Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood, in full Robert
Emmet Sherwood (b. April 4, 1896, New
Rochelle, N.Y., U.S.—d. Nov. 14, 1955,
New York City), American playwright
whose works reflect involvement in human
problems, both social and political.
Sherwood was an indifferent student
at Milton Academy and Harvard
University, failing the freshman
rhetoric course while performing well
and happily on the Lampoon, the humour
magazine, and with the Hasty Pudding
club, which produced the annual college
musical comedy. He left before
graduation to enlist in 1917 in the
Canadian Black Watch Battalion, served
in France, was gassed, and was
discharged in 1919.
Sherwood was drama editor of Vanity
Fair (1919–20) and with his colleagues
Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley found
his way to the Algonquin Round Table,
the centre of a New York literary
coterie. Sherwood then worked as
associate editor (1920–24) and editor
(1924–28) of the humour magazine Life.
His first play, The Road to Rome (1927),
criticizes the pointlessness of war, a
recurring theme in many of his dramas.
The heroes of The Petrified Forest
(1935) and Idiot’s Delight (1936) begin
as detached cynics but recognize their
own bankruptcy and sacrifice themselves
for their fellowmen. In Abe Lincoln in
Illinois (1939) and There Shall Be No
Night (1941), in which his pacifist
heroes decide to fight, Sherwood’s
thesis is that only by losing his life
for others can a man make his own life
significant. In 1938 Sherwood formed,
with Maxwell Anderson, Sidney Howard,
Elmer Rice, and S.N. Behrman, the
Playwrights’ Company, which became a
major producing company.
The Lincoln play led to Sherwood’s
introduction to Eleanor Roosevelt and
ultimately to his working for President
Franklin D. Roosevelt as speechwriter
and adviser. Sherwood’s speechwriting
did much to make ghostwriting for public
figures a respectable practice. Between
service as special assistant to the
secretary of war (1940) and to the
secretary of the navy (1945), Sherwood
served as director of the overseas
branch of the Office of War Information
(1941–44). From his wartime association
with Roosevelt came much of the material
for Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate
History. Except for his Academy
Award-winning film The Best Years of Our
Lives (1946), Sherwood’s theatrical work
after World War II was negligible.
