What Price Glory? is a 1924 comedy-drama written by poet/playwright Maxwell Anderson and journalist/critic/veteran Laurence Stallings . It was Anderson's first commercial success, with a long run on Broadway, starring Louis Wolheim .
51-457: James Maxwell Anderson (December 15, 1888 – February 28, 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist, and lyricist. Anderson faced many challenges in his career, frequently losing jobs for expressing his opinions or supporting controversial figures. Despite this, he found success as a dramatist and wrote a number of hit plays, including What Price Glory , Both Your Houses , and The Bad Seed . Many of his works were adapted for
102-609: A "big, dumb, goddamn Swede!" Anderson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his political drama Both Your Houses , and twice received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award , for Winterset , and High Tor . Anderson enjoyed great commercial success with a series of plays set during the reign of the Tudor family, who ruled England, Wales and Ireland from 1485 until 1603. One play in particular – Anne of
153-503: A book, South Mountain Road: A Daughter's Journey of Discovery describing how following her mother's suicide, she unearthed the fact that her parents never married. Anderson then married Gilda Hazard on June 6, 1954. This marriage was a happy one, lasting until Anderson's 1959 death. Anderson was an atheist. Anderson died in Stamford, Connecticut, on February 28, 1959, two days after suffering
204-417: A further sequel titled Women of All Nations in 1931, each with Lowe and McLaglen playing the same characters. A third sequel in 1933, Hot Pepper , with McLaglen and Lowe again reprising their roles, was directed by John Blystone . The original play was adapted for a film again in 1952, titled What Price Glory and starring James Cagney . The 1952 remake was directed by John Ford , who had directed
255-696: A high school English teacher in San Francisco. After three years, Anderson became chairman of the English department at Whittier College in 1917. He was fired after a year for public statements supporting Arthur Camp, a jailed student seeking status as a conscientious objector . Anderson moved to Palo Alto to write for the San Francisco Evening Bulletin , but he was fired for writing an editorial stating that it would be impossible for Germany to pay its war debt. He then moved to San Francisco to write for
306-565: A hit on Broadway with Helen Hayes in the title role. His play The Wingless Victory was written in verse and premiered in 1936 with Broadway actress Katharine Cornell in the lead role. It received mixed reviews. Two of Anderson's other historical plays, Valley Forge , about George Washington 's winter there with the Continental Army , and Barefoot in Athens , concerning the trial of Socrates , were adapted for television. Valley Forge
357-609: A magazine devoted to verse. Anderson wrote White Desert , his first play, in 1923; it ran only 12 performances, but it was well reviewed by Laurence Stallings of the New York World , who collaborated with him on his next play What Price Glory? , which was successfully produced in 1924 in New York City. Afterward, Anderson resigned from the World , launching his career as a dramatist. His plays are in widely varying styles, and Anderson
408-408: A number of years. Flagg is commissioned a captain in command of a company on the front lines of France during World War I . Sergeant Quirt is assigned to Flagg's unit as the senior non-commissioned officer . Flagg and Quirt quickly resume their rivalry, which this time takes its form over the affections of Charmaine, the daughter of the local innkeeper. However, Charmaine's desire for a husband and
459-501: A prophetic play about a vain, neurotic liar who cheats on her husband then commits suicide by inhaling gas after he catches her. It is around this same time, c. 1930 , that Anderson began a relationship with a married actress, Gertrude Higger (married name, Mab Maynard, stage name Mab Anthony). The affair led Anderson to split with Haskett, who later died in 1931 following a car accident and stroke. Mab divorced her husband, singer Charles V. Maynard, and moved in with Anderson. She
510-641: A renewal of blank verse with his volume of kaleidoscopic meditations, The Task , published in 1784. After Shakespeare and Milton, Cowper was the main influence on the next major poets in blank verse, teenagers when Cowper published his masterpiece. These were the Lake Poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge . Wordsworth used the form for many of the Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), and for his longest efforts, The Prelude and The Excursion . Wordsworth's verse recovers some of
561-585: A singing breath Save the curt history of life isled in death Honorary awards include the gold medal in Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954, an honorary doctor of literature degree from Columbia University in 1946, and an honorary doctor of humanities degree from the University of North Dakota in 1958. The largest collection of Maxwell Anderson's papers – over sixty boxes –
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#1732858200468612-474: A stroke, aged 70. He was cremated. Half of his ashes were scattered by the sea near his home in Stamford. The other half was buried in Anderson Cemetery near his birthplace in rural northwestern Pennsylvania. The inscription on his tombstone reads: Children of dust astray among the stars Children of earth adrift upon the night What is there in our darkness or our light To linger in prose or claim
