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75-567: As a playwright and screenwriter Ardrey received many accolades. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937, won the inaugural Sidney Howard Memorial Award in 1940, and in 1966 received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay for his script for Khartoum . His most famous play is Thunder Rock . Ardrey's science writing challenged models in the social sciences of his time. African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative (1966), two of his most widely read works, increased public awareness of evolutionary science. However he

150-552: A Ph.B . While in attendance, he studied creative writing with Thornton Wilder , who would become his lifelong mentor. His first play, Star Spangled , opened on Broadway in 1935 and lasted only a few days, but resulted in the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship . The award granted Ardrey the financial independence to focus on writing plays. Several of his subsequent plays, including Casey Jones , How to Get Tough About It , and his most famous play, Thunder Rock , were produced on Broadway. In 1938 he moved to Hollywood to work as

225-571: A Doubt . In 2009, a second volume was released, containing his first five novels, six early stories, and four essays on fiction. Finally, the third and final volume in the Library of America series on Wilder was released in 2011, containing his last two novels The Eighth Day and Theophilus North , as well as four autobiographical sketches. Six years after Wilder’s death, Samuel Steward wrote in his autobiography that he had sexual relations with him. In 1937, Gertrude Stein had given Steward, then

300-425: A U.S. lecture tour after the war, and was under the influence of existentialism , although rejecting its atheist implications. In 1954, Tyrone Guthrie encouraged Wilder to rework The Merchant of Yonkers into The Matchmaker . This time the play opened in 1955 and enjoyed a healthy Broadway run of 486 performances with Ruth Gordon in the title role, winning a Tony Award for Guthrie, its director. It became

375-544: A better world. In his depths, he takes a job as keeper of a lonely lighthouse on a rock in Lake Michigan. On that rock, a century earlier, had been wrecked a ship carrying immigrants to the New World. It was a time of legitimate hope – he thought. And there – within this lighthouse, symbolically the shape of his mind – he recreated a little world populated by the hopeful immigrants to the New World. The play consists of

450-611: A bridge in Peru when it collapses, killing them. Philosophically, the book explores the question of why unfortunate events occur to people who seem "innocent" or "undeserving". It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, and in 1998 it was selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century. The book was quoted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair during

525-405: A college professor, a letter of introduction to Wilder. According to Steward, Alice B. Toklas told him that Wilder liked him and that Wilder had reported he was having trouble starting the third act of Our Town until he and Steward walked around Zürich all night in the rain and the next day wrote the whole act, opening with a crowd in a rainy cemetery. Penelope Niven disputes Steward's claim of

600-1031: A few days. However it did catch the attention of notable playwright Sidney Howard , whom Ardrey claims was instrumental in the resulting award of a Guggenheim fellowship for promise as a young playwright. The award allowed Ardrey the financial independence to remain in Chicago and focus on writing plays. While in Chicago Ardrey wrote two more plays. The first, Casey Jones , was a play about railroad men and their love for their machines. The second, How to Get Tough About It , Ardrey describes as "A proletarian love story of pleasant dimensions." In 1938 Guthrie McClintic presented How to Get Tough About It and Elia Kazan directed Casey Jones . The plays opened ten days apart and were massive failures. In his preface to Plays of Three Decades Ardrey writes: No author in Broadway memory had attained two such failures on

675-417: A high number of applications; since its formation it has seen anywhere between 500 and 4,000 applications. Out of these, approximately 175 Fellowships are awarded. The size of each grant varies and the amount and duration of the grant is adjusted based on the individual needs of the recipients, taking into consideration their other resources and the purpose and scope of their plans. The average grant awarded

750-459: A house built for his family in Hamden, Connecticut , designed by Alice Trythall Washburn , one of the few female architects working at the time. His sister Isabel lived there for the rest of her life. This became his home base, although he traveled extensively and lived away for significant periods. Wilder died of heart failure in his Hamden, Connecticut house on December 7, 1975, at age 78. He

