Robert E. Sherwood | |
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 Sherwood in 1928 | |
| Born | Robert Emmet Sherwood (1896-04-04)April 4, 1896 New Rochelle, New York, U.S. |
| Died | November 14, 1955(1955-11-14) (aged 59) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Education | Harvard University (BA) |
| Notable works | Waterloo Bridge Idiot's Delight Abe Lincoln in Illinois Rebecca There Shall Be No Night The Best Years of Our Lives The Bishop's Wife |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama(1936, 1939, 1941) Academy Award for Best Screenplay (1947) Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1948) |
| Spouse | |
Robert Emmet Sherwood (April 4, 1896 – November 14, 1955) was an American playwright and screenwriter.
He is the author ofWaterloo Bridge,Idiot's Delight,Abe Lincoln in Illinois,There Shall Be No Night, andThe Best Years of Our Lives. He was a screenwriter on the adapted filmsRebecca andThe Bishop's Wife.
He received thePulitzer Prize for Drama(1936, 1939, 1941), anAcademy Award for Best Screenplay (1947) and aPulitzer Prize for Biography (1948).
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Born in 1896 inNew Rochelle, New York, Robert was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker who co-foundedThe Harvard Lampoon while in college, and his wife, the formerRosina Emmet, a highly accomplished illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood.[1] His paternal grandmother,Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood, was an author and social leader. He was a great-great-grandson of the formerNew York State Attorney GeneralThomas Addis Emmet and a great-grandnephew of the Irish nationalistRobert Emmet, who was executed for high treason after leading theIrish rebellion of 1803, one of a series of attempts to dislodgeBritish rule in Ireland, in 1803. His relatives also included three other notable American portrait artists: his aunts,Lydia Field Emmet andJane Emmet de Glehn, and his first cousin, once removed,Ellen Emmet Rand.
Sherwood was educated atFay School,[2]Milton Academy and thenHarvard University from 1914 to 1917. Sherwood left Harvard to enlist in the42nd Battalion of theCanadian Expeditionary Force, after the United States Army rejected him as being too tall. During his World War I service in France he wasgassed and wounded twice.[3] After his return to the United States, he began working as a movie critic for magazines includingLife andVanity Fair.[4] Sherwood's career as a critic in the 1920s is discussed in the 2009 documentaryFor the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. In this filmTime criticRichard Schickel discusses, among other topics, how Sherwood was the first New York critic invited to Hollywood by cross-country train to meet the stars and directors.
Sherwood was one of the original members of theAlgonquin Round Table. He was close friends withDorothy Parker andRobert Benchley, who were on the staff ofVanity Fair with Sherwood when the Round Table began meeting in 1919. AuthorEdna Ferber was also a good friend.
In 1920, Sherwood became editor ofLife.
Sherwood's first Broadway play,The Road to Rome (1927), a comedy concerningHannibal's botched invasion of Rome, introduced one of his favoritethemes: the futility of war. Many of his later dramatic works employed variations of this theme, includingIdiot's Delight (1936), which won Sherwood the first of fourPulitzer Prizes. According to legend, he once admitted to the gossip columnistLucius Beebe: “The trouble with me is that I start with a big message and end up with nothing but good entertainment.”[5]
Sherwood was actively engaged with the advocacy for writers' rights within the theatre world. From 1937 to 1939, Sherwood served as the seventh president of theDramatists Guild of America.
Sherwood's Broadway success soon attracted the attention of Hollywood; he began writing for movies in 1926. While some of his work went uncredited, his films included many adaptations of his plays. He also collaborated withAlfred Hitchcock andJoan Harrison in writing the screenplay forRebecca (1940).
With Europe in the midst of World War II, Sherwood set aside his anti-war stance to support the fight against theThird Reich.There Shall Be No Night, his 1940 play about the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland, was produced by the Playwright's Company that he co-founded, and it starredAlfred Lunt,Lynn Fontanne, andMontgomery Clift.Katharine Cornell produced and starred in a 1957 TV adaptation on TV.[6] Sherwood publicly ridiculed isolationistCharles Lindbergh as a "Nazi with a Nazi's Olympian contempt for all democratic processes".[7]
During this period Sherwood also served as a speechwriter for PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt. He recounted the experience in his bookRoosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History,[8] which won the 1949Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and a 1949Bancroft Prize.[9] Sherwood is credited with originating the phrase that eventually evolved to "Arsenal of Democracy", a notable speech and a frequent catchphrase in FDR's wartime addresses. Sherwood was quoted on May 12, 1940, byThe New York Times, "This country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies."[10]
After serving as director of the Overseas Branch of theOffice of War Information from 1943 until the conclusion of the war,[11] he returned to dramatic writing with the movieThe Best Years of Our Lives, directed byWilliam Wyler. The 1946 film, which explores changes in the lives of three soldiers after they return home from war, earned Sherwood anAcademy Award for Best Screenplay.[12]
Sherwood stood 6 feet 8 inches (2.03 m) tall. Dorothy Parker, who was 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m), once commented that when she, Sherwood, and Robert Benchley (6 feet (1.8 m)) walked down the street together, they resembled "a walking pipe organ." When asked at a party how long he had known Sherwood, Benchley stood on a chair, raised his hand to the ceiling, and said "I knew Bob Sherwood back when he was only this tall."[13]
In 1949, comedianGroucho Marx also commented about Sherwood's height during a filmed radio broadcast of the quiz showYou Bet Your Life. Groucho, who hosted the popular series, interviewed in one episode American football player Howard Scala, a member of the NFL'sGreen Bay Packers. Impressed by Scala's own considerable height, Marx shared the following anecdote with the show's audience:
Reminds me of Bob Sherwood, the playwright, he's an old friend of mine; and he's six-foot-five and very thin. I said to him one day 'Bob, what do you say to people when they ask you how the weather is up there?' He said 'I spit in their eye and tell ‘em it's raining.'[14][15]
Sherwood died of a heart attack in New York City in 1955. A production ofSmall War on Murray Hill, his final work, debuted on Broadway at theEthel Barrymore Theatre on January 3, 1957.[16]
Sherwood was portrayed by actorNick Cassavetes inMrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a 1994 movie about the Algonquin Round Table.[17]
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