Behrman, S[amuel] N[athaniel] (1893–1973), playwright. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, he studied at Clark University before enrolling in Professor George P.
Baker's
47 Workshop at Harvard. Behrman worked as book reviewer, play reader, and press agent before he turned to playwriting. His first two efforts, written with others, never reached New York, but he scored with his first solo effort,
The Second Man (1927). Behrman found little success with
Love Is Like That (1927),
Serena Blandish (1929),
Meteor (1929), and
Brief Moment (1931), but he triumphed with what is considered his finest work:
Biography (1932). Somewhat less successful were
Rain from Heaven (1934) and
End of Summer (1936). In 1937 he adapted Jean
Giraudoux's
Amphitryon 38 for the Lunts, but in the following year came a cropper with
Wine of Choice. Another high point in Behrman's career was
No Time for Comedy (1939), but his serious drama
The Talley Method (1941) did not run. Returning to comedy and to the Lunts, he scored a popular success with
The Pirate (1942). A second comic adaptation, from Franz Werfel, won favor as
Jacobowsky and the Colonel (1944), a saga of a Jewish refugee and an anti‐Semitic Polish colonel together fleeing the Nazis. His drama
Dunnigan's Daughter (1945) and character study
Jane (1947), based on a Somerset
Maugham story, could not find an audience, while an adaptation of Marcel Achard's
Auprès de Ma Blonde as
I Know My Love (1949) ran largely on the appeal of the Lunts. After two attempts that closed out of town, Behrman had a hit when he co‐wrote the libretto for
Fanny (1954) with Joshua
Logan. In 1958 he offered
The Cold Wind and the Warm, a semi‐autobiographical look at Jewish life in his hometown at the turn of the century, and in 1962 wrote
Lord Pengo, which was loosely based on his biography of the famous art dealer Duveen. Berhman's last play, which he called a “serious comedy,” was
But for Whom Charlie (1964), which depicted the exploitation of a selfless philanthropist. Like those of his closest rival in the field of high comedy, Philip
Barry, Behrman's writings were marked by a distinctive dichotomy. But whereas Barry's best work drew strength from his interweaving of wit and despair, Behrman's sometimes profited and sometimes was hurt by his unique mixture of brilliant, high social comedy and increasingly strong political (leftish) colorings. Joseph Wood
Krutch observed in
Literary History of the United States, “Faced with the problem of writing comedy in an atmosphere which many are ready to say makes comedy either impossible or impertinent, he thus invented something which might not improperly be called the comedy of illumination.” Autobiography:
People in a Diary, 1972; biography:
S. N. Behrman, K. Reed, 1975.