825-688: A lasting legacy. Later in 1940 the BBC broadcast a live radio version, and in 1946 they produced an adaption for television. In 1942, Thunder Rock was turned into a film, directed by the Boulting Brothers , also starring Michael Redgrave . ( See Thunder Rock (film) ) Shortly following the war, productions of Thunder Rock were quickly launched in Vienna , Prague , Budapest , and, most famously, in Allied-occupied Berlin where it

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900-447: A play about the conflict until he was struck by a moment of inspiration during a performance of Swan Lake , in which he conceived of "the play from beginning to end, complete with first, second, and third act curtains." In his autobiography, Ardrey gives the following summary of the play: My story was that of a renowned journalist who having experienced the disillusionments of the 1930s had given up all hope of influencing man toward

975-646: A production starring Michael Redgrave . The play had been so successful that the British Minister of Information, Duff Cooper , arranged to have the Treasury department fund a production at the Globe Theatre in London's West End . The play deeply resonated with a British public under siege. Eminent theater critic Harold Hobson wrote of Thunder Rock : "The theatre ... did a great deal to keep

1050-409: A public wary of war. It received largely negative reviews and a poor reception. In the introduction to Plays of Three Decades , Ardrey writes that it opened "to the worst reviews I have ever received. Our most eminent critic deplored a play containing so much thunder and so little rock." Despite the negative initial reception, later commentators have described the play as prescient. Though unpopular at

1125-612: A relationship with Wilder and, based on Wilder's correspondence, says Wilder worked on the third act of Our Town over the course of several months and completed it several months before he first met Steward. Robert Gottlieb , reviewing Penelope Niven's work in The New Yorker in 2013, claimed Wilder had become infatuated with a man, not identified by Gottlieb, and Wilder’s feelings were not reciprocated. Gottlieb asserted that "Niven ties herself in knots in her discussion of Wilder’s confusing sexuality" and that "His interest in women

1200-450: A scale quite so grand on evenings quite so close together. Had they opened six months apart, none would have noticed. Coming as they did, I became a kind of upside-down white-headed boy, a figure thundering toward literary glory in reverse gear. Hollywood, incapable of resisting the colossal, bid lavishly for my services. And Samuel Goldwyn, buyer of none but the best, bought me. Ardrey signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and moved for

1275-414: A screenplay of Baroness Karen Blixen 's memoir Out of Africa , but it was never produced.) While this work at first appears disparate with his early career, later commentators have emphasized the continuity. In his New York Times obituary, Bayard Webster wrote, "A closer look at his dramas and his behavioral books disclose that he was writing about social conditions in both genres. One involved humans,

1350-480: A screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , where he would eventually become MGM's highest paid writer. There he wrote many screenplays, including those for adaptations such as The Three Musketeers (1948, with Gene Kelly), Madame Bovary (1949), The Secret Garden (1949), and The Wonderful Country (1959, with Robert Mitchum; The Wonderful Country also had a cameo from famed Negro leagues pitcher Satchel Paige ). He also wrote original screenplays, including

1425-603: A small town named Kalk Bay just outside Cape Town, South Africa. He continued to publish influential works until his death on January 14, 1980, from lung cancer. His ashes, along with those of his wife, are interred in the Holy Trinity Church overlooking False Bay. After graduating from the University of Chicago , under the continuing mentorship of Thornton Wilder , Ardrey wrote a novel, several plays, and many short stories, all of which remained unpublished. It

1500-698: A time in China, where his sister Janet was born in 1910. He attended the English China Inland Mission Chefoo School at Yantai , but returned with his mother and siblings to California in 1912 because of the unstable political conditions in China at the time. Thornton graduated from Berkeley High School in 1915. Wilder served a three-month enlistment in the U.S. Army 's Coast Artillery Corps at Fort Adams in Rhode Island during World War I , eventually rising to

