thompson, david s. “what price pulitzer?” paper...

What Price Pulitzer? 1

Thompson, David S. “What Price Pulitzer?” Paper Presentation. Theatre Symposium

2006: “Theatre and the Moral Order.” Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA. 1 April

2006.

What Price Pulitzer?

Each year, the theatre community joins an increasingly broad spectrum of arts and culture

concerns in bestowing a litany of annual awards. The Pulitzer Prize for Drama occupies a unique

place in American theatrical culture. Its prominence bestows potentially increased significance

upon the circumstances surrounding each citation.1 For example, one might interpret the fact that

the Pulitzer Board elected not to bestow a prize for 2006 as an indication of a fallow period in

American playwriting or a lack of appreciation for the work of Christopher Durang, Rolin Jones

and Adam Rapp, the finalists for the prize. The 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama may suggest,

depending upon perspective, that audiences yearned for the moral debate of a play such as Doubt

or that John Patrick Shanley was overdue for a major theatre award or that there simply were not

many viable choices available. The award may also suggest trends. The Pulitzers to Paula

Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive (1998) and Margaret Edson’s Wit (1999) and Suzan Lori

Parks’s Topdog/Underdog (2002) may be seen as signaling a reemergence of women as

commercial playwrights, a promise similar to observations made in the 1980s about Beth

Henley, Marsha Norman and Wendy Wasserstein.

Trends and promises, however, have a down side. Citing an analysis undoubtedly

familiar to many, in The Feminist Spectator as Critic, Jill Dolan discusses the production history

of Marsha Norman’s 'night Mother and the attendant popular criticism as an example of gender-

biased reception and media polarization over issues of gender differences.2 She continues by

outlining some of the related questions of intent, the nature of the canon, and universality of


subject matter. Particularly in the case of the latter, Dolan notes the influence of the Pulitzer

Prize on the public's interest and attitudes:

After Norman won the Pulitzer Prize, the press documents the effect of the

national attention the honor conferred. Variety exclaimed, ‘What a difference a

Pulitzer makes.’ The reporter noted that 'night Mother had doubled its $5,000-per-

day box office income and that advance sales were starting to build. The Pulitzer

award had a favorable impact on the public's perception of the play and

influenced spectators’ expectations by validating and legitimizing the production.3

This is not the first instance of the Pulitzer wielding a significant influence regarding the

general opinion toward its female recipients. The first three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays written

by women—Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett, Susan Glaspell's Alison's House, and Zoe Akins's The

Old Maid—provide interesting cases. However, an analysis of the circumstances surrounding

these citations reveals a perception far different from that of “validating and legitimizing.” This

investigation will demonstrate that the award, and especially the surrounding controversy, rather

than cementing the reputation of these earlier playwrights and their plays, had the effect of

calling into question the legitimacy of these works as worthy of a national honor. Imbedded

within each controversy is an implied sexism combined with a curious anti-theatricality that

shifts the focus away from the work of each playwright and toward considerations that lie apart

from the plays themselves.

One contextual note regarding the selection of the plays and playwrights for this

exploration may prove helpful prior to considering them in earnest. By selecting the work of

these particular women, I do not wish to imply that, by extension, the circumstances described

here necessarily apply to the other women who have received the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.


Although the interplay of politics and personalities associated with the other female Pulitzer

playwrights—Mary Chase, Frances Goodrich, Ketti Frings, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman,

Wendy Wasserstein, Paula Vogel and Margaret Edson—may provide fertile ground for

investigation, their stories lie beyond the scope of this article. The three plays noted carry the

obvious ordinal distinction of offering the first three examples of female authorship in the

award’s history (each of the plays premiered during the initial period of the Pulitzer Prize

administration). The plays also fall into a relatively brief span of time between the World Wars,

and display a spirit which owes much to the so-called “simpler time” prior to the turn of the

twentieth century. Each of these factors may subtly contribute to the system of events described

below, thus providing additional links among the plays.

