Robert E. Sherwood
Birth : 1896-04-04, New York City, New York, USA
Death : 1955-11-14
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Emmet Sherwood (April 4, 1896 – November 14, 1955) was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.
Born in 1896 in New Rochelle, New York, Robert was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a highly accomplished illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood.
Sherwood's first Broadway play, The Road to Rome (1927), a comedy concerning Hannibal's botched invasion of Rome, introduced one of his favorite themes: the futility of war. Many of his later dramatic works employed variations of that motif, including Idiot's Delight (1936), which won Sherwood the first of four Pulitzer Prizes. According to legend, he once admitted to the gossip columnist Lucius Beebe, “The trouble with me is that I start with a big message and end up with nothing but good entertainment.”
Sherwood's Broadway success soon attracted the attention of Hollywood; he began writing for the silver screen in 1926. While some of his work went uncredited, his films included many adaptations of his plays. He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock and Joan Harrison in writing the screenplay for Rebecca (1940).
With Europe in the midst of World War II, Sherwood set aside his anti-war stance to support the fight against the Third Reich. His 1940 play about the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland, There Shall Be No Night, was produced by the Playwright's Company that he co-founded and starred Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Montgomery Clift. Sherwood publicly ridiculed isolationist Charles Lindbergh as a "Nazi with a Nazi's Olympian contempt for all democratic processes".
After serving as Director of the Office of War Information from 1943 until the conclusion of the war, he returned to dramatic writing with the movie The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler. The 1946 film, which explores changes in the lives of three servicemen after they return home from war, earned Sherwood an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
Sherwood died of a heart attack in New York City in 1955. A production of his final work, Small War on Murray Hill, debuted on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on January 3, 1957. Nearly four decades later, Sherwood was portrayed by actor Nick Cassavetes in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a 1994 feature film about the Algonquin Round Table.
Himself (archive footage)
The story of the legendary wits who lunched daily at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 1920s. The core of the so-called Round Table group included short story and poetry writer Dorothy Parker; comic actor and writer Robert Benchley; The New Yorker founder Harold Ross; columnist and social reformer Heywood Broun; critic Alexander Woollcott; and playwrights George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber and Robert Sherwood.
Theatre Play
The life of Abraham Lincoln is traced from the 1830s when he was a struggling backwoods lawyer to winning the Presidency in 1860.
Theatre Play
A ballerina resorts to prostitution when her fiance is reported killed in World War II.
Theatre Play
Gabrielle Maple works in a dusty desert gas station-café, but yearns for the life of an artist in France, knowing there must be something finer than the provincial dead-end she is trapped in. A hitch-hiking writer, the disillusioned Alan Squier, appears and revitalizes her dreams of a better place, and finds his own sense of worth refreshed by this vital young girl. When Duke Mantee and his gang, wanted killers, show up and take hostages, Gabrielle falls in love with the poetic Alan, and Squier begins to see a way to give Gabby the life she deserves.
Theatre Play
Rome is on the verge of being conquered by Hannibal. While Rome's ruler, Fabius Maximus, plots a defense against Hannibal's armies, Fabius' fiancée, Amytis, is curious about the fearless conqueror. Amytis travels to Hannibal's camp just to get a look at him, but she ends up being captured. However, she is instantly smitten by the Carthaginian commander, so she tries to shift his attentions away from Rome -- and to her instead.
Writer
An account executive tried to find the perfect American family to use in a forthcoming advertising campaign.
Writer
In New York, a surly, down-on-his-heels playwright meets a country girl who's giving up trying to act and returning home. He goes with her for inspiration when his agent convinces a stage star to take his next effort. When he returns to Broadway, his girl stays behind and starts seeing a local businessman.
Writer
Elia Kazan's 1953 film stars Fredric March as the owner of an impoverished circus in Communist-ruled Czechoslovokia who plots to flee across the border to freedom, taking his entire troupe of performers and wild animals with him. The cast also includes Gloria Grahame, Terry Moore, Cameron Mitchell, Richard Boone and Adolphe Menjou.
Screenplay
An Episcopal Bishop, Henry Brougham, has been working for months on the plans for an elaborate new cathedral which he hopes will be paid for primarily by a wealthy, stubborn widow. He is losing sight of his family and of why he became a churchman in the first place. Enter Dudley, an angel sent to help him. Dudley does help everyone he meets, but not necessarily in the way they would have preferred. With the exception of Henry, everyone loves him, but Henry begins to believe that Dudley is there to replace him, both at work and in his family's affections, as Christmas approaches.
Screenplay
It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.
Theatre Play
Escaped Nazi POWs hold the denizens of a California resort hostage.
Producer
Emilie has been hired to care for the four sons of wealthy Adam Stoddard and his wife, Molly. After Molly dies, Adam and the boys grow to depend on Emilie even more. At the same time, Emilie falls in love with Adam. The boys grow up, but Adam insists that Emilie stay on as part of the family. Her relationships with both the boys and Adam become strained after one son marries a gold-digging viper named Hester. Written by Daniel Bubbeo
Theatre Play
On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front. Myra stayed with him past curfew and is thrown out of the corps de ballet. She survives on the streets of London, falling even lower after she hears her true love has been killed in action. But he wasn't killed. Those terrible years were nothing more than a bad dream is Myra's hope after Roy finds her and takes her to his family's country estate.
