama critic and later an editor of Life and Scribner's Magazine. His first play was The Road to Rome (1927), a comedy concerning Hannibal's march on Rome and his decision to turn from his goal, which served as a plea against war. This was followed by The Love Nest (1927), dramatizing a story by Ring Lardner, and The Queen's Husband (1928), a comedy about a timid king who assumes power during the absence of his queen. Waterloo Bridge (1930), set in London during World War I, is concerned with a chorus girl turned prostitute, who, in order to preserve the chivalric ideals of a doughboy, refuses to give herself to him. After a melodrama, This Is New York (1930), Sherwood returned to comedy with Reunion in Vienna (1931), presenting a nostalgic assembly of the exiled Hapsburgs, at which is revived the love of Prince Maximilian Rudolph and his former mistress, Elena. Sherwood next spent several years in Hollywood and England, writing for motion pictures, but in 1935 produced The Petrified Forest, a melodramatic play concerned with frustrated lives during a period of social transition, and the following year won a Pulitzer Prize for Idiot's Delight, a dramatic setting of a plea for world peace. After Tovarich (1936), a comedy adapted from the French, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize again, this time for Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938), concerned with Lincoln's early years and his preparation for his lifework. There Shall Be No Night (1940, Pulitzer Prize) deals with the Russian attack on Finland, and its consequences in altering the attitude of a liberal Finnish scientist. He also wrote The Virtuous Knight (1931), a novel about the Third Crusade, and Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948, Pulitzer Prize), “an intimate biography,” deriving in part from his association with the president as a speech writer. His life to 1939 is described in John Mason Brown's The Worlds of Robert E. Sherwood (1965).