Playwrights' Company

The Playwrights' Company was an American theatrical production company.

Maxwell Anderson, S.N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, Elmer Rice and Robert E. Sherwood established the Playwrights’ Company in 1938 to produce their own plays. Anderson had been frustrated with Broadway producers as well as drama critics. Anderson had stated the goal of the company “to make a center for ourselves within the theatre, and possibly rally the theatre as a whole to new levels by setting a high standard of writing and production,”. The founders had been unhappy with the policies of the Theatre Guild which had previously been their main producer. Robert Anderson, producer Roger L. Stevens, Kurt Weill and lawyer John F. Wharton joined later. It became a major production company. The company was dissolved in 1960 as only two founders were still alive, Behrman (who had already left) and Rice.

Notable productions

• Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938)
• Knickerbocker Holiday (1938)
• American Landscape (1938)
• No Time for Comedy (1939)
• Key Largo (1939)
• Two On An Island (1940)
• There Shall Be No Night (1940)
• Journey to Jerusalem (1940)
• Flight to the West (1940)
• The Talley Method (1941)
• Candle in the Wind (1941)
• The Eve of St. Mark (1942)
• The Pirate (1942)
• The Patriots (1943)
• A New Life (1943)
• Storm Operation (1944)
• The Rugged Path (1945)
• Dream Girl (1945)
• Truckline Cafe (1946)
• Joan of Lorraine (1946)
• Street Scene (1947)
• Anne of the Thousand Days (1948)
• The Smile of the World (1949)
• Lost in the Stars (1949)
• Darkness at Noon (1951)
• Not for Children (1951)
• The Fourposter (1951)
• Barefoot in Athens (1951)
• The Grand Tour (1951)
• Mr. Pickwick (1952)
• The Emperor's Clothes (1953)
• Tea and Sympathy (1953)
• Sabrina Fair(1953)
• In the Summer House (1953)
• The Winner (1954)
• Ondine (1954)
• All Summer Long (1954)
• The Traveling Lady (1954)
• The Bad Seed (1954)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
• Once Upon A Tailor (1955)
• The Trojan War Will Not Take Place (1955)
• Tiger at the Gates (1955)
• The Ponder Heart (1956)
• The Lovers (1956)
• Small War on Murray Hill (1957)
• Time Remembered (1957)
• Nude With Violin (1957)
• The Rope Dancers (1957)
• The Country Wife (1957)
• Summer of the 17th Doll (1958)
• Present Laughter (1958)
• Howie (1958)
• Handful of Fire (1958)
• The Pleasure of His Company (1958)
• Edwin Booth (1958)
• Cue for Passion (1958)
• The Gazebo (1958)
• Look After Lulu! (1959)
• Juno (1959)
• Cherie (1959)
• Flowering Cherry (1959)
• Five Finger Exercise (1959)
• Silent Night, Lonely Night (1959)
• The Best Man (1960)

References

• Imternet Broadway Data Base - Playwrights' Company
• Playwrights' Company Papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
• Answers.com - The Playwrights' Company

External links

• Playwrights' Company records, 1938-1960, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts