John William van Druten

• Born: June 1, 1901
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: December 19, 1957
• Place of death: Indio, California

Other Literary Forms

John William Van Druten was primarily a dramatist but also a prolific screenwriter. In addition, he published a body of literary reviews, poems, and short stories. His letters and papers are housed in the New York Public Library.

Achievements

John William Van Druten’s most successful plays were light comedies that modernized the drawing-room comedy genre. He specialized in small-cast, one-setting plays that emphasized character and witty dialogue over plot or action. Beginning with Young Woodley in 1925, Van Druten wrote five plays that were selected among the top ten plays of their respective years, and I Am a Camera received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1951. He usually directed his own plays and also directed The King and I (pr. 1951) for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. He was nominated for an Academy Award for best screenplay for Gaslight (1944). It was not unusual to find two of Van Druten’s plays running simultaneously on Broadway. Although he was a successful playwright, his pleasant comedies were not great plays. His sentimental script for I Remember Mama, based on family values and situations, may well prove to be his most enduring work. Van Druten’s I Am a Camera was adapted into the musical Cabaret (1966) by John Kander and Fred Ebb.

Van Druten wrote when the Broadway theater and films were especially alive and vibrant. There was an audience for every genre of theater and drama. His five most successful plays (Young Woodley; The Voice of the Turtle; I Remember Mama; Bell, Book, and Candle; and I Am a Camera) made him known on Broadway.

Biography

John William Van Druten was born to a Dutch banker in London on June 1, 1901. Although Van Druten’s mother was English by nationality, she was Dutch by heritage. Van Druten, a sickly infant, had one brother, Harry, who was eight years older. Neither physically strong nor athletically gifted, Van Druten preferred to spend his time in the world of books and imagination, avoiding sports and games. This avoidance of sports caused others to tease and make fun of him. In return, he developed a vitriolic turn of phrase as self-protection.

Both of the Van Druten parents had received continental educations and saw the arts as a way of life as well as a cultural experience; consequently, the family regularly attended art exhibitions, concerts, and theatrical performances. In addition to his books, Van Druten’s favorite possession was a miniature theater, and early in life, he began writing plays to perform with his toy.

Van Druten would come to see 1914 as a turning point in the life of Europe, as well as a turning point in his own life. He felt World War I destroyed an era of gentleness and innocence, never again allowing the population of Europe to feel secure and in control of its destiny. Certainly, World War I changed Van Druten from a rather carefree child to a more mature thinker, even though he never was nor would ever become any kind of activist.

Van Druten always wanted to be a writer. He believed that his destiny was poetry, but he was unable to find a publisher for his poems even though he slavishly imitated the work of the poets that he admired. He graduated from University College School at age seventeen. Ready to conquer the literary world, Van Druten suffered a disappointment when his father insisted that he should prepare for a real profession. Choosing law as a field for advanced study, Van Druten passed his exams in 1923 and became a solicitor. He chose, however, to become a lecturer rather than a practitioner and accepted a post at a Welsh college. This position left him free time to work at his writing. An interview with the editor of Mercury magazine resulted in the publication of one of his poems after Van Druten was advised to write what he felt rather than what he admired. He also wrote columns for an obscure English newspaper published in Switzerland.

Van Druten’s first play, Young Woodley, optioned for production in London and the United States, premiered in New York after being banned by the London censor. Only twenty-three at the time, Van Druten resigned from his lecturer’s post and devoted himself to writing full time. Although his major emphasis remained playwriting, he also received favorable notices for several novels: A Woman on Her Way (1931) and And Then You Wish (1936). He novelized Young Woodley for British publication in 1929.

A string of Van Druten’s British productions were optioned for film treatments, which led him into a second career as screenwriter. From the 1930’s until World War II, Van Druten split his time between England and the United States. With the onset of World War II and fighting in Europe, Van Druten decided to make the United States his permanent home and became a naturalized citizen in 1944.

More than fifteen years before his death, Van Druten purchased a large ranch in Indio, California, and settled there with his manager and partner, although he continued to spend six months of each year in New York. Frequently in ill health, Van Druten died at home on his ranch on December 19, 1957.

Analysis

Arriving on the scene of a massive theater boom in both London and New York, John William Van Druten’s sophisticated comedies filled a space between the serious dramas and typical comedies of the time. Although Van Druten’s plays were driven by character rather than plot, he more than mastered the devices of effective theater. His use of telephone conversations to establish characters who never appeared on the stage helped to flesh out small casts and created a world beyond the one-setting interiors.

Later, in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, when the economics of theater became problematic, Van Druten’s use of small casts in single settings made him commercially viable without sacrificing quality. As the commercial theater began to dry up and the only plays audiences cared to see were musicals, Van Druten’s plays continued to attract playgoers.

