Thornton Wilder (110 page)

56.
TNW to Katharine Cornell, April 8, 1932
SL
, 254–55.

57.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, November 2, 1932,
SL
, 255–59.

58.
Katharine Cornell,
I Wanted to Be an Actress: The Autobiography of Katharine Cornell
(New York: Random House, 1938), 117–18.

59.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, August 30, 1933, New York University.

60.
TNW to Ruth Gordon, June 18, 1933, Private Collection.

61.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, August 30, 1933, New York University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

22: “HOME” (1930S)

1.
TNW to Family, October 21, 1920. TNW Collection, YCAL.

2.
TNW, “A PREFACE FOR OUR TOWN,”
New York Times,
February 13, 1938. The preface is reprinted in TNW,
Our Town
(New York: HarperPerennial, 2003), as well as in TNW,
American Characteristics
; Tappan Wilder,
The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder,
vol. 2; and McClatchy,
Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater
.

3.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, December 11, 1933, YCAL.

4.
APW to L. N. Flint, June 17, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

5.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, [May 1931?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

6.
TNW to Leslie Glenn, July 15, 1932, TNW Collection, YCAL.

7.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, [no day], 1933, TNW Collection, YCAL.

8.
Dr. John Beebe to APW, March 30, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

9.
Charlotte Wilder to APW, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters. (“December 1930” is written in another hand at the top of the letter.)

10.
Ibid.

11.
Charlotte Wilder to APW, [Summer 1933 or 1934, judging by return address: Christodora House, 147 Avenue B, New York], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

12.
Janet Wilder Dakin, “Light and Shadow: An Autobiographical Sketch of My Childhood (1910–1923),” TS, headed, in JWD's handwriting, “A talk I am giving today,” and dated February 22, 1982, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged manuscripts. Janet apparently sent her fifteen-page typescript to Isabel Wilder. In notes on the manuscript, Isabel not only corrected her sister's memory of certain events, but challenged some of Janet's personal reflections.

13.
Ibid.

14.
Ibid.

15.
Janet Wilder Dakin to Tappan Wilder, March 13, 1978, Private Collection.

16.
Janet Wilder Dakin, “Light and Shadow: An Autobiographical Sketch of My Childhood.”

17.
TNW to Ruth Gordon, June 18, 1933, Private Collection.

18.
Janet Wilder to Family, February 6, 1938, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters. There is no record of her family's response to Janet's diet.

19.
Janet Wilder Dakin to Tappan Wilder, March 13, 1978, Private Collection.

20.
“A thoroughly American story”: Isabel Wilder to Charlotte Wilder, March 28, [1934?], TNW Collection, uncataloged papers. “Had a modest success”: ANW, “Isabel's Writings,” June 4, 1987, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.

21.
Isabel Wilder to Charlotte Wilder, [1933 or 1934?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

22.
Charlotte Wilder to Isabel Wilder, [1940?; as Charlotte refers to her Guggenheim application, which was submitted on March 3 of that year], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

23.
Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters. (“March 1933” in Isabella's hand.)

24.
Charlotte Wilder to APW, [from Yaddo, Summer 1933?], TNW Collection, uncataloged letters. During the summers of 1928 and 1929 Charlotte taught English and literature in the Barnard Summer School for Women Workers in Industry at Barnard College in New York City.

25.
APW to Charlotte Wilder, September 7, 1932, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

26.
TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [September 3, 1933?], TNW Collection, YCAL. ANW received his Ph.D. at Yale in 1933. Isabel's first novel was published in 1933. Charlotte Wilder went to Yaddo in 1933. She resigned her teaching post at Smith College in 1933 so that she could write full-time.

27.
See Robert Pollock to Charlotte Wilder, August 3, 1925, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

28.
Charlotte Wilder to Ernestine Friedmann, n.d. and September 8, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters. Ernestine Friedmann to Charlotte Wilder, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

29.
Charlotte Wilder to ANW, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters. (“1932,” written in ANW's hand.)

30.
Charlotte Wilder, untitled manuscript, April 2, [1932?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged manuscript.

31.
Ibid.

32.
APW to Charlotte Wilder, February 8, [1930?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

33.
Charlotte Wilder to ANW, [1932?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

34.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, January 17, 1935, Private Collection.

35.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, [postmarked November 17, 1934], Private Collection.

36.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, December 13, 1934, Private Collection.

37.
ANW, quoted by Tappan Wilder, “Amos Niven Wilder: The Memorial Service,” June 21, 1993.

38.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, December 25, [1934?], Private Collection.

39.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, January 17, 1935, Private Collection.

40.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, February 11, [1935?], Private Collection.

41.
TNW to Leslie Glenn, [March 1935?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

42.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, February 15, [1935?], Private Collection.

43.
“Amos Niven Wilder: The Memorial Service,” June 21, 1993, Private Collection.

44.
APW to Charlotte Wilder, January 29, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

45.
TNW to Grace Foresman, October 6, 1934, TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
TNW to Sarah Frantz, October 13, 1934,
SL
, 287–88.