The Pulitzer Prize

Before exploring the plays individually, a brief background regarding the constitution of

the prizes seems appropriate. Here, three factors have the greatest bearing on the award in drama:

the motives of Joseph Pulitzer, the character of Columbia University’s President Nicholas

Murray Butler, and the rules for awarding the prize. In his book covering the history of the first

six decades of the Pulitzer Prizes, John Hohenberg traces some of Pulitzer’s correspondence and

actions, offering a revealing insight into the motives underlying his desire to create an award

apparatus. In 1902, Pulitzer was well aware of the significance of the first Nobel Prizes awarded

in the previous year. However, he also concerned himself with a rumor that a rival publisher,

James Gordon Bennett, had a plan to establish a school of journalism by placing the New York

Herald in trust as a source of funding. This coupled with Andrew Carnegie’s pronouncement


that the wealthy should administer their fortunes as trustees of the public good prompted Pulitzer

to increase his contributions to Columbia University. An initial gift of $100,000 in scholarships

blossomed into a $2 million endowment, of which $500,000 would be earmarked for prizes “for

the encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of

education.”4

Because of various disagreements with Butler about the administration of the prizes and

the advisory board of the School of Journalism, Pulitzer decided that Columbia should postpone

the implementation of his plan until after his death. Ostensibly, this maneuver was designed to

save the publisher from further unpleasantness. However, in so doing Pulitzer abdicated any

future influence over the specific direction of American journalistic and literary writing in favor

of the perception of the broad influence carried by a named award. As he states in the postscript

of a letter to the chairman of Columbia's Trustees, “To the plan of the prizes I am much attached

and believe that in the future it will be of the greatest possible benefit and renown to the

university, possibly greater than the school itself.”5

A second factor comes into play in the personality of Nicholas Murray Butler. Butler was

a man of prodigious accomplishments. He was appointed as Columbia’s acting president in

1901 and served as president from 1902 to 1945. He cultivated many substantial gifts to the

university including those of Joseph Pulitzer and Andrew Carnegie. He even shared the Nobel

Peace Prize in 1931 for promoting the Kellogg-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris.

Yet Butler was also committed to the ideals of the orthodox elements of the Republican

Party. In 1912 he was nominated as running mate in William Taft’s re-election bid following the

sudden death of Vice President James Sherman. He was characterized a moralistic man who

sought to preserve the virtues of the mid-Victorian society which he felt defined the nation. His


appointment to the presidency of Columbia at age 40 demonstrates some measure of his ambition

and intellect.6 However, the level of his conservativism and the extent of his authoritarian rule

surface most clearly in his responses to United States involvement in World War I.

President Butler, with America's entry into the war, proclaimed a moratorium on

academic freedom in which he threatened all faculty members who ‘are not with

whole heart and mind and strength committed to fight with us to make the world

safe for democracy.’ There were two casualties—Professor James McKeen Cattell

and Assistant Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, who were dismissed

by the Trustees for activities that ‘tended to promote disloyalty.’7

The awards procedure also provided a shaky foundation upon which to build a monument

to American creativity. Pulitzer’s will stipulates the following:

Annually, for the best original American play, performed in New York, which

shall best represent the educational value and power of the American

stage in raising the standard of good morals, good taste, and good manners, One

thousand dollars ($1,000).

Within this charge, the term “best” has been replaced by “a distinguished” as prize

administrators found agreeing upon the best creation an invitation to internal dispute. Of course

the whole notion of offering an award to anyone perceived as simply a distinguished example

rather than a demonstration of superiority on some level seems a bit disingenuous. However,

other wordings in Joseph Pulitzer's wishes—terms such as “educational,” “morals,” and

“taste”—also beg debate. (Indeed, the interpretation of these concepts would become the central

points of contention in several Pulitzer decisions.)


Those making the selections also form a curious configuration. The Pulitzer Prize is

selected by its Advisory Board (later renamed the Pulitzer Prize Board), on the basis of a

recommendation of three jurors (a number which has since expanded). The Board may accept the

recommendation of the jury or withhold the award if its members feel that the nominated work

does not meet perceived minimum standards. The jury system originated as a means of attracting

individuals with more specific expertise than the members of the Advisory Board, previously

proposed by Joseph Pulitzer as a decision-making body with a wider variety of experience than

the university administration. Additionally, the original agreement positioned the Advisory

Board as an agency to guide and improve the Columbia School of Journalism, rather than solely

as guardian of the annual citation. This arrangement placed the Pulitzer Prize organization

squarely under the aegis of the university and thus subject to the tastes of the administration.

