John Adams High School - Clipper Yearbook (Ozone Park, NY)

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Maxwell Anderson QESTHETIC beauty is immortal! Michaelangelo's fresco, The Last judgment, is one of the most magnificent pictures, both in conception and execution the world has ever seen. It will never die. Milton, Shakespeare, Wagner, Bee- thoven, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and their works will live through eternity. Tut, tut! How we go on! However, let us not concern our- selves with the ancient Florentine School, Elizabethan drama, or with aestheticism of the past. Our con- cern directs itself toward a contem- porary playwright, Maxwell Ander- son and his plays. Perhaps it was an inherent quality that prompted Mr. Anderson to write a satire on corrupt political machines. This quality if inherent stands him in good stead for Both Your Houses was a Pulitzer prize win- ner. Mr. Atkinson says Both as a play and a performance 'Both Your Houses' is real and stimulating. Al- though it is propaganda, it asks no quarter from the complacent playgo- er. Realizing the burden of proof is upon him, Mr. Anderson has worked his material into robust dra- matic style. In this three act play, depicting the appropriations commit- tee in the act of fattening the pork barrel and cheerfully swindling the country, he is circumstantial enough to show how such things are done in the ordinary course of human frail- ties, and he is prophet enough to shout that the day of complacent piracy in politics is drawing to a close. Let us again return to Anderson. We find that before he turned play- NI'l.l.lM WVHVHSV wright, he was a newspaper man, and wrote his first play, White Desert, while an editorial writer on the old New York l-World. As a playwriter Mr. Anderson is workmanlike and discerning. His dialogue in the vernacular has a humorous tang and a rare vividness. In his characters, Mr. Anderson re- veals himself as a man who knows people and relishes both their weak- nesses and aspirations. Anderson is vehement, but a level-headed enemy of evil, he is poet enough to write Elizabeth the Queen, propagandist enough to collaborate in Gods of the Lightning' 'and What Price Glory ? and to realize and report the poorer qualities of his fellow men. Born on December 15, 1888, Max- well Anderson has grown to six feet and 200 pounds. He has a crop of wavy brown hair, which true to cus- tom, always looks as if it needed a combing. He doesn't do much talking and has never been interviewed. He be- lieves all one should know about him is in his plays.

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I0 biplane. From their conversation he learned that the boxes contained ex- plosives, destined to break up a mine cave-in that had occurred in a coal field not many miles distant. The plane was being refueled for its scheduled departure at midnight. For five long hours Menson crouched be- side the plane laying his plans with hendish calculation while the plane was made ready for flight. At last preparations were completed. The pilot and crew went in to refresh themselves with one last cup of coffee. A single bound carried Men- son to the plane. Hastily he clawed at the door, then jerked it open and clambered in. The idling motors sprang to life. The air was lit by the exhaust. As he easily rolled the sleek machine down the runway, Arthur Menson was glad for the first time in his life that he had been a pilot in 1917. And now, he circled a mile above the city he had loved. The city that housed the men who had taken everything from him-stripped him of all he held dear. In his warped brain, the plan that had been grow- ing, assumed? bizarre proportions. True, he would have gained great satisfaction from battering at the buildings of the city with his bare lists in his futile rage. But no, he had something better than that. He had nearly a ton of explosive death at his finger tips. Lazily he circled over the unwary city. There was the building he had worked in short, short days ago. There, the bank he had traded at, the docks he had visited with his two boys, the streets he had sped along on his way home! The utter futility of the whole thing! His wife's face as it had been be- fore the fatal crash arose before him. His boys stretched out their arms to him. Savagely he shoved the wheel down. The well-loaded plane nosed over. Down, down, faster, faster the powerful motors urged the ship on to its destruction. The air rushed past the slim nose of the ship with terrible rapidity. The propellor was a flat blue against the earth. Fas- cinated, Menson watched the earth come rapidly up to meet him. His grotesquely-twisted face grew more ghastly as he realized the plane was headed for the river that flowed through the heart of the city. Maddened, he pulled frantically at the wheel. He must turn aside. He would not be cheated of his revenge. Witli super human strength he wrenched at the wheel. Wars it giv- ing? It must. It must! The plane dashed ever closer to the smooth flat surface of the water. The wings were shreds of tattered fabric, wav- ing wildly in the slipstream. Sud- denly there were no wings. Still the plane continued its death plunge. In the morning, curious folk might gather by the quiet river. Rumors of a boat explosion would be noised through the city. Perhaps they would be substantiated by a few scraps of charred wood. The slight fervor would soon be quieted and news that really affected the city would take its place. Tomorrow the inhabitants of the magnificent metropolis would re- sume their lethargic plodding through life. But at the exact moment of the crash, a few weary men awoke, swore terribly, and then lapsed into the depths of a drugged sleep. Tomor- row, the weather would be hne for fishing, but now--night stood sentinel.

