Author’s typed copy, with autograph notations, of “The Young Elizabeth” [“The Crown of Flame”], by Amélie Rives. 1920.

From the Papers of Amélie Rives.

Women Playwrights II

Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy

The playwright and novelist Amélie Louise Rives spent most of her life at her family’s estate, “Castle Hill,” in Albemarle County, just east of Charlottesville. Born in 1863, Amélie began writing stories and plays at an early age. When she was twenty-three years old, her first story appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Two years later, in 1888, her first novel, The Quick or the Dead?, caused a sensation when accusations of immorality attached to the plot in which a young widow ponders whether or not to remarry shortly after the death of her husband. Amélie Rives became a celebrity of sorts with the appearance of this “scandalous” novel, which she later dramatized. That same year also saw the publication of her first play, the Romantic drama Herod and Marianne, written in blank-verse.

Production photograph of The Young Elizabeth. [St. Louis Little Theatre], no date.

From the Papers of Amélie Rives.

Following her marriage and divorce from John Armstrong Chanler, Amélie Rives married portrait-painter Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy. The couple divided their time between Virginia and New York, and it was during this period that Amélie became increasingly drawn to the theatre, writing a series of plays that were staged on Broadway. For example, “The Fear Market,” an unpublished play, successfully ran for 118 performances at the Booth Theatre in 1916. The 1920s saw the production of more plays, while the playwright began a nearly twenty-year project to dramatize the story of England’s Queen Elizabeth I. At various times entitled “The Crown of Flame” and “Bel Phoebe,” The Young Elizabeth proved Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy’s last major work before her death in 1945.

From The Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature

Engraving of Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy by Wellington. Ca. 1888.

Autograph fragment, of “Miss Lulu Bett,” by Zona Gale. No date.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Zona Gale

Although Zona Gale is known primarily for her novels and short stories, she also wrote seven plays, three of which were produced professionally. Born and raised in Wisconsin, Gale incorporated Midwestern values and small-town settings into her novels and plays. The early twentieth-century feminist movement also influenced her writng, as seen in the title character in her short story and later play Miss Lulu Bett. Chronicling the transformation of a meek, servile young woman into an individual of strength and determination, the play earned Gale a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921. The first woman to receive this honor, Gale dazzled the American theatre scene of the 1920s; critics compared her plays to those of Eugene O’Neill in their realism and treatment of dialogue and character.

Photograph of Zona Gale. No date.

Hellman, Lillian. Watch on the Rhine. New York: Privately published, 1942.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence Hellman was a product of both the American North and South. Born in New Orleans in 1905, she spent large portions of her childhood there with her paternal relatives after her parents moved to New York City when she was five years old. The playwright felt that this dual, and often contradictory, living arrangement influenced the development of her character and temperament, translating into her work.

Hellman’s career took off with her move to Hollywood. Following her husband, Arthur Kobler, who had been hired as a screenwriter, she met and became romantically involved with detective-story writer Dashiell Hammett, a relationship that lasted until his death in 1961. Hammett encouraged Hellman to turn from fiction writing to playwriting, and the result was her first and immediately successful play, The Children’s Hour (1934). Two years later, her Days to Come proved a failure, but Hellman rebounded with The Little Foxes in 1939. Set in the South at the turn of the twentieth century, this familial drama of power and greed won the acclaim of audiences and critics alike, establishing Hellman as a significant American playwright. The success continued. In 1941, Hellman’s anti-fascist views created Watch on the Rhine, her play about the evils of Nazism. That year, the play received the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

Herman Shumlin Presents Tallulah Bankhead in “The Little Foxes” by Lillian Hellman. Playbill for the National Theatre. [New York]: New York Theatre Program, [1939].

Gift of Doris Farr.

Over the next twenty years, Hellman produced a large number of original and prize-winning dramas and adapted many authors’ prose works. She also collaborated with Leonard Bernstein in 1956, writing the book for the comic opera Candide. By the time of her death in 1984, Lillian Hellman had contributed five long-running plays to Broadway, more than any of her male contemporaries.