Happy birthday, playwright Russel Crouse

Russel Crouse

It is the birthday of Broadway playwright Russel Crouse (1893), whose 32-year writing partnership with Howard Lindsay produced some of the most memorable Broadway shows of all time, including the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes (1934), the long-running Life With Father (1939), The Sound of Music (1960), and State of the Union (1946), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Crouse was born in Findlay, Ohio, and became a reporter at the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune at age 17. He served in the Navy during 'World War I, and afterward he worked on New York newspapers, including a column for the New York Post. He became head of the publicity department for the Theatre Guild in 1932 and wrote his first Broadway play in 1933. it was a collaboration with humorist Corey Ford that resulted in the musical comedy Hold Your Horses.

In 1934, he teamed up with Howard Lindsay to adapt a play originally written by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse called Anything Goes. The original story was about a shipwreck and the wacky characters who survived it. However, before the show began rehearsals, the luxury cruise ship Morro Castle caught fire and burned off the coast of New Jersey and 137 people died. The show's producer asked Lindsay and Crouse to revise the libretto to eliminate the shipwreck. Instead, the story became the madcap adventures of people on an ocean liner bound for London. The show, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, became a hit. It was the beginning of a three-decade collaboration of Lindsay and Crouse, that also produced the librettos for Cole Porter's Red, Hot and Blue (1936), Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam (1950), and Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music (1959).

Life With Father was based on the autobiographical novel by writer Clarence Day Jr. about his A-personality father, who demanded perfection of his family. The Lindsay-Crouse play ran for seven years (3,224 performances) on Broadway, setting the record as the longest-running non-musical in Broadway history. At the beginning, the play starred Howard Lindsay and his wife, Dorothy Stickney.

Ås Broadway producers, Lindsay and Crouse, presented the now-classic comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (1940), a play about a pair of murderous elderly sisters. Playwright Joseph Kesselring originally conceived the play as a dark drama but Lindsay and Crouse convinced him that it would work better as a comedy. It was Kesselring's most successful play.

Wendell Willkie: ambassador, womanizer

Wendell Willkie

It is the birthday of lawyer Wendell Willkie (1892), who ran unsuccessfully for president against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, later became an ambassador-at-large for Roosevelt and traveled around the world to advance a concept of a planet freed from colonialism and imperialism. Willkie's book, One World (1943), told the story of his travels and became a bestseller, one of the most widely read books of the 20th century. Scholars consider it a crucial element in gaining support for Roosevelt's policy of helping Britain resist dictators. It was a powerful force in guiding national thought toward creating the United Nations and the United States' participation in international affairs. It was also effective in turning many Republicans away from isolationism.

Willkie was widely known in political circles and among newspaper reporters as a womanizer. In fact, he made no attempt to hide his affair with Irita Van Doren, the popular book editor of The New York Herald Tribune. She was divorced and they lived together despite the fact that Willkie was married. They traveled together and were invited as a couple to friends' homes. When it looked like Willkie, who was president of a utility holding company, might actually become a presidential candidate, advisers urged that his paramour be kept in the background until after the election.

Willkie resented the hypocrisy of politics and refused. He believed his private life was his own. After the nomination, when a reporter confronted Willkie about the affair, he is said to have replied, "I am in love with another woman — and I don't intend to apologize for that and pretend that it isn't so. If you print this story, my campaign for the Presidency is probably over. But that is your decision. I have made mine."

The story was never printed but a Broadway play, State of the Union (1945) by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, was loosely based on Willkie's affair. It opened after Willkie's death and ran for 765 performances. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Frank Capra directed a 1948 film adaptation.

In 1944, as Willkie began seeking the Republican nomination again, he published a book titled An American Program. It was a collection of articles he had written for various newspapers on his vision for the nation plus critical analyses of the Republican and Democratic platforms. After losing in the Wisconsin primary, Willkie withdrew from the race. He never held public office.

Willkie was the subject of two biographies and other books, including Willkie (1952), Dark Horse (1984), The Republican Party and Wendell Willkie (1960, reprinted 1981), Roosevelt and Willkie (1968), Wendell Willkie: Hoosier Internationalist (1992).

Russel Crouse's collaboration won Pulitzer

It is the birthday of playwright and librettist Russel Crouse (1893), who teamed with Howard Lindsay for 27 years to write Broadway comedies and musicals. Their play, State of the Union (1945) won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1946. The play concerns a fictional Republican presidential candidate who has an extramarital affair. It was adapted for a Frank Capra film in 1948. Crouse and Lindsay also rewrote the libretto for Cole Porter's hit Anything Goes (1934). They also wrote the librettos for The Sound of Music (1959), Cole Porter's Red, Hot and Blue (1936) and Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam (1950) and Mr. President (1962), as well as the play Life with Father (1939).