Sidney Coe Howard

Sidney Coe Howard 1891-1939, American dramatist, b. Oakland, Calif., grad. Univ. of California, 1915, and studied under George Pierce Baker at Harvard. His first successful play was They Knew What They Wanted (1924; Pulitzer Prize), a compassionate drama set in the wine-producing region of California. It was followed by such plays as Ned McCobb's Daughter (1926), about a courageous New England resort owner; The Silver Cord (1926), concerning possessive maternalism; and Yellow Jack (1934), a dramatization of man's struggle against yellow fever. Howard's other works include the adaptation The Late Christopher Bean (1932) and the Academy Award winning screenplay for the movie Gone With the Wind (1939).

Howard, Sidney [Coe] (1891–1939), playwright. Born to pioneer stock in Oakland, California, he studied at the University of California and with Professor George Pierce Baker in his 47 Workshop at Harvard. Howard then worked on magazines and newspapers before his first play, the romantic verse drama Swords (1921), reached New York. His first success was They Knew What They Wanted (1924), followed by Lucky Sam McCarver (1925), Ned McCobb's Daughter (1926), and The Silver Cord (1926). Howard endured a series of failures before finding success again with The Late Christopher Bean (1932), Alien Corn (1933), and his 1934 dramatization of Sinclair Lewis's Dodsworth. In 1938 he joined in founding the Playwrights' Company. For the rest of his career Howard's new plays met with divided notices and poor box office response. Ironically, after he died in an accident on his farm, two of his works found better receptions: the adaptation of an old Chinese classic, Lute Song (1946), written with Will Irwin; and the fantasy Madam, Will You Walk (1953), a play that had closed on the road in 1939 but was superbly revived by the Phoenix Theatre. Theatre historian Glenn Hughes observed, “Howard's work was always vigorous and biting, but frequently repellent. At times, too, it lacked form and compactness. He was a headstrong writer, and his enthusiasms were apt to carry him beyond the bounds of dramatic propriety.” But his best work also showed a compassionate, tolerant understanding of human foibles and a zest for life.

Howard, Sidney Coe (1891–1939), American dramatist. His first play to be produced, a romantic verse drama entitled Swords (1922), was a failure; but success came with the Pulitzer Prize-winner They Knew What They Wanted (1924), a drama about a middle-aged Italian and his mail-order bride set in grape-growers' country in Howard's native state of California. It was followed by Lucky Sam McCarver (1925), the portrait of a night-club proprietor, Ned McCobb's Daughter and The Silver Cord (both 1926), the first a sympathetic tale of a New England woman at odds with rum-runners, the second a study of maternal possessiveness. The position of the artist in an unsympathetic community was the theme of Alien Corn (1933), a somewhat melodramatic piece starring Katharine Cornell; Yellow Jack (1934) was a factually accurate account of the fight against yellow fever; The Ghost of Yankee Doodle (1937), though only moderately successful in production, was perhaps the most satisfactory of Howard's plays, showing how in all classes of society economic considerations overcome the normal aversion to war. Howard had just finished the first draft of Madam, Will You Walk? when he was killed in an accident. It was produced in 1953 but, lacking the author's revisions, was not a success.

Howard was a prolific translator and adaptor, being responsible for the American versions of Vildrac's Le Paquebot Tenacity in 1922 and René Fauchois's Prenez garde à la peinture in 1932, among others. As The Late Christopher Bean, the latter had a great success, and was further adapted for British audiences by Emlyn Williams. Howard also dramatized Sinclair Lewis's novel Dodsworth in 1934 and was the joint adaptor of a 14th-century Chinese play as Lute Song, eventually staged as a musical, with Mary Martin, in 1946.