1575-547: A twin who was stillborn. All of the surviving Wilder children spent part of their childhood in China when their father was stationed in Hong Kong and Shanghai as U.S. Consul General. Thornton's older brother, Amos Niven Wilder , became Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School . He was a noted poet and was instrumental in developing the field of theopoetics . Their sister Isabel Wilder

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1650-842: A visiting professor at Harvard University , where he served for a year as the Charles Eliot Norton professor . Though he considered himself a teacher first and a writer second, he continued to write all his life, receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1957 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. In 1968 he won the National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day . Proficient in four languages, Wilder translated plays by André Obey and Jean-Paul Sartre . He wrote

1725-460: Is between $ 40,000 and $ 55,000. Since the inaugural class of 1925, over 18,000 fellowships have been awarded. Harvard University counts the most affiliated fellows at 176, followed by Yale University at 102, Princeton University at 96, Berkeley at 73, and Columbia University at 72. † Harvard includes Radcliffe and Columbia includes Barnard College Thornton Wilder Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975)

1800-576: The Hollywood blacklist with the Supreme Court . The suit came up for review four years later, but the Guild dropped it. In the early '50s, partly due to its enforcement of the blacklists and partly due to the increasing role banks were playing in creative decisions, Ardrey began to feel a growing dissatisfaction with Hollywood and started to travel abroad. He travelled to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona,

1875-642: The Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey , beginning in 1921. His first novel, The Cabala , was published in 1926. In 1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey brought him commercial success and his first Pulitzer Prize (1928). He resigned from the Lawrenceville School in 1928. From 1930 to 1937 he taught at the University of Chicago , during which time he published his translation of André Obey's own adaptation of

1950-588: The Makapan cave. Among the fossils, some bones that could be used as tools—the lower jaw bones of small gazelles, which could be used as cutting tools, and the humerus of antelope, which could be used as clubs—were overrepresented (more frequent) by a factor of ten. This led Dart to theorize that in australopithecines , as man's direct ancestors, the use of weapons evolutionarily predated the development of large brains. Ardrey wrote an article about Dart's theory for The Reporter. After receiving significant attention, it

2025-423: The National Book Award . According to Harold Augenbraum in 2009, it "attack[ed] the big questions head on, ... [embedded] in the story of small-town America". His last novel, Theophilus North , was published in 1973, and made into the film Mr. North in 1988. The Library of America republished all of Wilder's plays in 2007, together with some of his writings on the theater and the screenplay of Shadow of

2100-486: The University of Southern California . His work was so popular that some scientists cited it as inspiring them to enter their fields. Ardrey wrote for popular audiences on topics in paleoanthropology , which encompasses anthropology , ethology , paleontology , zoology and human evolution . He was praised for crossing the boundaries of scientific specialism. The Observer , for instance, in its review of The Social Contract , wrote that "Robert Ardrey ... leaps across

2175-439: The alternate history of mankind. It was claimed by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, authors of A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake , that much of the play was the result of unacknowledged borrowing from James Joyce 's last work. In his novel The Ides of March (1948), Wilder reconstructed the characters and events leading to, and culminating in, the assassination of Julius Caesar . He had met Jean-Paul Sartre on

2250-594: The human brain . Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since 1925  ( 1925 ) by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation , endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated distinguished accomplishment in the past and potential for future achievement. The recipients exhibit outstanding aptitude for prolific scholarship or exceptional talent in

2325-501: The killer ape theory . Ardrey postulated that precursors of Australopithecus survived millions of years of drought in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, as the savannah spread and the forests shrank, by adapting the hunting ways of carnivorous species. Changes in survival techniques and social organization gradually differentiated pre-humans from other primates . Concomitant changes in diet potentiated unique developments in

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2400-424: The libretti of two operas, The Long Christmas Dinner , composed by Paul Hindemith , and The Alcestiad , composed by Louise Talma and based on his own play. Alfred Hitchcock , whom he admired, asked him to write the screenplay of his thriller Shadow of a Doubt , and he completed a first draft for the film. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on