Therefore, a man of strength such as Nicholas Murray Butler could have the opportunity to

influence the composition of the Pulitzer Prize personnel, especially since any change in the

Advisory Board required ratification by the university trustees.8

Viewing the complicated matrix formed by this web of personalities, motives and

procedures could lead the casual observer to wonder if the Pulitzer Prize could ever truly

represent any substantive evaluation. The worst-case scenario plays like a clash of wills,

struggling to assert power and influence because nebulous rules allow them to do so, leaving the

“[power of] the American stage” as one of the losers. While the history and reputation of the

Pulitzer Prize is far too vast to address here, anyone studying the subject must bear in mind the

potential for actions somewhat below the original idealistic guidelines, as witnessed by the

politics surrounding the first three winning plays written by women.


Miss Lulu Bett

Zona Gale’s adaptation of her own novel took the prize in 1921. The play concerns Lulu

Bett, who works in conditions of near slavery in the home of her brother-in-law Dwight. The

action of the play hinges upon a visit by Dwight's bother Ninian. In a parlor game of sorts,

Dwight, a judge, “marries” Lulu and Ninian, only to realize that the ceremony is legally binding.

Lulu leaves for a honeymoon with Ninian, but returns in disgrace having learned that

Ninian is already married (even though his wife has been absent for years). In the original ending

Ninian's wife returns, nullifying the marriage to Lulu; Ninian’s wife is dead in the revised ending

and this leads to a reconciliation.

As with many Broadway productions, the play received mixed reviews. Alan Dale’s

comments in the American provide an example of the mixed message: “The plot of the

play was, for me, utterly negligible, not to say foolish; the characters were delectable.” The

negative reviews found fault with the slow-paced treatment of domestic life, placing blame on

the adaptation. An unsigned review in the Herald stated that “they [the characters] were

projected through a medium to which they had not been adjusted.” 9 Alexander Woollcott

summed up this line of thinking: “Certainly in this instance the vitality, the dramatic interest and

what is more, the poignant actuality of the story—it was less a clumsy slice of life than a rare

distillation of it—was largely lost in the process of dramatization.”10


Several reviewers, however, praised the play for its faithful recreation of small-town life.

Kenneth MacGowan termed it “[a] homely and bitter piece of genuine American realism.”

Robert C. Benchley was perhaps most enthusiastic, writing:

Miss Lulu Bett is great because of its pitiless fidelity to everyday people and

everyday life, and because of this very fidelity it sometimes seems dull. But the

glory of it is that Miss Gale has made it seem dull because she knows better, and

it takes an artist to be dull on purpose.11

Benchley would go on to write the foreword for the published version of the play in which he

praises it for “bearing the revolutionary banner of banality.”12 Whether or not Benchley chose

these moments to exercise his noted penchant for ironic wit, he becomes an unwitting prophet by

noting the qualities which form central elements in absurdism and hyperrealistic drama.

Writing for Nation, Ludwig Lewisohn paralleled Miss Lulu Bett to Eugene O’Neill’s

Beyond the Horizon as “a genuine achievement of the American stage.”13 The significance

of this comparison lies not only in the fact that O’Neill’s play had won the Pulitzer Prize the

previous year, but also in the fact that two of the three jurors who had recommended

it (Hamlin Garland and Richard Burton) also served on the jury recommending Gale's play.

In the 1920 O’Neill decision Garland, chair of the Drama Jury, remained opposed to the

selection, partly because he felt it did not meet the requirement as “uplifting” suggested

by the phrase “raise the standard” in Joseph Pulitzer’s will, and partly because he did not like the

play. However, he finally concluded that the play was far superior to any other in New York that

season and went along with the other jurors.14 None of the disagreement regarding the process

reached the public until several years later; the Pulitzer debate had seemingly little impact on the

reception of the play.


By contrast, the Drama Jury of 1921, in which Professor William Lyon Phelps served

with Garland and Burton, appeared predisposed to controversy by the presence of Phelps. Phelps

had served on the Fiction Jury in the previous year and had championed Zona Gale’s novel, the

original Miss Lulu Bett, for the fiction award. However, the novel had been published too late

for consideration in that year. Phelps’s admiration for Gale's work was widely known and thus

the appearance of favoritism may have clouded the integrity of the deliberations for 1921. Phelps

insisted the drama award go to Miss Lulu Bett over plays such as The First Year and The

Emperor Jones, choosing to interpret the requirement for an “original” American play as satisfied

by the fact that Zona Gale had adapted her own novel.