Screenplay
Story of a young woman who marries a fascinating widower only to find out that she must live in the shadow of his former wife, Rebecca, who died mysteriously several years earlier. The young wife must come to grips with the terrible secret of her handsome, cold husband, Max De Winter. She must also deal with the jealous, obsessed Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, who will not accept her as the mistress of the house.
Theatre Play
Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a 1940 biographical film which tells the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln from his departure from Kentucky until his election as President of the United States.
Screenplay
Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a 1940 biographical film which tells the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln from his departure from Kentucky until his election as President of the United States.
Dispatcher
Pilot disobeys unsafe orders and loses his job. He then starts a flying school which receives a boost when the government launches a program which it hopes will produce 20,000 pilots a year.
Story
Young Jane Benson just about manages to make ends meet running the large family house in Yorkshire. In love with local doctor Freddie Jarvis, she suggests they marry, but almost at once finds she has inherited eighteen million pounds. He makes it clear he wants nothing to do with the money and what it can buy, and Jane sets off alone on a spree pursued by two ardent suitors. Jarvis finds he has gained notoriety for turning down such a catch and his plans for ernest research are soon compromised.
Screenplay
A group of disparate travelers are thrown together in a posh Alpine hotel when the borders are closed at the start of WWII.
Theatre Play
A group of disparate travelers are thrown together in a posh Alpine hotel when the borders are closed at the start of WWII.
Screenplay
The Venetian traveler Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan and foils a plotter with fireworks in medieval China.
Writer
The morning after a London barrister lets a mystery woman stay in his suite, a friend files for divorce.
Theatre Play
When upper-class Parisian Charles Dupont and his family hire Tina and Michel as their servants, they have no idea that the domestics are in fact Tatiana, the Grand Duchess Petrovna, and her husband, Mikail, Prince Ouratieff. Recent exiles from the Russian Revolution, Tatiana and Mikail befriend the Dupont family, keeping their true identities a secret -- until one night when Soviet official Gorotchenko arrives for dinner.
Screenplay
A visiting American engages in a bold business promotion, the likes of which the British have not seen.
Theatre Play
Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
Writer
18th century English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney leads a double life. He appears to be merely the effete aristocrat, but in reality is part of an underground effort to free French nobles from Robespierre's Reign of Terror.
Theatre Play
An exiled archduke (John Barrymore) tries to renew romance with a former lover (Diana Wynyard) now wed to a psychiatrist (Frank Morgan).
Story
A kind-hearted young man is thrown out of his corrupt home town of West Rome, Oklahoma. He falls asleep and dreams that he is back in the days of olden Rome, where he gets mixed up with court intrigue and a murder plot against the Emperor.
Writer
An opera diva sets her sights on a womanizing army officer.
Dialogue
With the advent of sound, the world's leading screen idol, Douglas Fairbanks, experienced a downturn in his fortunes. His thin, reedy voice was not suited to the talkies, his marriage to Mary Pickford was on the outs, and his son, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., had replaced him as a major box-office draw. Faced with the Hollywood equivalent of a mid-life crisis, Doug called up three of his best friends - director Victor Fleming, cinematographer Henry Sharp, and production manager Charles Lewis - and took them on a six-month tour of Asia, ostensibly to shoot a travelogue for United Artists (of which Fairbanks was still a major shareholder.) Their first stop is Honolulu, followed in quick succession by Japan, China, Peking, Hong Kong, Indochina, the Philippines, Siam, and India. Fairbanks and company spend time at such noteworthy spots as the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, the Summer Palace and the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum.
Dialogue
A comedy-drama about marriage and divorce. A wife does not want children, her husband leaves her and marries a woman who does.
Theatre Play
In World War I London, Myra is an American out-of-work chorus girl making ends meet by picking up men on Waterloo Bridge. During a Zeppelin air raid she meets Roy, a naive young American who enlisted in the Canadian army. After they fall for each other, Roy tricks Myra into visiting his family, who live in a country estate outside London, his mother having remarried to a retired British Major. Myra is reluctant to continue the relationship with Roy, he not aware of her past.
Editor
A silent cartoon short produced by Mason Wadsworth and animated by John R. McCory.
Title Graphics
A silent cartoon short produced by Mason Wadsworth and animated by John R. McCory.
Editor
A silent cartoon short produced by Mason Wadsworth and animated by John R. McCory.
Writer
The cartoon stars a couple of monkeys. One is kidnapped and the other gives chase while a dog and his pirate buddies try to stop the hero monkey.
Writer
Convent-bred to assume her position of nobility when the time comes, Princess Antoinette plays hooky from school one day to attend a theatrical performance. Here she meets a handsome young American, and it's love at first sight. Meanwhile, in the Princess' home country, the Prime Minister plots to quell a rebellion by arranging a marriage between Antoinette and the Grand Duke.
