Robert Emmet Sherwood

Robert Emmet Sherwood 1896-1955, American dramatist, b. New Rochelle, N.Y., grad. Harvard, 1918. After serving in World War I, he wrote for Vanity Fair and Life, serving as editor of the latter from 1924 to 1928. His first play, the historical comedy The Road to Rome (1927), was an immediate success. It was followed by The Love Nest (1927), Waterloo Bridge (1930), and Reunion in Vienna (1931), a nostalgic comedy of the exiled Hapsburgs. His next plays— The Petrified Forest (1935), a melodrama set in the Arizona desert; Idiot's Delight (1936; Pulitzer Prize), an antiwar drama; and There Shall Be No Night (1940; Pulitzer Prize), about the Russian invasion of Finland—depict a civilization on the brink of disaster. Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938; Pulitzer Prize), one of his most notable efforts, concerns Lincoln's early years. During World War II, Sherwood was director of overseas operations in the Office of War Information and a speech writer for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. On the basis of the papers of Harry Hopkins he wrote a memoir, Roosevelt and Hopkins (1948; Pulitzer Prize), one of the most important documents on World War II. Sherwood also adapted Jacques Deval's comedy Tovarich (1936); wrote film scripts, including The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); and completed Philip Barry's last play, Second Threshold (1951).

Bibliography: See biographical studies by J. M. Brown (1965; ed. by N. Cousins, 1970), and W. J. Meserve (1970).

Sherwood, Robert Emmet (1896–1955), American dramatist, who scored a success with his first play The Road to Rome (1927; London, 1928), a satirical treatment of Hannibal's march across the Alps which deflated military glory. It was followed by The Love Nest (also 1927), based on a short story by Ring Lardner, and The Queen's Husband (1928; London, 1931), which drew an amusing portrait of a henpecked king. Waterloo Bridge and This is New York (both 1930) were failures, but with his next play, Reunion in Vienna (1931; London, 1934), brilliantly interpreted by the Lunts, Sherwood again achieved success. With The Petrified Forest (1935; London, 1942), about an idealist's virtual suicide, he began to take cognizance of the rapidly deteriorating world situation, and although there was a light-hearted interval with Tovarich (London, 1935; NY, 1936), based on a play by Jacques Deval, in the Pulitzer Prize-winner Idiot's Delight (1936; London, 1938) his ironic pessimism grew darker; in it he foretold a Second World War (he had fought in the first one), and the intellectual bankruptcy of Western civilization. Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938) showed Lincoln as a man of peace who entered the political arena reluctantly, and paralleled contemporary political struggles with those of his day. There Shall be no Night (1940; London, 1943), written in response to the invasion of Finland, showed a pacifist scientist choosing war as preferable to slavery. After a few years of political activity, during which he wrote no new plays, Sherwood returned to the theatre with The Rugged Path (1945). His last play, Small War on Murray Hill, a mildly romantic comedy about the American Revolution, was produced posthumously in 1957.