2475-609: The Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966), The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970), and The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976). Along with Raymond Dart and Konrad Lorenz , Robert Ardrey became one of the three most famous proponents of the hunting hypothesis and

2550-537: The Atlantic to Hitler, Mussolini, and Europe." During the summer of 1940 Ardrey discovered, when he read a syndicated column from Britain, that unbeknownst to him Thunder Rock had been having a massively successful run in London. In the column Vincent Sheehan wrote that it had become so emblematic as to be "London's Chu Chin Chow of World War II." The British rights had been sold to Herbert Marshall, who had launched

2625-606: The Riviera, Venice, Yugoslavia, where he spent a month living in Belgrade, Greece, Istanbul, and Munich. He later described these travels as "necessary exercises" for his book African Genesis. In 1952 Ardrey joined the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator Adlai Stevenson against the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower , as a part of the group "Hollywood for Stevenson". The group sponsored an investigator to go to

2700-717: The University of Chicago. In the summer of 1956 he moved with his wife and two sons to Geneva. He spent the following years traveling in Southern and Eastern Africa, conducting research for what was to become his first book on the subject, African Genesis (1961), ultimately an international bestseller. Subsequently, he went on to write a total of four books in his widely read Nature of Man Series , including his best known book The Territorial Imperative (1966) . In October 1960 he moved with his second wife to Trastevere , Rome, where they lived for 17 years. In 1977 they moved to

2775-442: The arts. The foundation holds two separate competitions each year: The performing arts are excluded from these fellowships, but composers, film directors, and choreographers are still eligible to apply. While students are not qualified to apply, advanced professionals in mid-career, such as published authors, are encouraged to do so. Upon receipt of the grant, Fellows are free to use the funds however they deem fit. The goal of

2850-458: The basis for the hit 1964 musical Hello, Dolly! , with a book by Michael Stewart and score by Jerry Herman . In 1960, Wilder was awarded the first ever Edward MacDowell Medal by The MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions to American culture. In 1962 and 1963, Wilder lived for 20 months in the small town of Douglas, Arizona , apart from family and friends. There he started his longest novel, The Eighth Day , which went on to win

2925-596: The board of the Screen Writers Guild and made chairman of its Political Advisory Committee. Following the founding of the Committee for the First Amendment , Ardrey flew to Washington, along with Lauren Bacall , Humphrey Bogart , Gene Kelly , Danny Kaye , and John Huston , to defend The Hollywood Ten . Later, on behalf of the Guild, Ardrey worked with Thurman Arnold to lodge a suit against

3000-573: The daily lives of the Gibbs and Webb families, as well as the other inhabitants of Grover's Corners, the play illustrates the importance of the universality of the simple, yet meaningful lives of all people in the world in order to demonstrate the value of appreciating life. The play won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize. In 1938, Max Reinhardt directed a Broadway production of The Merchant of Yonkers , which Wilder had adapted from Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy 's Einen Jux will er sich machen (1842). It

3075-476: The east coast and set to work, first on a minor project which he would abandon, and then on the play that would become Thunder Rock . Robert Ardrey wrote Thunder Rock during the period of escalation in Europe which would lead to World War II. Despairing of the growing isolationism among Americans, Ardrey became convinced that American involvement in the war was a moral necessity. However he did not intend to write

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3150-550: The fences with which scientists nowadays surround their special subjects. He reports their findings in clear English. He attempts to relate them in a single science of Man, by which all of us may try to know ourselves." This single "science of Man" was postulated in Ardrey's influential Nature of Man Series , which is composed of four books: African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961), The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into

3225-442: The film rights to his play How to Get Tough About It. Ardrey decided to use the opportunity to take time off to write a play. He travelled to Tucson where he married Helen Johnson with famed Hollywood director Garson Kanin as his best man. Following his wedding, he sent a note to Samuel Goldwyn which read: "Dear Mr. Goldwyn. I fear that I am wasting your money, and I'm sure you are wasting my time." He moved with his new wife back to