Garland and Burton finally agreed to the recommendation, but felt compelled to justify

their decision in some way. Here, the specter of tokenism raises its head. In a letter to Frank

Diehl Fackenthal, Secretary of Columbia University, Garland wrote:

Feeling that it would be a handsome thing to give the prize to a woman,

Burton will join Phelps and me in giving the award to Lulu Bett.

Lulu Bett is not a great play, but it is original and interesting, and Miss

Gale is a woman to whom such an honor can go with justice. I know her

intimately and I know her work in fiction as well as in the drama. As the award

has not gone to a woman before perhaps it would be a graceful concession to give

her this year’s prize. I leave the matter in the hands of your Advisory

Committee.15

That the Advisory Board accepted the recommendation should come as no surprise considering

the conservative tone established by President Butler, especially given that one could interpret


the play as asserting marriage as the only proper recourse for a young woman in an unpleasant

situation.

The circumstances surrounding the play's selection as the Pulitzer Prize winner certainly

contributed to a diminished reputation for the work which persisted throughout the twentieth

century. Subsequent commentaries addressed neither the play nor the playwright in dramatic or

theatrical terms, but as a function of the relationship with the Pulitzer Prize. In his 1938 book

Contemporary American Playwrights, Burns Mantle seems to view Zona Gale’s award as a fluke

by implying that to reach such a stature requires a continuing contribution to the dramatic canon.

Mantle notes that Gale “has not properly capitalized on the gifts that brought [her] the Pulitzer

Prize.”16 John L. Toohey refers to her award as “a poor decision” in his 1957 book on the

Pulitzer Prize plays.17 The negativity even affects later attempts at reclamation such as Thomas

P. Adler’s Mirror on the Stage: The Pulitzer Plays as an Approach to American Drama (1987).

While Adler describes Lulu Bett as an American cousin of Ibsen's Nora, demonstrating how

society limits the options open to women, and praises Gale’s approach to naturalistic dialogue as

a precursor to lonesco and Pinter, he also implies a link to the women’s rights movement of the

early part of the century and a jury sympathetic to the cause as responsible for her award.18

Adler’s approach provides an example of the influence of the Pulitzer Prize, an influence that

tends to limit subsequent discussion of a play or playwright without also including the

metatheatrical components of reception related to a major dramatic prize.


Alison’s House

Several factors related to the reception of Susan Glaspell's 1931 Pulitzer Prize winner

suggest a case of preconceptions and prejudice on the part of many New York critics. Some of

these reviewers may have confused reaction to the play with reaction to the circumstances.

Others who had originally praised it apparently let the Pulitzer Prize color their subsequent

writings, thereby leaving a false impression of near universal dissent which would become the

play’s legacy. Set on the last day of the nineteenth century, Alison's House is inspired by the life

of Emily Dickinson. It concerns members of the Stanhope family, who, while packing

belongings in anticipation of the sale of the family homestead, discover a collection of poems

which reveal an illicit love affair between the deceased poet, Alison, and a married man. The

family grapples with questions of allegiance and appearance as they decide whether to publish

the potentially embarrassing poetry or destroy it.

In her treatment of eccentric characters who mourn the loss of the family home and long

for a bygone era which they will never see again, Susan Glaspell created a drama reminiscent of

the works of Chekhov, particularly The Cherry Orchard. Stewart Beach of Theatre Magazine

noted this parallel in his review writing of the similarities between Chekhov and Glaspell, but

added that in the final analysis she had failed to write in his manner and achieve the same

universality of theme.19 The majority of critics found fault with one point or another, but most

often cited the overall tone of the play. Mark Van Doren called it a “false, sentimental piece”20

while John Hutcheons declared it “untheatrical.”21

Of all the unfavorable reviews, none seems more curious than those of Brooks Atkinson

whose opinion of Alison’s House appears to turn from negative prior to the announcement of


the award to spiteful afterward. His original review, published the day after the original opening

at the Civic Repertory, has an almost pedagogical tone, as befits a former professor:

