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Home , Born Yesterday (play), Garson Kanin, My Favorite Wife

Insights A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival

Born Yesterday The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages. The Study Guide is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director. Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print The Study Guide, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org.

Cover photo: Anne Newhall (left) as Billie Dawn and Craig Spidle as Harry Brock in , 2003. Contents BornInformation Yesterday on the Play Synopsis 4 Characters 5 About the Playwright 6

Scholarly Articles on the Play A Pygmalion Tale, but So Much More 8 Well in Advance of Its Time 10

Utah Shakespeare Festival 3 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Synopsis: Born Yesterday Born Yesterday opens in the sitting room of suite 67D in the finest hotel in Washington, D.C. Colorful and lavishly decorated, it is “a masterpiece of offensive good taste.” The time is shortly after the end of World War II. Waiting in the suite is Paul Verrall, a newspaper reporter for The New Republic’s Washington bureau. Young and idealistic, he is investigating Washington skullduggery and hopes to interview mil- lionaire junk man Harry Brock, who has rented this suite. Brock is a businessman who operates on the shady side of the street, and Verrall wants to find out what it is that brings him to Washington. Brock soon arrives with his entourage, including his brother, Eddie, and his lawyer, Ed Devery. Also with him is his beautiful but poorly educated and rough-around-the-edges girlfriend, Billie Dawn. Brock grants Verrall the interview but, other than giving him trivial background information on his life, reveals nothing about why he is in Washington. After the interview Brock meets with Senator Norval Hedges, and reveals his plan. Brock has realized that there is a fortune to be made overseas from scrap left over from the war in Europe and has hatched a scheme to import it back to the United States. Brock, however, does not want to be bothered with tariffs and other impediments. Senator Hedges, who is being bribed by Brock, is developing the Hedges-Keller Amendment, which would guarantee that the State Department would be unable to interfere with Brock’s business. This, then, is why Brock is in Washington—to make sure that Hedges is doing the job he is getting paid to do. Another stumbling block in his scheme, as Brock sees it, is Billie. During the evening with Senator and Mrs. Hedges, Billie’s lack of social graces embarrasses even the boorish junk man himself. Determined to make her fit in, he hires Verrall to educate her. Verrall is initially skeptical but soon finds that, in spite of her lack of formal education, Billie is capable of learning quickly. The more she learns and reads about the world around her, the more she begins to understand the nature of Brock and his schemes. More painfully, she begins to realize how Brock has been using her as a tool to further his plans—and how he has been both physically and emo- tionally abusive. Events come to a head when Billie refuses to sign her name to documents which she has discovered are part of Brock’s crooked scheme to create a junk cartel and amass a fortune at the expense of the public. Brock’s reaction to Billie’s refusal to sign the documents is violent. He strikes her and sends her from the hotel. Billie realizes that she can no longer be with Brock, and that during the course of her education, she and Verrall have fallen in love. In a parting act of defiance, Billie gives the incriminating documents to Verrall. Despite Brock’s rage, Billie and Verrall refuse to back down or return the documents. Billie lets Brock know that he had “better behave” or she will reveal everything she knows about his shady deals. Incredulous, Brock watches his carefully constructed scheme collapse as Billie and Verrall walk out of the hotel and into their own future.

4 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Characters: Born Yesterday Billie Dawn: A charming but poorly educated ex-chorus girl, Billie Dawn is entirely lacking in social graces. Her natural honesty and desire to improve her lot in life, however, soon cause her to experience a wonderful transformation. Harry Brock: A vulgar and egotistical junkman, Harry Brock has come to Washington full of fraudulent schemes. Loud and verbally and physically abusive of those around him, includ- ing Billie, he soon finds his crooked machinations going awry when he crosses her. Paul Verrall: A young, idealistic reporter, Paul Verrall has been investigating political skulldug- gery in Washington. He is hired by Harry Brock to educate Billie Dawn and eventually sees past her rough exterior and falls in love with her. Ed Devery: Harry Brock’s lawyer, thirty years ago Ed Devery was considered a man destined for greatness. Now, with Brock as his only client, the future looks far less bright—but with a salary of $100,000 a year and plenty of fine Scotch, Devery is past caring. Senator Norval Hedges: Pale, thin, and worn down at sixty years old, Senator Norval Hedges is a nervous politician currently on the payroll of Harry Brock, who plans on using the senator for his own means. Mrs. Hedges: The wife of Senator Norval Hedges Eddie Brock: Brother of Harry, Eddie Brock often handles the little details of his older broth- er’s business, “greasing the wheels,” as it were, with tips and pay-offs. The Assistant Manager Helen: A maid A Bellhop Another Bellhop A Barber A Manicurist A Bootblack A Waiter