3300-731: The first time to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. He worked on several projects, including Samuel Goldwyn's notorious boondoggle remake of Graustark , which was cancelled, and a western called The Cowboy and the Lady , from which he was dropped (though he later used most of the plot for his smash success Lady Takes A Chance ). While in Los Angeles he would meet and work with Samuel Goldwyn , Clarence Brown , Pandro Berman , Garson Kanin , Gene Fowler , Lillian Hellman , Sidney Howard , and S.N. Behrman . In 1938, however, he received word that his Broadway agent, Harold Freedman, had sold

3375-506: The grant is to provide recipients with dedicated time and freedom to pursue their projects or artistic endeavours, while being relieved of their regular duties. Applicants are required to submit references as well as a CV and portfolio . As of 2023, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has funded over 18,000 Fellows with a total sum of almost $ 400 million since its inception. Each year, the foundation receives

3450-552: The hometown of Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon , for research. While there the investigator discovered, in the high school newspaper archives, that Nixon had been known as "Tricky Dick". In 1954 Ardrey wrote a play about the persecution of accused communists in post- Cold War America. This play, Sing Me No Lullaby , was presented at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Brooks Atkinson , in his New York Times review, wrote: "...the contribution [Ardrey] has made in

3525-482: The journalist-lightkeeper and the long-dead people of his own resurrection, his relations with characters existing only in his own mind. Yet in the probing of his own creations, his integrity catches up with him. They were as much escaping problems of their world as he was of his. In the end he returns to reality. Thunder Rock , an anti-isolationist play, opened on Broadway in November, 1939 to isolationist critics and

3600-436: The last act is a clear and perceptive statement of this nameless, formless situation and an estimation of what it is doing to America ... Mr. Ardrey ... is a man of principle and taste. In Sing Me No Lullaby he has performed the function of a writer. He has found the words to describe something that is vague and elusive but ominous. And he has got far enough away from political recriminations to state it in terms of character and

3675-468: The life of the spirit." Also in 1954 Ardrey wrote the adaptation of John Masters' novel Bhowani Junction . Due in part to the intervention of the banks financing the film, Ardrey entered into contested negotiations over rewrites. Eventually he quit and took his name off the film. In 1958 Ardrey wrote the play Shadow of Heroes about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The play resulted in

3750-554: The lyric poet of human evolution, capturing the Homeric quality of the subject that so many scientists by and large feel but are unable to put into words. His opinions, like those in his earlier works, are controversial but more open, squarely stated, and closer to the truth than the protests of his most scandalized critics. In his 1964 book The Analysis of Prose , William D. Templeman used African Genesis as his third lesson. The volume included analysis and questions from his students at

3825-513: The memorial service for victims of the September 11 attacks in 2001. Since then its popularity has grown enormously. The book is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature and film-making , where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks to events before the disaster. Wilder wrote Our Town , a popular play (and later film) set in fictional Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. It

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3900-563: The morale of the British people high. One intellectual play had an enormous effect in keeping alight a spirit of hope at a time when it was nearer to extinction than it had ever been, either before or after. This was Thunder Rock , by Robert Ardrey. What he accomplished for the British people at a moment of supreme despair ... merits their lasting gratitude. ... He, more quietly but equally effectively as Churchill, urged us never to surrender." Following its success in London, Thunder Rock has had

3975-408: The other concerned both humans and other animals. But the dramatic theme was the same: the difficulties humans and other animals have in dealing with each other, and the reasons for their actions." The writing quality of Ardrey's work was widely praised. The biologist and naturalist E. O. Wilson admired The Hunting Hypothesis , commenting: In his excellent new book Robert Ardrey continues as

4050-546: The play had to close after a run of only one week. The critical consensus, with which Ardrey came to agree, was that Jeb was far ahead of its time. Following the short run of Jeb Ardrey moved back to Hollywood and signed a two-picture deal with MGM. In 1946 and '47 he wrote The Secret Garden . In 1947 he wrote the screenplay for The Three Musketeers , (which would become the second-highest-grossing film of 1948.) starring Lana Turner and Gene Kelly . This became Gene Kelly's favorite non-musical role. In 1949, Ardrey wrote

