Pulitzer Pother

The last time the Pulitzer Prize committee made a theatre award which met with anything like universal approval was in 1930. That year the $1,000 "for the original American play performed in New York which shall best represent the educational value and power of the stage" went to The Green Pastures. By that time the prize committee had practically ceased trying to abide by the will of Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, which had also stipulated that the winning drama should be pre-eminent "in raising the standards of good morals, good taste and good manners." Last week the award of the Pulitzer Prize, which may not raise the national dramatic level but can usually be counted upon to raise a dust cloud of national controversy, ran true to form. Taking advantage of advance press releases, gabby Walter Winchell jumped the gun a full two weeks by announcing in his radio period and tabloid column that the 1933-34 prizewinner was Men in White by Sidney Kingsley. This was startling and unpleasant news to the play jury composed of Clayton Hamilton, oldtime drama-critic, Author Walter Prichard Eaton (Boy Scouts in the Dismal Swamp}, and Play wright Austin Strong (Seventh Heaven}. Incensed not at Gossip Winchell's premature revelation but at the Columbia School of Journalism's general prize committee for scuttling the play jury's unanimous choice, Professor Hamilton hotly declared: "I think it's outrageous. The opinion of the judges, who selected [Maxwell Anderson's] Mary of Scotland as the best play, was arbitrarily overruled." Into the ruckus with both feet jumped Ralph Pulitzer, a member of the general committee and son of the embattled prize's donor. "The judges in these various contests," he tartly explained, "are merely advisory committees. Apparently they have arrogated to themselves the belief that their decisions are final."

And lastly, portly President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia steamed up to the firing line. Reputedly the man who has last say about Pulitzer Prizes, he settled the whole matter to his own satisfaction by pontifically announcing: ''The fact that the university's confidence has been violated by some newspapers does not alter the fact that this year's Pulitzer Prizes will not be awarded until the trustees take action next Monday."

In the 16 years his university has been handling the Pulitzer Prizes, President Butler has had time to become accustomed to such squabbles as last week's. A parallel case in the dramatic award occurred in 1924 when the play jury unanimously selected George Kelly's The Showoff, only to have the general committee give the prize to Hatcher Hughes's Hell-bent for Heaven.

A tempest broke out in Times Square in 1931 when the prize went to Susan Glaspell's Alison's House, an unsuccessful biography of Emily Dickinson presented in a downtown theatre. Disregarded were such outstanding productions as Tomorrow & Tomorrow by Philip Barry (a top-flight playwright who has never received the prize), the sensationally hilarious Once in a Lifetime by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart and, presumably on the grounds that they were not "American," Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen and Grand Hotel.

Like fisticuffers rattled by the crowd's jeers, the prize committee apparently lost its sense of timing in the next two years. As though to atone for the slight to Once in a Lifetime, the 1932 award unprecedentedly went to a musical comedy, Of Thee I Sing, by George Kaufman and another collaborator, Morrie Ryskind. The late Morris Gershwin, onetime East Side Turkish bath proprietor and father of the musicomedy's composer and librettist, complacently remarked: "That Pulitzer must be a pretty smart man." But the profession in general was dissatisfied that such deserving pieces as Mourning Becomes Electro, by Eugene O'Neill, Philip Barry's Animal Kingdom and Robert Sherwood's sprightly Reunion in Vienna should be left out in the cold. Equally unsatisfactory to many was last year's neglect of Dinner at Eight. Belatedly signalized was Maxwell Anderson. But even the stimulus of a Pulitzer Prize did not prevent an early closing for his acidic political play, Both Your Houses.

At his home near New City, N. Y. last week, Playwright Anderson could accept the loss of another prize for his Mary of Scotland with good grace. Both Mary of Scotland, an historical piece whose writing is its strong point, and Men in White, the hospital tale of an interne who forsakes the luxury of a Parkavian practice for the sterner glories of research, were due for increased attendance as a result of the Pulitzer Prize pother.

Men in White's playwright, Sidney Kingsley, is 27, unmarried. His prize-winning offering is his first. Its printed version, of which his delighted publishers were planning a 4th edition, gives ample evidence of the author's earnest research. It is replete with thoroughgoing footnotes on septic poisoning, Lord Lister and the literature which must be read by medical students. Last week Playwright Kingsley, far from the scene of the controversy his work had precipitated, was attending the May theatrical festival in Moscow (see p. 17).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.