Maxwell Anderson

Maxwell Anderson (born Dec. 15, 1888, Atlantic, Pa., U.S.—died Feb. 28, 1959, Stamford, Conn.) was a prolific playwright noted for his efforts to make verse tragedy a popular form.

Anderson was educated at the University of North Dakota and Stanford University. He collaborated with Laurence Stallings in the World War I comedy What Price Glory? (1924), his first hit, a realistically ribald and profane view of World War I. Saturday’s Children (1927), about the marital problems of a young couple, was also very successful. Anderson’s prestige was increased by two ambitious historical dramas in verse—Elizabeth the Queen (1930) and Mary of Scotland (1933)—and by a success of a very different nature, his humorous Pulitzer Prize-winning prose satire, Both Your Houses (1933), an attack on venality in the U.S. Congress. He reached the peak of his career with Winterset (1935), a poetic drama set in his own times. A tragedy inspired by the Sacco and Vanzetti case of the 1920s and set in the urban slums, it deals with the son of a man who has been unjustly condemned to death, who seeks revenge and vindication of his father’s name. High Tor (1936), a romantic comedy in verse, expressed the author’s displeasure with modern materialism. Collaborating with the German refugee composer Kurt Weill (1900–50), Anderson also wrote for the musical theatre a play based on early New York history, Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), and Lost in the Stars (1949), a dramatization of Alan Paton’s South African novel Cry, the Beloved Country. His last play, The Bad Seed (1954), was a dramatization of William March’s novel about an evil child.