Alison’s House is, for the most part, a disappointingly elusive play. Miss

Glaspell’s drama is full of ideas and perceptions. The loyalty of the family, the

imprisonment of genius, the brutal heedlessness of the outside world, the new

expression of the same genius in the next generation are obviously the ideas on

which the drama revolves. But the theatre needs more concrete evidence than

Alison’s House supplies. Although Alison’s House discusses an interesting theme

it has not been sufficiently translated out of ideas into the theatre.22

A comparison of this review with the one written just following the announcement of the Pulitzer

Prize, sounds as if Atkinson is discussing two completely different plays. The subtitle of the

article alone provides cause for concern: “Alison’s House as the Most Unsatisfactory Dramatic

Award Made During the Past Few Years.” However, he continues by blasting both the Drama

Jury and their selection in language far more brutal than that in the first piece:

[T]o select it as the best play of the season shows how meagerly the committee

esteems the current American drama and the annual prize it helps bestow. Every

few years the drama committee insists upon publishing its ignorance. Alison’s

House is a play of flat sentiments—of assertions, of sentimentally literary

flourishes and of perfunctory characterizations. No matter how earnestly the

characters talk, in a strangely stereotyped prose, the image of Alison never

appears for an instant. Prize committees are always unpopular and under

suspicion. But sometimes the drama committee for the Pulitzer Prize goes out of

its way to make its glory hollow.23


Atkinson’s reaction stands as a fair representative of the general reaction to the decision

to give the award to Glaspell. An explanation for at least part of the sentiment appears in the

writings of Barrett H. Clark. Clark emerges as a champion for the causes of Susan Glaspell and

Alison’s House. His January 1931 review in Drama Magazine praises the intricate character

development and subtle emotions, concluding that “in a word, the play has distinction and

quality.” Clark even tries his hand at prophecy writing, “Susan Glaspell is the author of at least

two plays that will outlast several Pulitzer Prize winners, and Alison’s House is one of them.”24

In the June 1931 issue of Drama Magazine Clark naturally agreed with the Pulitzer

committee’s choice of Glaspell play. However, instead of writing in self-congratulatory terms for

having favorably reviewed the winning play, he offered some explanation regarding the

controversy of the decision. Here Clark makes some interesting assertions. He felt that

audiences, including critics, objected to the slow, deliberate build of ideas in the work, preferring

pieces with fast action. While such an observation falls short of hard evidence, he does make a

more interesting charge. Clark points out that many critics had prejudged Alison’s House by

attending another play opening on the same night, thus showing an immediate preference for the

play attended. This theory does not apply to the original review of Brooks Atkinson cited above,

but remains a possibility in a majority of cases, especially for critics not writing for a daily

publication.

The notion of prejudice also arose in comments some thirteen years later from Walter

Prichard Eaton, one of the jurors. He summarizes the entire process in a Theatre Annual

article:

By recommending Alison’s House we brought down on our heads immediate

scorn. But its only real competitors among native plays were Elizabeth the


Queen and Barry’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the latter not a serious competitor.

The choice, really was between a play acted with great acclaim by Lunt and

Fontanne in the older fashion of romantic verse drama, and a play acted down on

14th Street by Miss Le Gallienne's struggling Civic Repertory Company which

plumbed the deep American love of home and family still existing outside the

confines of New York cubbyhole apartments, and which also brought the strange

story of Emily Dickinson to dramatic life. Again I have no apologies for this

choice. Alison’s House somewhat bored the critics in New York (it always bored

them to have to go down to 14th Street, anyhow), but it was acted for a long

time by many theatre groups throughout the country, and in a production I saw

only three years ago [1941], it was still a moving and provocative play which

deserved the recognition Broadway refused.25

Broadway remained the ultimate test of success and arbiter of quality, at least among