47.
TNW to Grace Foresman, December 21, 1934, TNW Collection, YCAL.

48.
ANW to Catharine Kerlin, January 9, [1935?], Private Collection. The name was Marian Truby.

49.
TNW to Amos Niven and Catharine Kerlin Wilder, September 22, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

50.
TNW,
Heaven's My Destination,
22–23.

51.
Ibid., 27.

52.
Ibid., 170.

53.
Ibid., 177.

54.
Ibid., 176.

55.
Ibid., 180.

 

23: “STRANDS AND THREADS” (1930S)

1.
TNW, “James Joyce, 1882–1941,”
American Characteristics,
168.

2.
TNW to Dwight Dana, December 9, 1934, Private Collection.

3.
TNW to Dwight Dana, May 16, 1934, Private Collection.

4.
TNW,
Joan of Arc: Treatment for Motion Pictures,
March 1934, TNW Collection, YCAL.

5.
Ibid. TNW took a proprietary interest in his rejected scenario for
Joan of Arc
, and approached Cass Canfield at Harper about publishing it. TNW argued that it would be the first movie scenario to be published in English, and publication would preserve the work from alteration. Nothing came of that proposal, however, and TNW's treatment rested among his papers after his death, until it was published in the
Yale Review
in 2003.

6.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, August 29, [1934?]; YCAL. (TNW misdated this letter 1933.)

7.
Mollie Herrick, “Hollywood Sidelights,” September 14, 1934, quoted in A. Tappan Wilder, “Movie Treatment for Joan of Arc,”
Yale Review
91, no. 4 (October 2003): 1–34.

8.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, October 7, 1934, YCAL.

9.
TNW to Family, [1933?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Hughes wrote a three-volume biography of George Washington.

10.
TNW to Charles Laughton, September 2, 1934,
SL
, 280–82.

11.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, August 31, 1934, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1770), HLH. While we do not know why TNW chose this pseudonym in 1934, an actor who changed his name to James Craven played movie and television villains, beginning in 1940.

12.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 8, 1934, TNW Collection, YCAL.

13.
TNW to Grace Foresman, October 6, 1934, TNW Collection, YCAL.

14.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, December 6, 1934, YCAL.

15.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, August 25, 1934, TNW Collection, YCAL.

16.
Tappan Wilder, introduction to “Joan of Arc: Treatment for Motion Pictures,” 4–5. This article provides background on TNW's sojourns in Hollywood.

17.
Lee Keedick to TNW, March 1, 1933, TNW Collection, YCAL.

18.
TNW to Lee Keedick, January 14, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

19.
TNW to Sarah M. Frantz, October 13, 1934,
SL
, 287–88.

20.
TNW to Lee Keedick, January 9, 1936, TNW Collection, YCAL. The Keedick letters are drawn from either the TNW Collection, YCAL, or a private collection, as noted in each instance. The Keedick correspondence at YCAL can be found in Call #162, Box 5, Folder 102.

21.
TNW to Dwight Dana, August 18, 1938, Private Collection. TNW's name was not listed among the writing credits for
Golden Boy
and
Union Pacific
when they were released in 1939.

22.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, August 29, [1934],
SL
, 266–67. (TNW misdated this letter 1933.)

23.
TNW to Dwight Dana, August 18, 1938, Private Collection.

24.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, January 27, 1938,
SL
, 333–37.

25.
TNW to J. Dwight Dana, January 18, [1934?], Private Collection. (Wilder mistakenly wrote 1933.)

26.
Cass Canfield for Harper & Brothers to Albert and Charles Boni, August 29, 1934, carbon copy, Private Collection.

27.
TNW to Harper & Brothers, September 29, 1924, carbon copy, Private Collection.

28.
Charles Bloch, A & C Boni, Inc., to J. Dwight Dana, November 21, 1934, carbon copy, TNW Collection, YCAL.

29.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, August 29, [1934?],
SL
, 266–67. (TNW misdated this letter 1933.)

30.
Mabel Dodge Luhan to TNW, April 6, [1929?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

31.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, May 19, 1934, YCAL.

32.
TNW, “Taos,” holograph manuscript, 1934, YCAL.

33.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, May 19, 1924, YCAL.

34.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, November 2, 1932,
SL
, 255–59.

35.
Ibid. Lines from Nietzsche's
The Wanderer and His Shadow
are quoted from Walter Kaufmann, ed.,
Basic Writings of Nietzsche
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), 165. Edward M. Burns, Ulla E. Dydo, and William Rice point out that Wilder may have drawn from Nietzsche's
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
for the moment when Brush says, “If you do pure good to a man that's harmed you that shames him too much. No man is so bad that you ought to shame him that way. . . . You ought to do just a little bit of bad in return so he can keep his self-respect.” As Nietzsche expresses it, “But if you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame.” Burns, Dydo, and Rice, eds.,
The Letters of Gertrude Stein & Thornton Wilder
(New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996), 11n8.

36.
TNW to Creighton Barker, M.D., February 3, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

37.
Ibid.

38.
TNW to William Frazier, July 5, 1935,
SL
, 295–96.

39.
Ibid.

40.
TNW to Les Glenn, [March 1935?],
SL
, 291–93.

41.
Gertude Stein,
Everybody's Autobiography
(New York: Random House, 1937; reprint, Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 1991
)
, 173.

42.
For detailed background on the production of
Xerxes,
see Burns, Dydo, and Rice,
The Letters of Gertrude Stein & Thornton Wilder
, 356–60.

43.
TNW to Dwight Dana, June 10, 1935, Private Collection.

44.
ANW, “Don Quixote in the American Scene,”
Anglican Theological Review
25, no. 3 (July 1943), 272–80.

45.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [August 1933?],
SL
, 268–71.

46.
According to Simon Callow, Welles “was always delighted to admit” that he “stole” the idea from Wilder and
The Long Christmas Dinner.
See Simon Callow,
Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), 504.