Robert (E) Sherwood

Author of the 1st selection in the 1958 Illustrated World Encyclopedia's collation of literary treasures for Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938), precise autobiographical information as to his birthplace and burial site seems hard to find. He was born in New Rochelle, New York in 1896, and died in New York City in 1955. Even his biographers seem to have neglected to note where in New Rochelle the family lived or what was done with his remains. His father was a rich stockbroker and his mother was an artist. He attended Milton Academy and Harvard. He was 6 foot 8. He won the Pulitzer Prize 4 times, 3 for drama (1936, '38 [for Abe Lincoln] '41, and once for History/Biography (1948 Roosevelt and Hopkins). He worked as a speechwriter for Franklin Roosevelt during World War II and won an Oscar for the screenplay of The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946. He was on the staff of Vanity Fair at age 23 and a member of Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley's Algonquin Round Table. This was a very elite and prominent man in his time, and  while largely forgotten as a figure of general consideration, he was the subject of a 400 page biography as recently as 2007. It seems as if even now his family, or whoever is still alive and would be able to provide trivial information about him, is still elite enough to forbear doing so.

Here is the trailer for the 1940 film version of Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Raymond Massey, who had played the role on stage to such effect that, according to the encyclopedia, he became permanently Lincoln to playgoers, was tapped for the movie as well. His wife was played by Ruth Gordon, who greatest triumph in the cinema, at least as far as anybody under age 60 is concerned, would come more than 30 years later in Harold and Maude, though the drama appears to have dealt more heartily with the "doubtful story" of Lincoln's love for Ann Rutledge. My favorite movie reference book says that, compared to 1939's Young Mr Lincoln, directed by cinema master John Ford and starring the equally legendary Henry Fonda, this film was more somber, historically accurate, and better acted, though it still rates the Ford film at 4 and 1/2 stars to 4 for the Sherwood/Raymond Massey version.

The selections of Sherwood's writing that I have seen look pretty good. Anyone who cut his teeth writing successfully for fashionable magazines in the 20s is almost guaranteed to have a fluid and spare style, if not in Sherwood's case quite as snappy as some of his colleagues and friends. However none of his works have survived as essential masterpieces, so he is gradually faded into obscurity, though there are people on that 1958 list who are more obscure than he is...

I wasn't pleased with what I had written here so I went to the library and took out the 1964 "Twayne's United States Authors" volume on Sherwood, which amazingly they still had in storage--one suspects it had been languishing there untouched for a long time. Books, especially ones written before about 1980, always give a much different perspective on everything than the internet does. The internet always emphasizes, or seems to emphasize, the salient, impressive characteristics of people's C.Vs. Thus the dominant impression of Sherwood from a Wikipedia article is of an elitist colossus of sorts. This is also partly the effect of the age we are living in--in the more egalitarian 60s, a person's being a prize-winning author or even having gone to Harvard does not seem to have elicited the same aura of awe and brilliance that such accomplishments do now. Though I only flipped through and skimmed this slim book--which at least with me is a much faster process with a physical book than scrolling through scores of pages on a computer--it turned up a few items that I found of interest:


Sherwood was fairly lugubrious in conversation--"Great hiatuses occurred between every syllable he uttered"--and he was somewhat renowned for paying much more attention at dinner parties to his actual dinner than to his fellow guests. Nonetheless he "was able to gain mastery in social situations when he desired to". 


His stock-in-trade was described by a critic of the time as "hokum of the highest type", which explains why his small share of renown fell off a cliff once the 60s came around, though hokum was rather fashionable and not always uncharming during the 1932-41 period which spans the peak years of Sherwood's career (age 36-45, as long as we are cataloging). We've all been quite well trained to have no tolerance for it in later generations however.


Sherwood got a contract to write television plays for NBC near the end of his life, but he only completed one, and it was a failure. He found television hard to write for due to "the terrific precision of the timing".   


This is somewhat off-topic, but near the end of his life Sherwood wrote a play set during the Revolutionary War that was produced posthumously but was not a success. The scholar (R. Baird Shuman) considers that the play "suffers significantly from the fact that General Sir William Howe, both in real life and in the play, had no stomach for suppressing the rebellious Americans...by the time he reached Manhattan, Sir William was much more eager to drink his 1738 Madeira, bathe in hot water, and sleep in a soft bed than he was to pursue General Putnam..." This reticence of Sir William Howe had heretofore escaped my knowledge. I was a bit of an avid student of the Revolution as a boy, particularly of course from our side of things, but I have neglected my study of that period of history for many years now. My sons are getting to the age where perhaps I can take up the subject with them.


Sherwood's "deep personal devotion to Lincoln...undoubtedly had about it a sense of the loneliness of the very tall man". Is this a real and well-known condition. I am not a very tall man, though I am usually the tallest person in any social gathering I attend, especially in New England with its predominantly French, Irish and English stock, and I am about the same height as Lincoln was, though his height would have been much more prominent in the time in which he lived. Still, is it not possible that I am afflicted at least mildly by this circumstance? Sherwood by the way is listed throughout the Shuman book as being only 6'7", not 6'8" as he is supposed to have been according to most internet accounts. 

"Although Sherwood was not politically to the left, it is clearly apparent that his sympathies were essentially liberal and that Rooseveltian democracy was the political philosophy with which he felt most in harmony." This is actually how I would describe myself, if this were accepted as a political philosophy anymore and not a sign of mental instability and dangerous ignorance of economic forces. It is close to what I would like to be true, if only it were reasonable or possible to introduce successfully.