Exonian Profiles
|
Writer Robert Anderson ’35: ‘A Gentleman
in an Age of Assassins’
In his book Best American Plays Fifth Series (1957-1963), drama critic John Gassner described the playwright and screenwriter Robert Anderson ’35 as “a gentleman in an age of assassins.” Anderson recalled this “judgment” when he heard that a serious play of his which was touring the country was not doing well on Saturday nights. He decided to write four short, comic plays for Saturday night, which became his smash hit You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running. Anderson—who made his reputation with his 1953 drama, Tea and Sympathy, the story of a sensitive young boarding school student and his struggles with loneliness—told this and other stories from his long and distinguished career when Hofstra University honored him last fall with a two-day retrospective of his life and work. Playwrights, actors, scholars and friends gathered to discuss Anderson’s plays and screenplays and to honor him not only for his own work, but also for his support and encouragement as a fellow writer and as a teacher. Perhaps his friend, celebrated playwright A.R. Gurney, put it best when, citing Anderson’s significance to his craft and the American Theater, he said, “It is important to remind him, not just the world.” Anderson began writing plays at Exeter, earning an unheard of A+ from instructor Robert Cunningham for a one-act play he penned during his senior year. He continued writing at Harvard and, while serving on the battleship Texas in the South Pacific, he even managed to write a play that went on to win the National Theatre Conference Prize for an overseas playwright (Iwo Jima). On his return from WWII, Anderson organized and taught playwriting classes at the American Theatre Wing and the Actor’s Studio. He is a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, has received several Academy Award nominations and received the William Inge Award for Lifetime Achievement in the theater. The mark Anderson has left on American theater was evident at the Hofstra conference. Donald Margulies, author of the Pulitzer PrizeÐwinning play Dinner With Friends, read from letters written to him by Anderson during a 20-year correspondence. There was a screening of I Never Sang For My Father, for which Anderson won the Writer’s Guild of America award for best screenplay. Hofstra’s theater company performed You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running, and there were readings and panels highlighting other aspects of Anderson’s body of work, which includes two successful novels, After and Getting Up and Going Home. Anderson described the event with characteristic modesty. “I was flattered and moved,” he said, “and if I were the type to blush, I would have.” When Anderson accepted the Presidential Medal from university head James M. Shuart, he noted that it was “customary on such occasions to thank one’s mother and father.” He did thank them, in spite of the fact that his mother knew nothing about Tea and Sympathy, had not read it or discussed it with him. When she heard that Deborah Kerr would star in the film version, she said, “It must be a much better play than I thought it was.” Several years later, his mother and first wife were dead, and his father was seated in the third row of a Broadway theater with actress Teresa Wright, soon to become Bob’s wife. The curtain was about to rise on Anderson’s play Silent Night, Lonely Night starring Henry Fonda and Barbara Bel Geddes, when his father, now more or less deaf, said, “No matter how bad this is, I’m going to tell the poor boy I liked it.” This fall it was clear that the world has liked Anderson’s work very much, and they took the time to remind him. —Julie Quinn |
