Philip Barry

American playwright and author

• Born: June 18, 1896
• Birthplace: Rochester, New York
• Died: December 3, 1949
• Place of death: New York, New York

Biography

Like a character from his own sparkling plays, Philip Barry had the good fortune to be handsome, clever, and rich. Born into an Irish Catholic middle-class family (his dying father left him unprovided for in his will), he was fortunate in his opportunities for education, marriage, and the fulfillment of his talent. After finishing public high school in Rochester, New York, Barry was accepted into Yale University in 1913, when he was seventeen. From his freshman year he showed a keen interest in literature; he read avidly and wrote poems and stories for the Yale literary magazine. He spent a year in London as a code clerk for the American embassy during World War I and afterward returned to the United States, receiving a degree from Yale in 1919.

Barry’s interest in the theater, evident even in his early teens, now ripened into an ambition that would make him one of the most successful playwrights of his time. He enrolled in George Pierce Baker’s Workshop 47 drama course at Harvard University in 1919 and earned Baker’s respect and friendship. Baker perceived the authenticity of Barry’s talent and gave him the encouragement and knowledge that made the workshop indispensable not only to Barry but also to a generation of American dramatists, including Eugene O’Neill.

Barry’s first full-length play, A Punch for Judy, was completed at the workshop and produced in 1921. By this time, he had met Ellen Semple, a wealthy debutante and an artist, and the two were married in July, 1922. For a wedding present the couple was given a house in Cannes, on the French Riviera, and for the rest of his life Barry moved between Broadway and Cannes as his career blossomed. Their son Philip Jr. went on to become a famed producer of stage, cinema, and broadcast productions.

His first major success was the comedy You and I, which ran on Broadway for 170 performances and received the Herndon Prize. The play was characteristic of the well-made comedy of manners that became Barry’s hallmark: clever, witty dialogue among charming men and women of high society, a romance with its conflicts, and an artfully satisfying resolution.

His next play, The Youngest, about the younger generation’s conflict with the conventions of family life, established Barry as the foremost American dramatist of the comedy of manners. Yet it was Paris Bound, Holiday, and, especially, The Philadelphia Story that earned for him a significant place in American drama. In these plays, serious themes such as adultery, love sacrificed for career, and divorce were presented in the context of humor and good sense, punctuated by crisp, clever dialogue. They are among Barry’s most appealing works. Holiday and The Philadelphia Story were adapted successfully for the screen and featured Katharine Hepburn. Both were later revived as Broadway musicals Happy New Year (1980) and High Society (1998), respectively; Happy New Year won several awards and earned a Tony nod.

Not content simply to entertain, however, Barry also wrote plays in which he experimented with darker themes and more serious intentions. In a Garden is a thoughtful comedy about a successful dramatist’s sense of self. White Wings treats the clash of tradition and modernity and the impediment of such a clash to love and romance. John explores the religious doubt and disappointment of John the Baptist. Hotel Universe is a serious, dreamlike play that brings a group of wealthy people onto a terrace overlooking the Mediterranean in search of life’s meaning. Similarly, Here Come the Clowns establishes a vaudevillian setting in which the main character, like Job, confronts God on the mystery of evil. Though they contain some of Barry’s best writing, these plays only puzzled the public.

Barry died suddenly of heart failure on December 3, 1949. He left behind some twenty plays, ranging from high drawing-room comedy to religious allegory, fantasy, and philosophical explorations on the meaning of life. He is generally remembered, however, as the master of high comedy. At its best, his work in this genre catches the tempo and the temper of a society representing a kind of American royalty, a hierarchy of wealth and privilege, which flourished particularly during the boom years after World War I. Barry’s people are monied, cultivated, and charming; the conflicts that stain their lives are the domestic incivilities of adultery, divorce, and shallow materialism. Though such conflicts are resolved by the very qualities of intelligence and benign common sense that mark the characters themselves, his plays manage to suggest the triumph of a value system relevant not only to Barry’s men and women but also to humanity at large. His serious plays, though not artistically satisfying, are thoughtful, often poetic presentations of the doubts and despair inherent in the experience of all intelligent human beings. Despite the workmanlike quality of his plays and their inerrant dramatic technique, only a few of Philip Barry’s comedies were performed by the end of the twentieth century. Yet the solidity of his work suggests that he is a playwright who deserves more serious attention.