Taking his cue from the drawing room comedies of an earlier age, Van Druten never descended into low comedy or farce. His was the high comedy of British plays, remodeled for modern times and American people. As Van Druten often repeated, he wrote about people. His audiences recognized the people he wrote about and responded. He was never issue minded and wrote to change neither society nor the theater. Van Druten’s plays exist to amuse. In his memoirs, Van Druten seldom mentions his novels or screenplays: He was a playwright, first and foremost, and he reveled in that fact.

Young Woodley

Van Druten’s first professional play failed to pass the British censor because it was deemed to be critical of the British school system. The discussion of sex between the schoolboy characters also raised objections. George Tyler arranged for the American rights to Young Woodley with Basil Dean, the British producer. The production started in Boston and, in November of 1925, moved to New York, where it played to full houses and critical praise.

American audiences took exception to neither the subject matter nor the dialogue of the play. The three-act comedy with a cast of nine is set in a boys’ school. The conflict is between the title character, a romantic, imaginative, eighteen-year-old poet and a staid, prosaic, controlling, and dour schoolmaster who has no time or sympathy for poets or poetry. Indeed, this headmaster stifles all attempts at creativity and is also stifling his pretty, young wife, who encourages Woodley’s poetry. In their affinity for one another, the wife and Woodley commit a slight indiscretion. As a result, and with the support of his understanding father, Woodley leaves the school, having learned something about the differences between love and lust.

The Voice of the Turtle

Although Van Druten authored a number of plays between 1925 and 1943, The Voice of the Turtle was his next unqualified success. Critics were amazed that he had created such a complete and believable play with a cast of only three characters and one interior set. The title is from the Song of Solomon, and “turtle” refers to turtle dove, symbolizing the arrival of spring, a new beginning.

The story is a romance: Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, or vice versa. The time is World War II, and the sense of urgency inherent in wartime makes (or seems to make) sex without marriage acceptable to the audience. A sophisticated soldier and a young actress are thrown together by circumstance and fall in love. Finally, her objections are overcome, and she is united with her soldier. Had the setting been anything other than wartime, moral sensibilities would have probably rebelled at the situation. However, the time and circumstances combined to make audiences less morally judgmental.

I Remember Mama

Rodgers and Hammerstein approached Van Druten about dramatizing Kathryn Forbes’s book and formed a production company expressly to produce the sentimental comedy. I Remember Mama is a series of character sketches and vignettes involving a family of Norwegian immigrants. Papa is a good man, but Mama is the fiber that holds the family together and on course.

Later, Van Druten felt that the character of Mama was probably an idealized portrait of his own mother and that the characters of the aunts, her sisters, gave him a chance to poke fun at his own aunts, whom he disliked as a child. The wholesome, loving, and secure nature of the family unit appealed to audiences almost universally. In fact, the script holds a kind of timeless and universal appeal and is frequently revived, even though it borders on sentimentality at times. The script was adapted to film, a television series, and later on, an unsuccessful musical.

Bell, Book, and Candle

This stylish bit of fluff captured the imagination of audiences. The fact that Rex Harrison and Lili Palmer enacted the leads brought in an audience eager to see the famous British husband and wife team perform live on the stage. The major characters are modern, urbane witches. Once again, with a small cast and one interior setting, Van Druten takes a weak plot furnished with outstanding characters, witty situations, and dialogue reminiscent of Noël Coward to produce a sparkling high comedy. Although the plot was weak, Van Druten’s frequently used theme about the sacrifices made for love was evident.

I Am a Camera

With this play, Van Druten, who had a string of successful plays to his credit, finally won a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. When interviewed about his play, Van Druten said that he had great difficulty with plots, and his plays were about people rather than action. In I Am a Camera, an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories (1945), Van Druten concentrates on the character of Sally Bowles. Set in pre-World War II Germany, the play deals peripherally with the Nazi-Jewish issue, but the focus of the comedy is on Sally, a repressed Londoner, seeking to liberate herself from an overbearing mother. Later, the script was to form the basis for the musical Cabaret.

Bibliography

Chapman, John, ed. Best Plays of 1950-1951 and Best Plays of 1951-1952. New York: Dodd, Meade, 1951, 1952. These two volumes, which include plays by Van Druten, contain production facts, interviews, statistics, critical responses, and summaries of the featured plays for the year.

Mantle, Burns, ed. Best Plays of 1925-1926, Best Plays of 1943-1944, and Best Plays of 1944-1945 New York: Dodd, Meade, 1927, 1944, and 1945. These three volumes, which include plays by Van Druten, contain production facts, interviews, statistics, critical responses, and summaries of the selected plays of the year.

Weber, Bruce. “A Play Outside the Mainstream of Its Time and Ours.” Review of The Voice of the Turtle, by John William Van Druten. New York Times, September 14, 2001, p. E3. This review of the revival of Van Druten’s The Voice of the Turtle by the Keen Company at the Blue Heron Arts Center in New York examines how its 1940’s sentiments translate into modern times.