New York critics, criteria clearly stacked against a play from a small company, especially a

sentimental domestic drama such as Alison’s House. Burns Mantle declared, “The award came

as a surprise to playgoers and as something of a shock to most professional play reviewers.” His

assessment continues with an equating of commercial and artistic success by stating, “The critics

were quite correct in their contention that Alison’s House was a literary drama of limited popular

appeal,” which supposedly explains the brief two-week run on Broadway after 25 performances

and the Pulitzer Prize at the Civic Repertory.26

As with Miss Lulu Bett, the reputation of a poorly considered award may have had

subsequent reverberations which reflected poorly on the play itself. This establishes a framework

in which Alison’s House has become a work of note only because of a jury’s sentimentality


toward an underdog. This assessment is perpetuated in the works of several authors who have

addressed the prize including John Toohey's 1957 conclusion that “this has to be rated as a

dreadful decision,”27 John Hohenberg's 1974 echo of the disbelief generated by the

recommendation,28 and Thomas P. Adler's 1987 evaluation of “unexceptional Pulitzer

material.”29

The Old Maid

An examination of the events surrounding the 1935 Pulitzer also reveals a pattern of

prejudice, but accompanied by considerable rumor and innuendo. This seems a fitting irony

given that these same issues form the central theme of that year’s leading contender for the

Pulitzer Prize, Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour.

Zoe Akins’s play covers a period from 1833 to 1854 and deals with the relationship of

two cousins, Delia and Charlotte Lovell. During the course of the action, Delia and her husband

adopt Charlotte’s illegitimate daughter and Charlotte opens a day nursery in order to create a

respectable means for helping to care for her child. A complicated web of relationships both

familial and romantic runs throughout the play, serving to explore themes of “sisterly” loyalty

and mother-daughter relationships.

The reviews of the New York production were mixed, but even the largely negative

notices were not scathing. Most critics felt that Akins’s play simply did not measure up to the

Edith Wharton novel, the source of the adaptation. Edith Isaacs, for example, writing for Theatre

Arts Monthly, praises Stewart Chaney's set, Guthrie McClintic's direction, the performances of


Helen Menken and Judith Anderson, but says little about the script except to imply that the

adaptation is too sentimental.30

However, one detects a far more troubling trend in the condescending attitude toward

perceived female sensibilities and the corresponding dismissal of The Old Maid as a “woman's

play.” An unsigned review in Time establishes the unfortunate ground rules: “Memorable

heroines in the U. S. are in the minority. But on the theory that women are the theatre’s best

customers, the U. S. stage has for years been the haven of commercially successful female

characterizations.”31 Because of multiple New York openings scheduled for the same date, the

producers of The Old Maid arranged for Broadway critics to attend the final out-of-town matinee

in order to publish their reviews in a timely manner. While accounts indicate that the audience

enjoyed the performance, many reviewers did not, a circumstance Burns Mantle attempts to

explain away:

On Saturday afternoon in Baltimore the audience was as heavily feminine as the

play, and the response was perfect. This is not to say that men will not like The

Old Maid. To the contrary, a majority will revel in its perfectly normal emotional

sweeps as completely as do women. But naturally and biologically, as you might

say, it will mean less to them.32

Three years later, in Contemporary American Playwrights, Mantle again discusses the

production, further expanding upon his previous assertion:

The early response was doubtful, the critical acclaim muffled, but soon the large

numbers of women discovered the maternal love theme and the matinees were

crowded. From then on the play’s success was assured. It ran for 305

performances, was given the Pulitzer award in the Spring and continued a huge


success on tour the season following. The familiar story of Delia and Charlotte

Lovell, cousins, and the tragedy that grew out of their both loving the same man

caught playgoers in a receptive mood the country over.33

None of the passages above offers any tangible evidence regarding the theatre attendance habits

or dramatic preferences of the American women, an understanding of whom is implicit within

the statements. Also, though Mantle admits that both men and women may find enjoyment in the

play, he summarily assigns it marginal status by noting the “receptive mood,” implying

acceptance of something less than brilliant.

Coupling the type of critical reaction to The Old Maid with the politics surrounding the

Drama Jury in 1935 produced a situation ready-made for scandalous allegations. Here, the

reputation of the play may have suffered through “guilt by association” with the jury and “guilt

by comparison” with its competition for the Pulitzer Prize.