663-452: A time when many other poets were turning to free verse . Marlowe and then Shakespeare developed its potential greatly in the late 16th century. Marlowe was the first to exploit the potential of blank verse for powerful and involved speech: You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds, That when they vomit forth into
714-440: Is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, usually in iambic pentameter . It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse". The first known use of blank verse in English was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his translation of
765-454: Is an extract spoken by Princess Ida after singing her entrance aria "Oh, goddess wise". Women of Adamant, fair neophytes— Who thirst for such instruction as we give, Attend, while I unfold a parable. The elephant is mightier than Man, Yet Man subdues him. Why? The elephant Is elephantine everywhere but here (tapping her forehead) And Man, whose brain is to the elephant's As Woman's brain to Man's—(that's rule of three),— Conquers
816-642: Is housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin and includes published and unpublished manuscript materials for plays, poems, and essays, as well as over 2,000 letters, diaries, financial papers, nearly 1,500 family photographs, and personal memorabilia are preserved along with 160 books from the playwright's library. The archive was placed at the Ransom Center in 1961 by Anderson's widow, Mrs. Gilda Hazard Anderson. Smaller collections of Anderson's papers can be found at institutions around
867-431: Is musical and regular; his lyric " Tears, Idle Tears " is probably the first important example of the blank verse stanzaic poem. Browning's blank verse, in poems like " Fra Lippo Lippi ", is more abrupt and conversational. Gilbert and Sullivan 's 1884 opera, Princess Ida , is based on Tennyson's "The Princess". Gilbert's dialogue is in blank verse throughout (although the other 13 Savoy operas have prose dialogue). Below
918-658: The Aeneid (composed c. 1540 ; published posthumously, 1554–1557 ). He may have been inspired by the Latin original since classical Latin verse did not use rhyme, or possibly he was inspired by Ancient Greek verse or the Italian verse form of versi sciolti , both of which also did not use rhyme. The play Arden of Faversham (around 1590 by an unknown author) is a notable example of end-stopped blank verse. The 1561 play Gorboduc by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville
969-541: The San Francisco Chronicle , but he was fired after contracting the Spanish flu and missing work. Alvin S. Johnson hired Anderson to move to New York City and write about politics for The New Republic in 1918, but he was fired after an argument with Editor-in-Chief Herbert David Croly . Anderson found work at The New York Globe and the New York World . In 1921 he founded The Measure: A Journal of Poetry ,
1020-601: The William March novel . He was hired by Alfred Hitchcock to write the screenplay for Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1957). Hitchcock also contracted with Anderson to write the screenplay for what became Vertigo (1958), but Hitchcock rejected his screenplay Darkling, I Listen . Anderson married Margaret Haskett, a classmate, on August 1, 1911, in Bottineau, North Dakota . They had three sons, Quentin , Alan, and Terence. In 1929, Anderson wrote Gypsy , what would prove to be
1071-407: The 17th century until Paradise Lost , in which Milton used it with much license. Milton used the flexibility of blank verse, its capacity to support syntactic complexity, to the utmost, in passages such as these: ....Into what Pit thou seest From what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd He with his Thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those Nor what
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#17328582004681122-454: The 20th century in original verse and in translations of narrative verse. Most of Robert Frost 's narrative and conversational poems are in blank verse; so are other poems like Wallace Stevens 's " The Idea of Order at Key West " and " The Comedian as the Letter C ", W. B. Yeats 's " The Second Coming ", W. H. Auden 's "The Watershed" and John Betjeman 's Summoned by Bells . A complete listing
1173-465: The Plains of Heav'n, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: Milton also wrote Paradise Regained and parts of Samson Agonistes in blank verse. In the century after Milton, there are few distinguished uses of either dramatic or non-dramatic blank verse; in keeping with
1224-477: The Potent Victor in his rage Can else inflict do I repent or change, Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind And high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit, That with the mightiest rais'd me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd In dubious Battel on
1275-513: The Stars , a story of South Africa based on the Alan Paton novel Cry, The Beloved Country . In 1950, Anderson and Weill began collaboration on a musical adaptation of Mark Twain 's Huckleberry Finn , but Weill died when only a few songs had been completed for it. Saturday's Children , Anderson's long-running 1927 comedy-drama about married life, in which Humphrey Bogart made an early appearance,
1326-511: The Thousand Days – the story of Henry VIII 's marriage to Anne Boleyn – was a hit on the stage in 1948, but did not reach movie screens for 21 years. It opened on Broadway starring Rex Harrison and Joyce Redman , and it became a 1969 movie with Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold . Elizabeth the Queen opened in 1930 with Lynn Fontanne as Elizabeth and Alfred Lunt as Lord Essex. It
