UNITED STATES AUTHOR · DRAMA · MAN-WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS
Robert E. Sherwood
Also known as: Robert E Sherwood, Robert Emmet Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood (April 4, 1896 – November 14, 1955) was an American playwright and screenwriter. 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 Adapted Screenplay (1947) and a Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1949).
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
— from Rebecca, 1996
Most acclaimed
Miss Liberty
The play opened at the Imperial Theatre in New York City on July 15, 1949, and ran for a total of 308 performances. Produced by Irving Berling, Moss Hart, and robert E. Sherwood, and directed by Moss Hart with choreography by Jerome Robbins--vendor information.
Reunion in Vienna
Elena is married to Dr. Anton Drug, a Viennese psychoanalyst. But in the golden days before the fall of the Empire, she had a love affair with Prince Rudolf Maximilian. After World War I and the expulsion of the aristocracy, Elena developed into a responsible, mature woman, and a devoted wife. A group of her former cronies, some of whom have been living in poverty and exile, return to Vienna to attend a party to which Rudolf is (surreptitiously) invited. Elena's old friends press her to attend the party. But she refuses, saying the past means nothing to her, but Anton thinks she should go, if only to prove to herself that she has left the past behind. Rudolf, who eeks out an existence abroad as a taxi driver, arrives incognito and immediately sends for Elena. Elena arrives, and for a moment an illusion of gaiety is established. Rudolf makes violent love to Elena, she runs home, and he follows her, determined to renew their affair. But Elena, though caught in the excitement of old memories and still attracted to Rudolf, knows he belongs to the past, and her husband and the present is the better of the two. But she allows Rudolf to hide in her apartment while Anton arranges for him to escape from the country. The experiment of trying to renew a past that no longer has meaning has been successfully carried out. --www.doollee.com.
Rebecca
1996
Rebecca learned at a young age how important it is to be liked, when her family left Russia to settle in Hirsch, Saskatchewan, a mostly Jewish community. But Rebecca's close-knit extended family returns from her triumph on-stage at an amateur night to find their home in flames. With everything they own destroyed, the family is devastated and penniless. They move to Winnipeg, where Rebecca's father struggles to find work, and where all the family members try to adjust to life in a big city. Rebecca is sent to live with a non-Jewish family until her parents get settled. There, she learns the true meaning of bravery, loyalty, and friendship. As she struggles to re-unite her family, Rebecca bridges the distance between the old world and the new, between her family's traditional immigrant values and the opportunities of the modern world.