Author Works

Drama:

Autonomy, pr. 1919 (one act)

A Punch for Judy, pr. 1921

You and I, pr., pb. 1923 (originally as The Jilts, pr. 1922)

The Youngest, pr. 1924

In a Garden, pr. 1925

White Wings, pr. 1926

John, pr. 1927

Paris Bound, pr. 1927 (as The Wedding), pb. 1929

Cock Robin, pr. 1928 (with Elmer Rice)

Holiday, pr. 1928

Hotel Universe, pr., pb. 1930

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, pr., pb. 1931

The Animal Kingdom, pr., pb. 1932

The Joyous Season, pr., pb. 1934

Bright Star, pr. 1935

Spring Dance, pr., pb. 1936 (adaptation of Eleanor Golden and Eloise Barrington’s play)

Here Come the Clowns, pr. 1938 (adaptation of his novel, War in Heaven)

The Philadelphia Story, pr., pb. 1939

Liberty Jones, pr., pb. 1941 (book; music and lyrics by Paul Bowles)

Without Love, pr. 1942

Foolish Notion, pr. 1945

My Name Is Aquilon, pr. 1949 (adaptation of Jean Pierre Aumont’s play L’Empereur de Chine)

Second Threshold, pr., pb. 1951 (completed by Robert E. Sherwood)

States of Grace: Eight Plays, pb. 1975

Long Fiction:

War in Heaven, 1938

Short Fiction:

“Meadow’s End,” 1922

Nonfiction:

The Dramatist and the Amateur Public, 1927

Children’s/Young Adult Literature:

“Tab the Cat,” 1905

“The Toy Balloon,” 1917

Bibliography

Bigsby, C. W. E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama: Volume One, 1900-1940. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. A discussion of individual plays, which treats Barry’s Hotel Universe and its presentation by the Theater Guild.

Broussard, Louis. American Drama: Contemporary Allegory from Eugene O’Neill to Tennessee Williams. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. In tracing the evolution of the American allegorical play treating contemporary human beings and their problems, Broussard centers a twelve-page chapter on Barry, whom he identifies as a pioneer of a new genre: the comedy of moral purpose. Takes Hotel Universe and Here Come the Clowns as chief examples of Barry’s predilection for forcing characters to exhume and confront a repressed past in a search for self-realization. Bibliography, index.

Eisen, Kurt. “Philip Barry.” In Twentieth Century American Dramatists, edited by Christopher J. Wheatley. Vol. 228 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2000. A short overview of Barry’s life and works.

Gassner, John. “Philip Barry: A Civilized Playwright.” In The Theatre in Our Times. New York: Crown, 1954. Gassner succinctly examines Barry’s life and dramatic works, and he avows that the playwright merits an honored place in American theater both as a cultivated writer of high comedy and as an experimentalist. Includes an index.

Gill, Brendan, ed. “The Dark Advantage.” In States of Grace: Eight Plays. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. Gill precedes a collection of Barry’s major plays with an excellently condensed biographical portrait, placing Barry not only in his period but also in his favored milieu (among the rich) and in his relationships to such friends of similar Irish-American background as F. Scott Fitzgerald and John O’Hara. Barry’s plays are mentioned but not fully explored. Includes a photograph of Barry.

Gould, Jean. Modern American Playwrights. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966. Gould devotes a twenty-page chapter to Barry, intermixing biographical details with an informal yet substantive analysis of the plays. Emphasizes Barry’s yearning to succeed as a serious dramatist despite his recognition as a writer of high comedy. Contains an index and a select bibliography. High school students will find the essay accessible.

Joshi, B. D. Major Plays of Barry and Behrman: A Comparative Study. Jaipur, India: Pointer, 1989. Compares Barry with S. N. Behrman. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Klein, Alvin. “A Philadelphia Story with Social Conscience.” Review of The Philadelphia Story, by Philip Barry. The New York Times, October 28, 2001, p. CT8. This review of the Hartford Stage Company’s production of The Philadelphia Story finds the story relevant for a modern audience.

Krutch, Joseph Wood. American Drama Since 1918. New York: Random House, 1939. Krutch furnishes a lucid sixteen-page appraisal of Barry’s plays up to The Philadelphia Story. The discussion clearly favors Barry more for his sophisticated social comedies than for his serious dramas. Index.

Roppolo, Joseph Patrick. Philip Barry. New York: Twayne, 1965. Roppolo’s biographical and critical study provides the most comprehensive treatment of the playwright and his work. It includes chapters on Barry’s major themes, dramaturgical techniques, and plot structure. Contains a chronology, a detailed index, and an annotated list of secondary sources.

Sievers, Wieder David. Freud on Broadway. New York: Heritage House, 1955. In a chapter entitled “The Psychodrama of Philip Barry,” Sievers traces and commends Barry’s knowledgeable and skillful use of psychology and psychoanalysis in his major plays. Barry is cited as being second only to Eugene O’Neill in his contribution to modern psychological drama.

Weber, Bruce. “Yuppies of the 1920’s, Dancing with Their Demons.” Review of Hotel Universe, by Philip Barry. The New York Times, May 1, 2000, p. E5. This review of the Blue Light Theater Company’s production of Hotel Universe examines one of Barry’s serious plays.