S. N. Behrman

Playwright and essayist

• Born: June 9, 1893
• Birthplace: Worcester, Massachusetts
• Died: September 9, 1973
• Place of death: New York, New York

Over a forty-year period Behrman wrote dozens of plays, chiefly comedies, which excelled in wit and psychological insight. He also wrote film adaptations of classic literary works, short stories, literary criticism, and essays about his personal life.

Early Life

S. N. Behrman (BAYR-man) was the son of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. His father, who had little formal education, was acknowledged in his community as an apt student of Talmudic theology. The youngest child of five, Behrman was the only one born in the United States, specifically in an immigrant section of Worcester, Massachusetts. As a boy Behrman was nearsighted and unsuccessful in athletics, which he cherished. In the summer he and his friends walked to and from Lake Quinsigamond, four miles from his home, every day to swim. He loved to read and admired particularly the novels of Horatio Alger, whose young heroes overcome obstacles and rise to success.

Behrman attended public schools and Clark University in Worcester, and he was influenced strongly by an older boy named Daniel Asher, of whom Behrman later wrote, giving him a fictitious name. Known to his friends throughout his life as Sam, Behrman preferred to use his first two initials in his numerous writings. After two years at Clark, Asher convinced Behrman to transfer to Harvard University to study drama with George Pierce Baker. Graduating in 1916, Behrman studied French drama under Brander Matthews at Columbia University, where Behrman earned his master’s degree in 1918. After he had accepted an offer to teach English at the University of Minnesota, Asher stepped in and persuaded Behrman to remain in New York because of the writing opportunities he would find there.

Life’s Work

Behrman’s ambition was to write for the theater, but his early publications in New York were short stories and book reviews. Sent by The New York Times to interview Siegfried Sassoon, Berhman developed a friendship with the British poet, the first of many with outstanding artists. By the mid-1920’s Behrman began to find companies willing to stage his plays. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne starred in his comedy The Second Man (1927), which ran for six months in New York and later in London. Many comedies followed, with the participation of such actors as Ruth Gordon, Ina Claire, Katherine Cornell, and Laurence Olivier. With Maxwell Anderson, Sidney Howard, Elmer Rice, and Robert E. Sherwood, Behrman formed the Playwrights’ Company in 1938 to promote their own plays and those of other playwrights.

In the 1930’s, Behrman was much in demand in Hollywood, where he was called upon to write screenplays based on such well-known works as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), and A Tale of Two Cities (1859). Among the film stars he met was Greta Garbo, who starred in his adaptations of Queen Christina (1933) and Anna Karenina (1935). A later screenplay, which he wrote in association with Joshua Logan, was the musical Fanny in 1954.

In 1936, Behman married Elza Heifetz Stone, the sister of violinist Jascha Heifetz. The two had one son, Arthur; his wife had two children from an earlier marriage. Much of Behrman’s nondramatic writing deals with his life. A series of essays about his early years was published in The New Yorker. It caused a division with the Asher family because the final essay was about the mental illness and suicide of Daniel Asher, revealing facts that Asher’s mother had kept secret. In the opinion of the magazine’s editor, that revelatory piece was the finest of the ten essays. Later the essays were published as The Worcester Account (1954). Another autobiographical volume was People in a Diary: A Memoir (1972), which focuses on his friendships with writers such as Sassoon, W. Somerset Maugham, Sinclair Lewis; actors such as Garbo, Lunt, and Fontanne; and musical genius George Gershwin.

Significance

As an author of comedies of manners with sparkling dialogue, characteristically developing the ambitions of the upper class, Behrman not only entertained audiences but also probed their social consciences. He was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1943 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959. His plays dealt so pervasively with topics of the 1920’s and 1930’s that they have not held up well with later audiences, but his autobiographical essays recapture his experiences and friendships tellingly. During the Nazi terror, Behrman wrote recommendations for many European Jews to help them gain entry to the United States.

Bibliography

Asher, Don. The Eminent Yachtsman and the Whorehouse Piano Player. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973. This book, which amounts to the Asher family’s reconciliation with Behrman by Daniel Asher’s son, contains letters that passed between the two men and that demonstrate the closeness of their relationship.

Behrman, S. N. People in a Diary: A Memoir. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. Based on the sixty volumes of his diary, this work illustrates Behrman’s knack for friendship. His aim in recalling many prominent friends, he said, was to “revive their society.”

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Worcester Account. 1954. Reprint. Worcester, Mass.: Tatnuck Bookseller Press, 1996. All chapters but the first were originally published in The New Yorker. The work deals with Behrman’s early years. These experiences are thoroughly and vividly autobiographical (the names of some of the participants were changed).

Reed, Kenneth T. S. N. Behrman. New York: Twayne, 1975. Although not a comprehensive biography, this book contains the most salient facts and discussions of some of Behrman’s many literary works.