4125-739: The rank of corporal . He attended Oberlin College before earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1920 at Yale University , where he refined his writing skills as a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, a literary society. He earned his Master of Arts degree in French literature from Princeton University in 1926. After graduating, Wilder went to Italy and studied archaeology and Italian (1920–21) as part of an eight-month residency at The American Academy in Rome , and then taught French at

4200-566: The release from Soviet custody of two political prisoners, Julia Rajk and her son. Ardrey next turned his attention toward Africa. He was soon to begin his pioneering work in paleoanthropology, but he also continued his career as a screenwriter. In 1964 he wrote the first screenplay adaptation of Isak Dinesen 's novel Out of Africa . In 1966 he wrote another screenplay set in Africa, the Academy Award -nominated Khartoum . Khartoum

4275-661: The role: "It's a good part, presents the challenge of doing a mystic, as well as the English thing. Also, it's a helluva good script." The academy agreed with Heston's assessment of the script. In 1967 Khartoum earned Ardrey a nomination for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay . Ardrey died, aged 71, in South Africa . In 1955, when Ardrey was considering a trip to Africa, Max Ascoli , publisher of The Reporter , offered to buy anything that Ardrey would write there. At

4350-461: The same time, Ardrey renewed an acquaintance with prominent geologist Richard Foster Flint . Because of Ardrey's background in geology and paleontology, Flint arranged for Ardrey to investigate claims made by Raymond Dart about a specimen of Australopithecus africanus . Ardrey met Dart in South Africa and examined his evidence. Particularly, Dart had amassed a sample of 5,000 fossils from

4425-494: The screenplay for Khartoum (1966, directed by Basil Dearden, starring Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier ) for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story, and Screenplay. During the 1950s Ardrey became increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood and what he saw as the growing role money had started to play in creative decisions. At the same time and largely by accident, he renewed his interest in human origins and human behavior, which he had studied at

4500-558: The screenplay for Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovary . The film starred Jennifer Jones with James Mason playing the role of Flaubert. The novel was originally tried for obscenity in France and Ardrey used this as a device to frame the story and allow for a commentator. In 1947, Ardrey, amid growing persecution of Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee , was elected to

4575-664: The tale "Le Viol de Lucrece" (1931) under the title "Lucrece" (Longmans Green, 1933). In Chicago, he became famous as a lecturer and was chronicled on the celebrity pages. In 1938 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Our Town , and he won the prize again in 1943 for his play The Skin of Our Teeth . World War II saw Wilder rise to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force Intelligence, first in Africa, then in Italy until 1945. He received several awards for his military service. He went on to be

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4650-589: The time, it presaged the collapse of American isolationism. It was also one of the few pieces of art to warn not only about the European, but also about the Asian threat. Albert Wertheim remarked, "Ardrey's play is remarkable in another way as well. It is one of the only—perhaps the only—play of the period to see the conflicts and dangers across the Pacific. All other pre-Pearl Harbor plays of note look exclusively across

4725-529: The war in the Pacific. He has lost one leg, but gained the ability to run an adding machine. Seeking out employment, he is faced with the bigotry of his countrymen. Jeb opened in New York in 1946. It received largely positive reviews (famed American theatre critic George Jean Nathan called it the best play on the topic of civil rights) and found small but enthusiastic audiences. However, due to factors including high production costs and relatively low revenues,

4800-479: Was Wilder's rule that "A young author should not write for market until his style [has] 'crystallized'". Wilder and Ardrey agreed that this moment came with the writing of the play Star Spangled . Star Spangled opened on Broadway in 1935. It was a comedy that brought to life the classic struggles of an immigrant family living on the South Side of Chicago. It received largely negative reviews and lasted only