1377-963: The air, My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven. Shakespeare developed this feature, and also the potential of blank verse for abrupt and irregular speech. For example, in this exchange from King John , one blank verse line is broken between two characters: My lord? A grave. He shall not live. Enough. Shakespeare also used enjambment increasingly often in his verse, and in his last plays
1428-649: The best known of his blank verse works. The blank verse of Keats in Hyperion is mainly modelled on that of Milton, but takes fewer liberties with the pentameter and possesses the characteristic of Keats's verse. Shelley's blank verse in The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound is closer to Elizabethan practice than to Milton's. Of the Victorian writers in blank verse, the most prominent are Tennyson and Robert Browning . Tennyson's blank verse in poems like "Ulysses" and "The Princess"
1479-472: The chief censor (Rear Admiral Charles Peshall Plunkett ) was discredited because he was found to have written far more obscene letters to General Chamberlaine. The only one of his plays that he adapted to the screen was Joan of Lorraine , which became the film Joan of Arc (1948), starring Ingrid Bergman , with a screenplay by Anderson and Andrew Solt . When Bergman and her director changed much of his dialogue to make Joan "a plaster saint", he called her
1530-423: The desire for regularity, most of the blank verse of this period is somewhat stiff. The best examples of blank verse from this time are probably John Dryden 's tragedy All for Love and James Thomson 's The Seasons . An example notable as much for its failure with the public as for its subsequent influence on the form is John Dyer 's The Fleece . At the close of the 18th century, William Cowper ushered in
1581-488: The farm. It was published under the pseudonym John Nairne Michealson to prevent offending family. The Andersons lived in Andover, Ohio; Richmond Center, Ohio; Townville, Pennsylvania; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; McKeesport, Pennsylvania; New Brighton, Pennsylvania; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Jamestown, North Dakota. Anderson attended Jamestown High School, graduating in 1908. As an undergraduate, Anderson waited tables and worked at
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1632-427: The foolish giant of the woods, As Woman, in her turn, shall conquer Man. In Mathematics, Woman leads the way: The narrow-minded pedant still believes That two and two make four! Why, we can prove, We women—household drudges as we are— That two and two make five—or three—or seven; Or five-and-twenty, if the case demands! Blank verse, of varying degrees of regularity, has been used quite frequently throughout
1683-755: The freedom of Milton's, but is generally far more regular: Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! And again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. – Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs... Coleridge's blank verse is more technical than Wordsworth's, but he wrote little of it: Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost Beauties and feelings, such as would have been Most sweet to my remembrance even when age had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile... His conversation poems such as " The Eolian Harp " and " Frost at Midnight " are
1734-479: The green sour ringlets make Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid, Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war – to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt;... This very free treatment of blank verse
1785-662: The night copy desk of the Grand Forks Herald , and he was active in the school's literary and dramatic societies. He obtained a BA in English Literature from the University of North Dakota in 1911. Anderson became the principal of a high school in Minnewaukan, North Dakota, also teaching English there, but was fired in 1913 for making pacifist statements to his students. He then entered Stanford University, obtaining an Master's degree in English Literature in 1914. He became
1836-616: The play on a California stage tour in 1949 with a gala cast (including Pat O'Brien , Ward Bond , Maureen O'Hara , Gregory Peck and John Wayne ) as a benefit for the Military Order of the Purple Heart , of which Ford was a commander. Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt - radio situation comedy (1941-42). This United States theatre–related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Blank verse Blank verse
1887-532: The primary censorship authority, Rear Admiral Charles P. Plunkett , was revealed by columnist Heywood Broun to have written a far more vulgar series of letters to a General Chatelaine. The play's success allowed Anderson to quit teaching and journalism, and start his long and successful career as a professional playwright. It was included in Burns Mantle 's The Best Plays of 1924-1925 . Flagg and Quirt are veteran United States Marines whose rivalry dates back
1938-513: The reality of war give the two men a common cause. (In the order listed in Three American plays (1926), by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings (p.2): In 1926 the play was adapted into a film, What Price Glory? , directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Edmund Lowe as Quirt and Victor McLagen as Flagg. Walsh also directed a musical sequel film three years later when sound films emerged in 1929, titled The Cock-Eyed World , and