Utah Shakespeare Festival 5 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 About the Playwright: By Sarah Johnson From Insights, 2003 Once asked how he dealt with the passing away of his closest contemporaries, Garson Kanin replied “the really great ones don’t die” (People, 13 October 1980, 51). With his own death on March 13, 1999 Kanin himself passed into the realm of the really great, the notewor- thy, and the never forgotten. His love affair with the written word began at a very young age. Nora Johnson noted that “Garson Kanin has been marinating in theatre since before most of us were ever in the audi- ence” (“Fun, Sex and Music,” New York Times Book Review, 23 November 1980, 42). Born on November 14, 1912 in Rochester, New York, Kanin dropped out of high school during the Great Depression to work in vaudeville as a musician and comic. He entered the business mainly to support his family, but was “bitten by the theatre bug” and moved to to train at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1932. He made his Broadway debut in Little Ol’ Boy in 1934, but quickly left acting to work as a production assis- tant for Little Ol’ Boy director . Employed by Abbott for several more shows, he moved on to directing with 1937’s Hitch Your Wagon, which in turn landed him a contract with Samuel Goldwyn. After a year on the Goldwyn staff, Kanin was frustrated over the lack of directing opportunities and signed on with RKO, where he directed such classic comedies as ; Tom, Dick and Harry; and with and . Drafted by the army in 1941, Kanin used his experience to make documentary shorts for the offices of war information and emergency manpower; of these the most notable is True Glory, General Eisenhower’s official report of the war in Europe. The film won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary, as well as other awards and citations. In December, 1942 Kanin married , Hollywood actress and author. The pair- ing was extremely successful, both professionally and personally. Their combined efforts result- ed in two vehicles for (and lifelong friendships with) and : the critically acclaimed and highly successful Adam’s Rib and . In total the couple wrote only four screenplays together, three of which garnered Academy Award nominations. Although their collaboration efforts were both lucrative and well received, the couple decided to part their professional ways. In an interview with Contemporary Authors in 1981, Kanin recounted why: “We weren’t really comfortable at work; we quarreled when we worked together. We never quarrel in private life. It soon became apparent that if we didn’t get a pro- fessional divorce we would have to get a real one” (Gale Group: Detroit. 1999, 290). Gordon went on to concentrate on acting and Kanin pursued other forms of writing. Kanin began writing plays, short stories, journals, and novels. But his professional apex came with the completion of his play, Born Yesterday. Wildly successful, Born Yesterday opened on Broadway on February 4, 1946, running 1,642 performances until closing on December 31, 1949. In 1950 Kanin adapted his hit for the screen, catapulting actress to stardom in one of her best screen roles, the persona of Billie Dawn. It seems as if the success of Born Yesterday was the affirmation Kanin needed to know that he could write for others; in turn, he began to write for his own gratification. Over the next thirty years he concentrated on penning books and plays to amuse himself. In several of his works, both fiction and nonfiction, Kanin drew on the anecdotal material of his journals and

6 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 the insights he had gained through experience in show business. In a telephone interview on April 9, 1981 with Contemporary Authors Kanin related his love affair with remembering the past: The notebooks I have written since 1935 at the insistence of Thorton Wilder, whom I met that year, now run four to five million words. Indeed they have provided me with much mate- rial. Many things I would have otherwise forgotten were well remembered because they were written down (Volume 78, Gale Group, Detroit, 1999, 291). He began to actively pursue portraying the important personages and aspects of the enter- tainment world that he had been privy to, including the greatly received Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir, prompting further forays into the secretive side of the silver screen in Hollywood, Moviola, and Together Again. During an interview Kanin was once asked if there was one facet of his career so far that he had enjoyed the most. He replied “Yes, it’s what I do now, . . . and the reason I continued was that I was scared. I didn’t have sufficient confidence in my abilities as a writer to believe that I would ever be able to make a living as a writer. . . . It took me some time to dredge up sufficient courage to say ‘I’m not going to do anything but write.’ That’s what I’ve been doing for the past several years and it seems to be going well” (Contemporary Authors, Vol. 78, Gale Group, Detroit, 1999, 292). t certainly did go well for Kanin. Doris Brumbach declared that “if youth is wasted on the young, old age has not been wasted on Garson Kanin (“Nonfiction in Brief: ‘It Takes a Long Time to Become Young,’” The New York Times Book Review, 26 February 1978, 22). He continued to write and direct the projects that were close to his heart until his death in 1999. When Kanin died he was hailed as “The Man for-All-Theatre-Seasons,” a celebrated play- wright, film writer, director, and author, whose career spanned over fifty years. His secret? Kanin once joked, “A man ninety years old was asked to what he attributed his longevity. ‘I reckon,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘it’s because most nights I went to bed and slept when I should have stayed up and worried.’” I, for one, am glad that Kanin got so much sleep.

