James Maxwell Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, on December
15, 1888 to William Lincoln Anderson and Charlotte Perrimela
(Stephenson) Anderson. The second child born to the couple, Anderson
spent his formative years on his maternal grandmother's farm in
Atlantic before the family moved to Andover, Ohio when he was three
years old. His father attended a seminary at night to study for the
ministry while he supported the family as a railroad fireman.
His father took up the life of a traveling minister, moving his family
frequently until Anderson was in his late teens. Anderson attended
schools in Ohio, Iowa, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania. The Anderson
family's life was a vagabond one until they settled in Jamestown, North
Dakota in 1907.
After graduating from Jamestown High School, Anderson went to the
University of North Dakota in 1908. He worked his way through college
as a waiter and serving on the night copy desk of the newspaper "The
Grand Forks Herald." He was a member of the literary society Ad Altiora
at UND and helped put together the "Dacotah" Annual. He also
participated in college theatrics, serving as assistant director for
the Sock and Buskin Dramatic Society.
Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in June
1911, Anderson married his UND classmate Margaret Haskett, a farmer's
daughter, on August 1, 1911. They eventually had three sons, Quentin,
Alan, and Terence.
His first job after college was serving as the principal of the
Minnewaukan, North Dakota high school, where he doubled as an English
teacher. After making pacifist comments to his students, his contract
was not renewed, and he moved to Palo Alto, California, where he
enrolled in a master's program in English Lit at Stanford University.
After graduating from Stanford in 1914, he spent three years as a high
school English teacher in San Francisco before accepting an offer to
become chairman of Whittier College's English Department in 1917. Once
again he got in trouble with his pro-pacifist statements, and he was
fired after his first year for speaking out publicly on behalf of a
student seeking conscientious objector status during World War I.
Moving back to San Francisco, he worked as a journalist on the "San
Francisco Chronicle" and the "San Francisco Bulletin," then moved to
New York City to take an editorial position on the liberal periodical
"The New Republic." He continued his work as a newspaperman, becoming a
stringer for the "New York Globe" and the New York World." He also
found time to help launch the poetry magazine "Measure."
Turning his interest to the theater, he wrote his first play in 1923.
Written in verse, "White Desert" was a flop, lasting only 12
performances, but it attracted the attention of "New York World" critic
Laurence Stallings. Stallings chose Maxwell as his collaborator on his
World War One play "What Price Glory?" Opening on September 3, 1924,
the play was one of the stage sensations of the decade, earning kudos
and running for 430 performances. The financial rewards of helping
create such a big boffo box office blockbuster enabled Anderson to
retire from journalism and become a full-time dramatist.
Many of his plays were written in verse, and they typically touch on
social and moral problems, such as "Winterset" (1935), which addressed
the Sacco & Vanzetti trials in fictional form. The play, which won the
first New York Critics Circle Award, is about a gangster who visits the
children of the anarchists executed for the murder he himself
committed. Anderson won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play
"Both Your Houses," and repeated as the New York Critics Circle Award
winner for "High Tor" in 1936. He wrote many historical dramas and two
librettos for Kurt Weill, "Knickerbocker Holiday" (1938) and "Lost in
the Stars" (1940). He was also a lyricist, his most famous creation
being "September Song" from "Knickerbocker Holiday."
His plays included "Elizabeth the Queen" (1930), "Mary of Scotland "
(1933), "Key Largo" (1939); "Truckline Café" (1945), "Joan of Lorraine"
(1946), "Anne of the Thousand Days" (1947), and "The Bad Seed" (1954).
Anderson also worked on numerous screenplays, including
Im Westen nichts Neues (1930),
for which he received an Academy Award nomination,
Das Washingtoner Karussell (1932),
Rain (1932) ,
Die schwarze Majestät (1934),
and Die Farm am Mississippi (1935).
Plays of his that were turned into movies were
"Maria von Schottland (1936),
"Saturday's Children," which was filmed three times (once as "Maybe
It's Love"), Winterset (1936),
"Elizabeth the Queen", which became
Günstling einer Königin (1939),
The Eve of St. Mark (1944),
Knickerbocker Holiday (1944).
Gangster in Key Largo (1948), "Joan of Lorraine,"
which became Johanna von Orleans (1948),
Böse Saat (1956), "The Devil's
Hornpipe", which became
Never Steal Anything Small (1959),
and
Königin für tausend Tage (1969).
"What Price Glory?" was made into a silent film in 1926 and was remade
by John Ford in 1952.
He published two books of poetry, "You Who Have Dreams" in 1925, and
"Notes on a Dream," published posthumously in 1972. Anderson also
published two collections of essays, "The Essence of Tragedy and Other
Footnotes and Papers" (1939) and "Off Broadway Essays About the
Theatre" (1947).
His wife Margaret died on February 26, 1931, and he remarried in 1933,
taking Gertrude "Mab" Higger as his second wife. They had a daughter,
Hesper, born on August 12, 1934, and when Gertrude died on March 21,
1953, he married Gilda Hazard on June 6, 1954.
Among his many honors were honorary Doctor of Literature degrees from
Columbia University in 1946 and the University of North Dakota in 1958,
and the National Institute of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal in Drama in
1954.
Maxwell Anderson had a stroke on February 26, 1959 and died two days
later in Stamford, Connecticut. His oeuvre included over thirty
published plays and over a dozen unpublished ones.
