The Theatre: WPA, Lewis & Co.

After spending a reputed $200,000 in preparations, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer last February abandoned its film version of It Can't Happen Here, a best-selling novel of 1935 in which Sinclair Lewis showed how a Fascist dictatorship might come to the U. S. Indignant Mr. Lewis thereupon offered the play rights to WPA's Federal Theatre Project, which went ahead with plans to produce the play simultaneously in a score of cities all over the nation. It was agreed that Nobel Prizewinner Lewis and his collaborator, Paramount Writer John C. ("Jack") Moffitt, should divide royalties of...

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