As to the competition, the 1934-35 season had featured outstanding productions of some

of the era’s most celebrated plays, including The Children’s Hour, Awake and Sing, and The

Petrified Forest. These three plays received acclaim far above any other and seemed the odds-on

choices to win, place, and show, respectively, in the Pulitzer race. In fact, the New York Times

published a listing of the odds of winning the Pulitzer Prize, declaring The Children's Hour a 9-

to-5 favorite; Awake and Sing followed at 5 to 2 with The Petrified Forest listed at 7 to 2. The

New York Times quoted odds for all other plays at 10 to l or higher and cited The Old Maid as a

40-to-1 longshot. Once again Burns Mantle stepped into the fray. Prior to the announcement of

the award, he reprinted the odds in his column with the following comment:


Practically everybody is agreed that The Children’s Hour is the strongest drama

produced in 1934-35. But because of the disturbing nature of its motivating

theme, everybody is equally convinced that the judges will not elect to hold The

Children’s Hour up for all and sundry, including Nicholas Murray Butler, to look

upon and discuss as a great university’s choice in drama. […] The Old Maid has a

chance, at 40 to 1. [Juror] Stark Young is on record as an admirer of Zoe Akins’

drama; it is the sort of drama that belongs definitely to Professor Phelps’ [the jury

chairman] playgoing past, and that he instinctively endorses most heartily, and

Professor Erskine [the remaining juror] could no doubt be easily won over if the

vote were close.34

Mantle’s reference to Phelps stems from the fact that this is the same juror who had

lobbied for the selection of Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett in 1921. During the years of his absence

from the Pulitzer process, he had become known as a “didactic” critic and an “eccentric”

personality on the Yale campus. (His activities included leading a cheer for Robert Browning’s

ghost on the library steps and bringing heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney to class to

lecture on Shakespeare.)35

However, his reputation as “didactic,” which translated to “moralizer,” created the

biggest stir in this circumstance. Rumors began to circulate that the notion of lesbianism so

greatly troubled him that he would not even consider The Children’s Hour for the Pulitzer Prize.

Despite the apparent lack of a factual basis, or perhaps because of it, different versions of the

rumor have survived. These range from Phelps (along with President Butler) being offended by

the subject matter36 to his walking out on the performance37 to his complete refusal to see the

play.38 While Phelps did nothing to stop these rumors, he clearly understood their broader


implications. As if expecting trouble, he wrote to Secretary Fackenthal at Columbia, “I go to

Europe Friday night. When the annual Pulitzer row breaks loose, if anyone should say I had

never seen The Children’s Hour, I did go and see it.”

There was indeed a tremendous row. The Drama Jury unanimously reported its

recommendations, in order of preference, as follows: 1. The Old Maid; 2. Personal

Appearance; 3. Merrily We Roll Along; 4. Valley Forge. In turn, the critics joined forces. Later

that year, they formed the New York Drama Critics Circle and instituted the Drama Critics Prize

for best new play by an American playwright. Referring to the selection of the best American

play, the critics promised to get it right.39 Considering the playwright’s view, the possibility of

greater disasters certainly exists, yet few seem as devastating to a play or its creator as providing

the inspiration for creating an alternative awards organization or carrying the label of “[t]he

silliest and most disgraceful decision” ever made by the Pulitzer Prize organization.40

Final Thoughts

In creating a prize that valued “good morals” it seems obvious that the moral order

Joseph Pulitzer sought to promote, at least as interpreted by the jurors for the Pulitzer Prize, was

one that reinforces traditional gender roles. This establishes a narrow view of what is

appropriate in terms of sexual behavior (for both men and women, but with particular restrictions

upon women), forces women into a social and economic reliance on men, and confines women

to the domestic sphere, not by their own choice, but by default without the availability of other

choices. Similarly, the notion of domesticity in plays written by women is a recurring theme

throughout most of the history of the Pulitzer Prize, well into the 1990s. Put another way, one


could posit that for a play written by a woman to win the Pulitzer, it had to include as least some

element of the prevailing or traditional domestic vision.

In addition, throughout this article I have provided references to a curious irony, namely

the possibility that winning the Pulitzer Prize actually damaged the reputation of these plays. Of

course reputation is difficult to assess and even more difficult to document. However, given that

the negative reaction to the awards continued as a major point of discussion in the years to

follow, often blurring the lines between the plays and the circumstances surrounding them,

charging the Pulitzer as an accessory seems appropriate. For the half-century that followed the

initial critical reaction to Miss Lulu Bett, Alison’s House and The Old Maid, few assessments of

these three plays appeared. When references to these plays did appear, the discussion frequently

turned to circumstances surrounding the Pulitzer Prize. This situation points to one of the themes

included in a consideration of “Theatre and the Moral Order,” the question of anti-theatricality.