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I2 u-sy, Ali Y u-mius.s-u manuals. J has sd gush At rehearsals of his plays he is silent, and like Eugene O'Neill he sits in the last row of the orchestra and doesn't say a word. If, at the conclusion, someone asks him to com- ment he is not fussy nor temperamen- tal. If he wants something in the play changed, he merely sits down and rewrites that part of the play. The first time Anderson spoke of doing a play pointing a finger at the government occurred when he made out his income tax report and had to give much of the money he made from his successful Elizubefla, the AQIIUHII. Anderson has been one of Broad- way's outstanding playrights, yet like all others, Eugene O'Neil, George Kelly, Sidney Howard, and Philip Barry, he seldom frequents the Main Stem. Of all the plays he has written, the one he considers the best is his first Wfbfle Dererl, which was a fail- ure. He likes to write poetry and has had five volumes of poetry pub- lished called You Wino Gaz-'e D1'eum.r. Undoubtedly most readers know the story of Mary of Scotland. It is pri- marily for that reason that I mention it. I would consider it Anderson's best play, because it can give us a deeper understanding of Anderson and his writings with some tangible material at hand. I chanced upon a paragraph by Mr. joseph Wood Krutch which said, When Maxwell Anderson decided to write a play about Mary Stuart he must have been faced by a pair of simple alternatives. Whatever view he decided to take of her moral chiricter he still had to choose whether he would regard her primar- .Bun ily rs 1 womrn who happened to be 1 queen or primarily as a queen who lf -5 4 i 'ECQL 1 f -22? 1' . . h ,fx-'X ..,i - ...uc , Q, XF 3 list - A i X 1 gud- IU it ix -fx' it . . ,. X 'Y x ' I 2' , l us...-...vkus I' ia l f 4' 1' - ffl ldllif, 'K 3-1. ., V, A 1 V' ' ' ' .rw x- 4, . . 4- 'lx ,ext ll' 4 I ' ' as-.15. 2.1-r. as V xp ,V , ,A .x'ii!1i' . . H ,V fi' Jff ll' ' il li GH '53 li lx 14. , 1 ' N i . xx ,p ' - ,. iffvl. ' N rx r-Wwxiglk , J - . '- .l'-Wlf ffl fri ' , t iw, i-.Q N N s happened to be a woman, and once that choice was made the whole char- acter of the drama was determined. For good, or for evil, he chose the first alternative, and 'Mary of Scot- land' becomes, therefore, the roman- tic tragedy of a woman who loved and lost. In the background we can see many other historical characters, among them Elizabeth, Bothwell and Knox. We find that Mary had made the mistake of refusing love when it was offered, but above all that she was innocent of any and all crimes charged against her. The story of her various intrigues and of her indiffer- ence to the fate of her people was a fallacy, so Anderson believes, or to be more specific, writes. The one mis- take Mary made was to marry Darn- ley, whom she did not love, and to refuse the aid of Bothwell who could have saved her. I marry him solely for his blood, or something to that effect was Mary's excuse for marry- ing Darnley. After that event we feel that Mary is doomed, for no wisdom, fortitude or even the dynam- ic Bothwell could save her. We know that Aristotle believed that only kings and queens could have personal stories worth telling and that Shakespeares contemporaries had at least the feeling that regal robes were the only fitting garments of a heroic character. We have long re- linquished that point of view, but it is upon this that Anderson counts so heavily. Thus it is that Mary of Smtltnzd is not really a modern play. It must be said, however, that Mr. Anderson's achievements have raised the level of America's dramatic art and have endeared him to the Amer- ican theatre-going public.