1989-471: The screen, and he wrote screenplays for other authors' works as well. Anderson was married three times and had a tumultuous personal life, dying in 1959 after suffering a stroke. His papers and personal effects can be found in various institutions, with the largest collection housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania,
2040-430: The second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela ('Premely') Stephenson, both of Scotch-Irish descent. His family initially lived on his maternal grandmother Sheperd's farm in Atlantic, then moved to Andover, Ohio, where his father became a railroad fireman while studying to become a minister. They moved often, to follow their father's ministerial posts, and Maxwell
2091-727: The world, including the Chester Fritz Library , the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts , and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. What Price Glory%3F (play) The play depicted the rivalry between two U.S. Marine Corps officers fighting in France during World War I. The play was notable for its profanity, "toot goddam sweet," etc., and for censorship efforts by military and religious groups. These efforts failed when
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2142-479: Was a significant help with clerical duties, but had expensive tastes and spent Anderson's money freely. Their daughter Hesper was born August 1934. Anderson left Maynard following the discovery of her affair with Max's friend, TV producer Jerry Stagg. The combination of losing Anderson, their massive tax debt, and the loss of her home proved too much for Mab, who on March 21, 1953, after several unsuccessful attempts, committed suicide by breathing car exhaust. Hesper wrote
2193-406: Was adapted for television on three occasions – in 1950, 1951 and 1975. Anderson wrote book and lyrics for two successful musicals with composer Kurt Weill . Knickerbocker Holiday , about the early Dutch settlers of New York, featured Walter Huston as Peter Stuyvesant . The show's standout number " September Song " became a popular standard. So did the title song of Anderson and Weill's Lost in
2244-456: Was adapted to the screen as The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn . Directed by John Ford , Mary of Scotland (1936) was an adaptation of his play of the same name involving Elizabeth I, starring Katharine Hepburn as Mary, Queen of Scots , Fredric March as the Earl of Bothwell , and Florence Eldridge as Elizabeth. The original play had been
2295-415: Was filmed three times – in 1929 as a part-talkie , in 1935 (in almost unrecognizable form) as a B-film Maybe It's Love , and again in 1940 under its original title, starring John Garfield in one of his few romantic comedies. The play was adapted for television in three condensed versions in 1950, 1952 and 1962. His last successful Broadway stage play was 1954's The Bad Seed , Anderson's adaption of
2346-471: Was frequently sick, missing a great deal of school. He used his time sick in bed to read voraciously, and both his parents and Aunt Emma were storytellers, which contributed to Anderson's love of literature. During a visit to his grandmother's house in Atlantic, at age 11, he met the first love of his life, Hallie Loomis, a slightly older girl from a wealthier family. His autobiographical tale Morning, Winter and Night told of rape, incest and sadomasochism on
2397-421: Was given to using feminine endings (in which the last syllable of the line is unstressed, for instance lines 3 and 6 of the following example); all of this made his later blank verse extremely rich and varied. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do
2448-424: Was imitated by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and led to general metrical looseness in the hands of less skilled users. However, Shakespearean blank verse was used with some success by John Webster and Thomas Middleton in their plays. Ben Jonson , meanwhile, used a tighter blank verse with less enjambment in his comedies Volpone and The Alchemist . Blank verse was not much used in the non-dramatic poetry of
2499-557: Was one of the few modern playwrights to make extensive use of blank verse . Some of these were adapted as films, and Anderson wrote the screenplays of other authors' plays and novels – All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Death Takes a Holiday (1934) – in addition to books of poetry and essays. His first Broadway hit was the 1924 World War I comedy-drama, What Price Glory , written with Laurence Stallings . The play made use of profanity, which caused censors to protest. However,
2550-404: Was the first English play to use blank verse. Christopher Marlowe was the first English author to achieve critical fame for his use of blank verse. The major achievements in English blank verse were made by William Shakespeare , who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed iambic pentameter , and John Milton , whose Paradise Lost is written in blank verse. Miltonic blank verse
2601-696: Was widely imitated in the 18th century by such poets as James Thomson (in The Seasons ) and William Cowper (in The Task ). Romantic English poets such as William Wordsworth , Percy Bysshe Shelley , and John Keats used blank verse as a major form. Shortly afterwards, Alfred, Lord Tennyson became particularly devoted to blank verse, using it for example in his long narrative poem " The Princess ", as well as for one of his most famous poems: " Ulysses ". Among American poets, Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are notable for using blank verse in extended compositions at
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