Robert Emmet Sherwood (April 4, 1896 – November 14, 1955) was an American playwright and screenwriter.
28-407: Three Ages is a 1923 black-and-white American feature-length silent comedy film starring comedian Buster Keaton and Wallace Beery . The first feature Keaton wrote, directed, produced, and starred in (unlike The Saphead , in which he only acted), Keaton structured the film like three inter-cut short films. While Keaton was a proven success in the short film medium, he had yet to prove himself as
56-461: A Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1948). Born in 1896 in New Rochelle, New York , Robert was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet , a highly accomplished illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood. His paternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood , was an author and social leader. He was a great-great-grandson of
84-596: A 1949 Bancroft Prize . Sherwood is credited with originating the phrase that eventually evolved to "arsenal of democracy", a frequent catchphrase in Roosevelt's wartime speeches. Sherwood was quoted on May 12, 1940, by The New York Times , "This country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies." After serving as director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information from 1943 until
112-423: A 1957 TV adaptation on TV. Sherwood publicly ridiculed isolationist Charles Lindbergh as a " Nazi with a Nazi's Olympian contempt for all democratic processes". During this period Sherwood also served as a speechwriter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt . He recounted the experience in his book Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History , which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and
140-597: A Keaton comedy, some flashes of the Keaton genius." A caption at the beginning of the Rohauer Collection print of the film states that when the film's negative was rediscovered in 1954, it was so badly decomposed as to be considered unsalvageable. Subsequent restoration work preserved the film for posterity, although a good deal of damage is still evident. Black and white Black-and-white ( B&W or B/W ) images combine black and white to produce
168-599: A big message and end up with nothing but good entertainment.” Sherwood was actively engaged with the advocacy for writers' rights within the theatre world. From 1937 to 1939, Sherwood served as the seventh president of the Dramatists Guild of America . Sherwood's Broadway success soon attracted the attention of Hollywood; he began writing for movies in 1926. While some of his work went uncredited, his films included many adaptations of his plays. He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock and Joan Harrison in writing
196-616: A black-and-white image, that is, an image containing shades of gray, is referred to in this context as grayscale . Robert E. Sherwood He is the author of Waterloo Bridge , Idiot's Delight , Abe Lincoln in Illinois , There Shall Be No Night , and The Best Years of Our Lives . He was a screenwriter on the adapted films Rebecca and The Bishop's Wife . He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1936, 1939, 1941) , an Academy Award for Best Screenplay (1947) and
224-402: A comedy concerning Hannibal's botched invasion of Rome, introduced one of his favorite themes : the futility of war. Many of his later dramatic works employed variations of this theme, including Idiot's Delight (1936), which won Sherwood the first of four Pulitzer Prizes . According to legend, he once admitted to the gossip columnist Lucius Beebe : “The trouble with me is that I start with
252-576: A feature-length star. It has been alleged that, had the project flopped, the film would have been broken into three short films, although this has been disputed by film historians who note that neither Keaton nor his associates made this claim in their lifetimes. The structure also worked as a parody of D. W. Griffith 's 1916 film Intolerance . Three plots in three different historical periods — prehistoric times , Ancient Rome , and modern times (the Roaring Twenties ) — are intercut to prove
280-491: A fight at sunrise. Keaton wins thanks to hiding a rock in his club, but is caught and tied to the tail of an elephant to be dragged around the dirt as punishment. Upon his return, he finds Leahy about to be claimed by Beery and attempts to make off with her. Beery catches him and the two battle by tossing boulders at each other from afar, with Keaton and Leahy on a cliff together. When Beery climbs up to reclaim Leahy, Keaton dispatches Beery's cronies and finally defeats him. He drags
308-541: A match for her daughter. Keaton accidentally gets drunk at a restaurant where Beery and Leahy are dining, and Beery tricks the male half of another couple into punching Keaton, who stumbles home drunk. Later, Keaton impresses Leahy by playing a football game, whereas Beery is only a coach, Beery decides to play opposite Keaton. Keaton is overwhelmed by the bigger Beery, but ends up winning the game with an impressive touchdown. An irritated Beery frames Keaton for possession of alcohol and gets him arrested, simultaneously showing him
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#1732765879399336-542: A range of achromatic brightnesses of grey . It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. However, there are exceptions to this rule, including black-and-white fine art photography , as well as many film motion pictures and art film (s). Early photographs in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries were often developed in black and white, as an alternative to sepia due to limitations in film available at
364-462: A smitten Leahy off by the hair. In the epilogue, they go off for a walk with their huge family of children following them. In the Ancient Rome segment, Keaton attempts to attract the attention of the wealthy Leahy, but is continually pushed back by Beery. Beery challenges him to a chariot race after a hard snow — Keaton wins by using sled dogs instead of horses. In revenge, Beery forces him into
392-399: A wedding announcement between him and Leahy — Keaton will be unable to stop the wedding while in jail. While shadowed by a guard, Keaton finds a criminal file showing that Beery has been charged with bigamy and forgery. He attempts to call Leahy to warn her. He accidentally escapes when the phone booth he is using is taken out for replacement. Keaton evades the police chasing him and makes it to