While scholars and artists might tend to view the concept as external to our experience, the

matrix of forces described here renders the Pulitzer Prize, and by extension other dramatic prizes,

as an internalized agent complicit in a kind of anti-theatricality. To the extent that discussions,

debates and scholarship shift the focus from a consideration of the dramatic or theatrical

accomplishments of the work and toward the merits of the awards the theatre community may

find that it is not always operating in its own best interests.

Rather than a single monolithic entity here we have a play of various forces and factors.

The Pulitzer Prize itself is not a monolithic entity. Rather, it is an umbrella term which

represents, in these instances, a myriad of activities and personalities—the wishes of its founder,

the conservative attitudes of Columbia’s president, the interpretation of the rules, the various

criteria for judgment, the points of similarity in the plays, the battles between critics and jurors—


each of which contributes to a system, an atmosphere which allows the negative reactions to

emerge. Such a thought should serve as a reminder to avoid reductive characterizations insofar as

they short-circuit thought. Referring to a play as “a controversial Pulitzer Prize winner” is a

pronouncement as dangerous as any other form of labeling, including that of “Pulitzer Prize

winner.”


References

1 A preliminary, abbreviated version of this article was delivered at the Association for

Theatre in Higher Education convention in 1997 as part of a panel titled “Intervening Authority:

Authors, Awards and Organizations.” An alternate approach to this material appears in David

Scott Thompson, Merit and Mythos: A Study of Major Dramatic Prizes Awarded Plays By

Women Playwrights, diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1997, (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1997).

2 Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

1988), 19.

3 Dolan, 22.

4 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes: A History of the Awards in Books, Drama, Music,

and Journalism, Based on the Private Files Over Six Decades (New York: Columbia UP, 1974),

11.

5 Hohenberg, 17.

6 Hohenberg, 12. 7 Hohenberg, 29.

8 Hohenberg, 19-20, 30-31.

9 John L. Toohey, A History of the Pulitzer Prize Plays (New York: Citadel, 1957), 19.

10 Alexander Woolcott. “Second Thoughts on First Nights,” New York Times 9 Jan.

1921, sec. 6, p. 1.

11 Toohey, 21. 12 Robert C. Benchley, “Foreword” to Miss Lulu Bett (New York: D. Appleton, 1921),

xiv.

13 Ludwig Lewisohn. “Native Plays,” Nation, 2 Feb. 1921, 189.

14 Hohenberg, 44-46.


15 Hohenberg, 51.

16 Burns Mantle, Contemporary American Playwrights (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1938),

96, 98.

17 Toohey, 21. 18 Thomas P Adler, Mirror on the Stage: The Pulitzer Plays as an Approach to American

Drama (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1987), 2, 4.

19 Stewart Beach. “The Editor Goes to the Play,” Theatre Magazine Feb. 1931, 25-26.

20 Mark Van Doren. “The Pulitzer Prize Play,” Nation 27 May 1931, 590-591.

21 John Hutchens. “Comedy in the Saddle: Broadway in Review,” Theatre Arts Monthly,

Feb. 1931: 95-106.

22 J. Brooks Atkinson. “Discussion of an Artist,” New York Times, 2 Dec. 1930, 31.

23 ---. “Pulitzer Laurels,” New York Times, 10 May 1931, Sec 8, p. 1.

24 Barrett H Clark. “Alison's House,” Drama Magazine, Jan. 1931, 13-14.

25 Toohey, 93. 26 Mantle, 48-49. 27 Toohey, 93. 28 Hohenberg, 105. 29 Adler, 134.

30 Edith J. R. Isaacs. “When the Actor is Bored: Broadway in Review: The Old Maid,”

Theatre Arts Monthly, March 1935,168-176.

31 “New Play in Manhattan: The Old Maid,” Time, 21 Jan 1935, 25.

32 Toohey, 127. 33 Mantle, 29.


34 Toohey, 125.

35 Hohenberg, 149.

36 J. Douglas Bates, The Pulitzer Prize: The Inside Story of America’s Most Prestigious

Award, (New York: Carol, 1991), 127.

37 Hohenberg, 149.

38 W. David Sievers, Freud on Broadway, (New York: Hermitage House, 1955), 279.

39 Hohenberg, 149-151.

40 Toohey, 128.

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