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Like fisticuffers rattled by the crowd's jeers, the prize committee apparently lost its sense of timing in the next two years. As though to atone for the slight to Once in a Lifetime, the 1932 award unprecedentedly went to a musical comedy, Of Thee I Sing, by George Kaufman and another collaborator, Morrie Ryskind. The late Morris Gershwin, onetime East Side Turkish bath proprietor and father of the musicomedy's composer and librettist, complacently remarked: "That Pulitzer must be a pretty smart man." But the profession in general was dissatisfied that such deserving pieces as Mourning Becomes Electro, by Eugene O'Neill, Philip Barry's Animal Kingdom and Robert Sherwood's sprightly Reunion in Vienna should be left out in the cold. Equally unsatisfactory to many was last year's neglect of Dinner at Eight. Belatedly signalized was Maxwell Anderson. But even the stimulus of a Pulitzer Prize did not prevent an early closing for his acidic political play, Both Your Houses.
At his home near New City, N. Y. last week, Playwright Anderson could accept the loss of another prize for his Mary of Scotland with good grace. Both Mary of Scotland, an historical piece whose writing is its strong point, and Men in White, the hospital tale of an interne who forsakes the luxury of a Parkavian practice for the sterner glories of research, were due for increased attendance as a result of the Pulitzer Prize pother.
Men in White's playwright, Sidney Kingsley, is 27, unmarried. His prize-winning offering is his first. Its printed version, of which his delighted publishers were planning a 4th edition, gives ample evidence of the author's earnest research. It is replete with thoroughgoing footnotes on septic poisoning, Lord Lister and the literature which must be read by medical students. Last week Playwright Kingsley, far from the scene of the controversy his work had precipitated, was attending the May theatrical festival in Moscow (see p. 17).