420-478: The Stone Age , Keaton competes with the bigger, brutish Beery for a cavewoman, Leahy. After observing another caveman drag away a woman by the hair in order to "claim" her, Keaton tries to become more assertive, but is continuously pushed back and bullied by Beery. An attempt to make Leahy jealous by flirting with another woman ends in failure. Nevertheless, Keaton grows closer to Leahy, and Beery challenges him to
448-468: The church in time to drag Leahy away from the wedding and into a cab. After showing her Beery's criminal file, he takes Leahy home and prepares to leave, but she kisses him. He declares to the cab driver that they are going back to the church. In the epilogue, they also go out for a walk — this time with their dog instead of children. In his October 1923 Life magazine review, Robert E. Sherwood wrote, "Although one has considerable difficulty in following
476-517: The conclusion of the war, he returned to dramatic writing with the movie The Best Years of Our Lives , directed by William Wyler . The 1946 film, which explores changes in the lives of three soldiers after they return home from war, earned Sherwood an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Sherwood stood 6 feet 8 inches (2.03 m) tall. Dorothy Parker, who was 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m), once commented that when she, Sherwood, and Robert Benchley (6 feet (1.8 m)) walked down
504-641: The former New York State Attorney General Thomas Addis Emmet and a great-grandnephew of the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet , who was executed for high treason after leading the Irish rebellion of 1803 , one of a series of attempts to dislodge British rule in Ireland , in 1803. His relatives also included three other notable American portrait artists: his aunts, Lydia Field Emmet and Jane Emmet de Glehn , and his first cousin, once removed, Ellen Emmet Rand . Sherwood
532-487: The late 1960s, few mainstream films have been shot in black-and-white. The reasons are frequently commercial, as it is difficult to sell a film for television broadcasting if the film is not in color. 1961 was the last year in which the majority of Hollywood films were released in black and white. In computing terminology, black-and-white is sometimes used to refer to a binary image consisting solely of pure black pixels and pure white ones; what would normally be called
560-572: The lion pit belonging to Leahy's family. Keaton survives by befriending the lion and manicuring its claws. Keaton is rescued by Leahy's parents while Beery kidnaps Leahy. Keaton rescues her and tries to seduce her in her palanquin, which takes off without them. In the epilogue, they also go out for a walk with many children in tow. In "modern times," Keaton is a poor man yearning for Leahy, who has rich parents. Leahy's mother, unimpressed with Keaton's bank account but interested in Beery's, decides on Beery as
588-415: The point that man's love for woman has not significantly changed throughout history. In all three plots, characters played by the small and slight Buster Keaton and handsome bruiser Wallace Beery compete for the attention of the same woman, played by Margaret Leahy. Each plot follows similar "arcs" in the story line in which Keaton's character works for his beloved's attention and eventually wins her over. In
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#1732765879399616-474: The popular series, interviewed in one episode American football player Howard Scala, a member of the NFL's Green Bay Packers . Impressed by Scala's own considerable height, Marx shared the following anecdote with the show's audience: Reminds me of Bob Sherwood, the playwright, he's an old friend of mine; and he's six-foot-five and very thin. I said to him one day 'Bob, what do you say to people when they ask you how
644-613: The screenplay for Rebecca (1940). With Europe in the midst of World War II, Sherwood set aside his anti-war stance to support the fight against the Third Reich . There Shall Be No Night , his 1940 play about the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland, was produced by the Playwright's Company that he co-founded, and it starred Alfred Lunt , Lynn Fontanne , and Montgomery Clift . Katharine Cornell produced and starred in
672-405: The street together, they resembled "a walking pipe organ." When asked at a party how long he had known Sherwood, Benchley stood on a chair, raised his hand to the ceiling, and said "I knew Bob Sherwood back when he was only this tall." In 1949, comedian Groucho Marx also commented about Sherwood's height during a filmed radio broadcast of the quiz show You Bet Your Life . Groucho, who hosted
700-413: The time. Black and white was also prevalent in early television broadcasts, which were displayed by changing the intensity of monochrome phosphurs on the inside of the screen, before the introduction of colour from the 1950s onwards. Black and white continues to be used in certain sections of the modern arts field, either stylistically or to invoke the perception of a historic work or setting. Since
728-399: The weird meanderings of Buster's plot (if any), one has no trouble whatsoever in greeting his antics with a hearty laugh. Of the three ages, the cave-man part is easily the most comic." The December 1923 issue of Photoplay said of the film, "It has its good spots, but is below Buster's standard." More recently, Dennis Schwartz felt that "Though overloaded with too much of a narrative for
756-780: Was educated at Fay School , Milton Academy and then Harvard University . He fought with the Royal Highlanders of Canada, CEF in Europe during World War I and was wounded. After his return to the United States, he began working as a movie critic for magazines, including Life and Vanity Fair . Sherwood's career as a critic in the 1920s is discussed in the 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism . In this film Time critic Richard Schickel discusses, among other topics, how Sherwood
784-632: Was the first New York critic invited to Hollywood by cross-country train to meet the stars and directors. Sherwood was one of the original members of the Algonquin Round Table . He was close friends with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley , who were on the staff of Vanity Fair with Sherwood when the Round Table began meeting in 1919. Author Edna Ferber was also a good friend. In 1920, Sherwood became editor of Life . Sherwood's first Broadway play, The Road to Rome (1927),
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