4875-485: Was a failure, closing after 39 performances. His play The Skin of Our Teeth opened in New York on November 18, 1942, featuring Fredric March and Tallulah Bankhead . Again, the themes are familiar – the timeless human condition; history as progressive, cyclical, or entropic; literature, philosophy, and religion as the touchstones of civilization. Three acts dramatize the travails of the Antrobus family, allegorizing

4950-491: Was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes , for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth , and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day . Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin , the son of Amos Parker Wilder , a newspaper editor and later a U.S. diplomat, and Isabella Thornton Niven. Wilder had four siblings as well as

5025-599: Was an accomplished writer. They had two more sisters, Charlotte Wilder , a poet, and Janet Wilder Dakin , a zoologist. Wilder began writing plays while at the Thacher School in Ojai, California , where he did not fit in and was teased by classmates as overly intellectual . According to a classmate, "We left him alone, just left him alone. And he would retire at the library, his hideaway, learning to distance himself from humiliation and indifference." His family lived for

5100-559: Was criticized by scientists for having misunderstood the science and misinterpreted the evidence. Ardrey was born in Chicago , the son of Robert Leslie Ardrey, an editor and publisher, and Marie (née Haswell). His father died in 1919 from pneumonia during the influenza epidemic and he was raised by his mother. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended the nearby University of Chicago , graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1930 as

5175-619: Was directed by Garson Kanin , starred Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton , and was shot on location in Napa Valley . In 1946, after a series of talks with RKO, Ardrey and his new agent Harold Norling Swanson negotiated the first-ever independent contract with a major Hollywood studio for him to write the screen adaptation of the A. J. Cronin novel The Green Years . The contract stipulated that Ardrey could work at his home in Brentwood – an unprecedented studio concession – and he

5250-559: Was inspired in part by Dante's Purgatorio and in part by his friend Gertrude Stein 's novel The Making of Americans . Wilder suffered from writer's block while writing the final act. Our Town employs a choric narrator called the Stage Manager and a minimalist set to underscore the human experience. Wilder himself played the Stage Manager on Broadway for two weeks and later in summer stock productions. Following

5325-483: Was not to be bothered until he completed the screenplay in around six weeks. The Green Years debuted to record profits and went on to be one of the highest-grossing films of 1946. Following these successes in Hollywood, Ardrey returned to New York to reengage the theater. There he wrote Jeb . Jeb was a play about a disabled African American soldier returning to his home in the rural south after having fought in

5400-492: Was reprinted in Science Digest and led to The Smithsonian Institution contacting Dart. The theory was later refuted but was influential at the time. This trip would serve as the beginning of Ardrey's renewed interest in the human sciences and the initiation of his writing on paleoanthropology. Ardrey spent the latter part of his life working as a science writer . (In 1969 he was also contracted by Universal to write

5475-602: Was the first modern play to go up in the American zone. It continues to be commonly produced in American university theaters and productions have gone up all around the globe, including in Harare (formerly Salisbury), Zimbabwe , and Nairobi , Kenya . After Thunder Rock quickly closed on Broadway, Ardrey returned to Hollywood. His first official credit was the screenplay for the adaptation of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play They Knew What They Wanted (1939) . It

5550-434: Was unshakably nonsexual." He takes Steward's view that Wilder was a latent homosexual but never comfortable with sex. Wilder had a wide circle of friends, including writers Ernest Hemingway , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Zelda Fitzgerald , Toklas, Jean-Paul Sartre , and Stein; actress Ruth Gordon ; fighter Gene Tunney ; and socialite Sibyl, Lady Colefax . From the earnings of The Bridge of San Luis Rey , in 1930 Wilder had

5625-652: Was written and produced in 1966, directed by Basil Dearden . The film is based on historical accounts of British Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon 's defense of the Sudanese city of Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdist army during the Siege of Khartoum . Khartoum starred Charlton Heston as General Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi ( Muhammad Ahmed ). Heston, in his autobiography, wrote about his decision to take

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