Maxwell Anderson
Maxwell Anderson, (b. Dec. 15, 1888,
Atlantic, Pa., U.S.—d. Feb. 28, 1959,
Stamford, Conn.), prolific playwright
noted for his efforts to make verse
tragedy a popular form.
Anderson was educated at the
University of North Dakota and Stanford
University. He collaborated with
Laurence Stallings in the World War I
comedy What Price Glory? (1924), his
first hit, a realistically ribald and
profane view of World War I. Saturday’s
Children (1927), about the marital
problems of a young couple, was also
very successful. Anderson’s prestige was
increased by two ambitious historical
dramas in verse—Elizabeth the Queen
(1930) and Mary of Scotland (1933)—and
by a success of a very different nature,
his humorous Pulitzer Prize-winning
prose satire, Both Your Houses (1933),
an attack on venality in the U.S.
Congress. He reached the peak of his
career with Winterset (1935), a poetic
drama set in his own times. A tragedy
inspired by the Sacco and Vanzetti case
of the 1920s and set in the urban slums,
it deals with the son of a man who has
been unjustly condemned to death, who
seeks revenge and vindication of his
father’s name. High Tor (1936), a
romantic comedy in verse, expressed the
author’s displeasure with modern
materialism. Collaborating with the
German refugee composer Kurt Weill
(1900–50), Anderson also wrote for the
musical theatre a play based on early
New York history, Knickerbocker Holiday
(1938), and Lost in the Stars (1949), a
dramatization of Alan Paton’s South
African novel Cry, the Beloved Country.
His last play, The Bad Seed (1954), was
a dramatization of William March’s novel
about an evil child.
