1996-1998
QUALITY STREET
By J.M. Barrie

MR. PIM PASSES BY
By A.A. Milne

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
By George Aiken

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
By Edith Wharton & Clyde Fitch

1999-2000
THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE
By Harley Granville Barker

ALISON’S HOUSE
By Susan Glaspell

MISS LULU BETT
By Zona Gale

2000-2001
WELCOME TO OUR CITY
By Thomas Wolfe

THE FLATTERING WORD &
A FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE
By George Kelly

& Harley Granville Barker

DIANA OF DOBSON’S
By Cecily Hamilton

2001-2002
RUTHERFORD AND SON
By Githa Sowerby

NO TIME FOR COMEDY
By S.N. Behrman

2002-2003
THE CHARITY THAT BEGAN AT HOME
By St. John Hankin
FAR AND WIDE
By Arthur Schnitzler

THE DAUGHTER-IN-LAW
By D.H. Lawrence

2003-2004
MILNE AT THE MINT
Two Plays by A.A. Milne

ECHOES OF THE WAR
By J.M. Barrie

2004-2005
THE LONELY WAY
By Arthur Schnitzler

THE SKIN GAME
By John Galsworthy

2005-2006
WALKING DOWN BROADWAY
By Dawn Powell

SOLDIER’S WIFE
By Rose Franken

SUSAN AND GOD
By Rachel Crothers

2006-2007
JOHN FERGUSON
By St. John Ervine

THE MADRAS HOUSE
By Harley Granville Barker

RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
By St. John Hankin

2007-2008
THE POWER OF DARKNESS
By Leo Tolstoy

THE FIFTH COLUMN
By Ernest Hemingway

OK, but other people thought the play needed work, right?

Right. Well, you know, producers always do like to suggest changes when it comes to new work. Hemingway wrote this to his mother-in-law in 1939:

“It really is an awful business. Until you have had a success in the theater the entire attitude is that you cannot possibly know what you are doing. And that a good play should be just like the last play that was good or like portions of several other plays that were quite good. Since it costs about $50,000 to put a play on, the one putting up the money feels that the play should be made absolutely fool proof to protect that investment.”

Sounds familiar—but why did Glazer think the play needed “doctoring”?

In essence, Glazer objected to Hemingway’s heroine. She was a woman who knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was to be with Philip Rawlings, Hemingway’s hero. Glazer called her a “nymphomaniac,” (i.e. a woman who enjoyed having sex and was willing to have it with a man she wasn’t married to). This made her completely unsympathetic in Glazer’s mind, and in the minds of others as well.

Did Hemingway agree with that?

Absolutely not. Remember, his heroine was based on Martha Gellhorn, and he was very much in love with her. But he knew that there was money to be made if the play got produced, and he was rather hard up. At any rate, he thought he was hard up. And he thought the play was preserved for posterity by the publication no matter what happened on Broadway.

The deal he and Glazer made was that Glazer would make suggestions, and if Hemingway agreed with him, then Hemingway could decide to write new scenes and the play would be produced under his name. If he didn’t agree to the changes, then Glazer could write new scenes and the play would be produced under Glazer’s name—and billed as “Adapted and arranged from a published play by Ernest Hemingway.” Either way there would be a 50-50 split of royalties. But there was no provision for Hemingway to cancel the deal.

Sounds pretty unusual.

Hemingway had sold stories and novels to the movies before, and as I said, I believe he thought of this as the same thing. He thought the published play was all that mattered—but, in fact, it was the least important thing. A play is not meant to be read, it’s meant to be staged. Hemingway knew that, but he didn’t hold on to it. Ultimately he was desperate to get out of this terrible arrangement.

When did the Theatre Guild enter the picture?

Glazer took his version of the play to the Theater Guild in December of 1939 when the war was over—Madrid had already surrendered to Franco’s army. The Guild wanted changes that would bring the play up-to-date with current events and promote their anti-fascist agenda.

And how did Hemingway feel about that?

Hemingway was appalled by what Glazer had done to his play, despairing over his inability to pull the plug on the whole business, and preoccupied with his new novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was in its final stages—so when the play was finally headed towards a production, he just washed his hands of the whole thing and walked away.

He never saw the production and in fact, he made sure that he was out of the country when it opened. He didn’t want to have to answer any questions about it because he knew he wouldn’t have anything nice to say—but at the same time, he wanted it to be a success (don’t forget, he still was due a 5% royalty).

And was it a success?

Actually it was. It got some good reviews and did decent business. The New Yorker wrote, “The quality of the original dialogue is still there, even if it has been slicked up to some extent for the Broadway trade. On the whole, while Mr. Glazer has unquestionably simplified and cheapened the play here and there, I think it is emphatically worth seeing.”

Alright, but what makes this play worth seeing now; isn’t it just a curiosity?

Not at all. The strength of this play has never been its topicality. The Spanish Civil War is now history, but what lives on are the needs and desires of some very interesting individuals. And the conflict between responsibility to the greater good versus personal fulfillment is as compelling today as ever. And let’s not forget, Hemingway was a great writer. The dialogue is wonderful and surprising and funny!

So why hasn’t anyone else ever done Hemingway’s play, as he wrote it?

That’s the mystery. I think the circumstances of that first Broadway production just put a stink on the play that it couldn’t shake off. The fact that Hemingway agreed to let Glazer re-write, and the fact that he abandoned the play, really, and never saw the production. Hemingway grossly underestimated how that would be interpreted and what it would mean for the play and the future of the play. Once the production was up and running he told Lawrence Langner, the Guild’s leader, that no financial rewards could ever compensate for the damage done to his reputation from allowing Glazer to rewrite his words.

I’m hoping that Mint’s production will bring new respect for the play I think it deserves it.