Utah Shakespeare Festival 7 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 A Pygmalion Tale, but So Much More By Heidi Madsen From Insights, 2003 Born Yesterday is set in the very year of its composition, the year of the presidential succession of Harry S. Truman, the year of the A-bombs, 1945. World War II was coming to an end, and the theatre was shifting from plays that analyzed politics, war, and the evils of fascism to plays that analyzed people—plays such as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. But, playwright Garson Kanin was still preoccupied with things political. He may have had some misgivings about the American people, how they felt about their country, how well they understood and appreciated their government, and whether or not they recognized their prevailing personal responsibilities to it. Kanin’s script in its original form included elements which were later removed due to tensions inside the U.S. associated with the Cold War. No one at this time was above scrutiny. Hollywood was followed with fascinated attention as usual—but the government was searching the stars for signs of propaganda. As a result, Born Yesterday lost a significant amount of its charge, political metaphors were diluted, and the play became the Pygmalion tale which it is thought of today. Kanin wanted to address the subject of dictatorship. At the start of the war, before knowledge of the Holocaust, there were many, including scholars and American heroes, who bought into the ideology of the dictator with its claims and promises of social and economic equality. Some even participated in the infamous Berlin book burnings where the work and words of wonderful minds—Eintsein, Thomas Mann, Jack London, H.G. Wells, and thousands of others—went up in smoke. When Helen Keller was informed that her book, too, had been selected for incineration she responded: “Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas” (www.ushmm.org/outreach/propag.htm, Nazi Propaganda and censorship). This, then, is truly the prevailing theme of Born Yesterday. With hints of farcicality to lighten the underlying seriousness of the subject, Kanin would place dictatorship inside modern American culture and call it Harry Brock, self-made millionaire and scrap-metal war profiteer from Plainfield, New Jersey. In the opening act of Born Yesterday, Brock has just arrived in Washington, D.C. along with his entourage: his lawyer (every dictator needs a lawyer) Ed Devery, an alcoholic and ex-secretary to a supreme court justice; his cousin and stooge Eddie Brock; and his girlfriend of nine years, former chorus girl Billie Dawn. Brock is determined to do business where he wants, how he wants, and as big as he wants. He has come to Washington to secure legislation that will help his million-dollar junk business and has bought himself a senator, Norvall Hedges, to help ensure this. Typical of the male tendency to choose beauty and then become dissatisfied with it, when Senator and Mrs. Hedges meet Billie, Harry begins to worry: “Every time she opened her mouth tonight, something wrong came out.” Devery, who is paid to give unwanted advice, suggests he send her home, but Brock has a better idea. He will hire Paul Verrall, a reporter with The New Republic, to show her the ropes and hopefully smarten her up a little. At first, Verrall sees Brock’s proposition only as a way to discover more about him and his busi- ness dealings—already alert to the fact that they were not entirely on the level—and to find outex- actly what Harry is doing in Washington. Verrall needs names, facts, and specific misdeeds before he can “get it to the people.” However, he knows that “a world full of ignorant people is dangerous”; and, notwithstanding his obvious attraction to the ex-chorus girl, he desires to empower Billie with information which could free her from those who would degrade her through the misuse of their

8 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 power. She is “breathtakingly beautiful,” but she does not have to stay “breathtakingly stupid.” Requiring only a jump-start from Verrall, Billie begins to read and to exercise her mind; she visits the National Gallery. She recalls her roots--the worthy care of a concerned father who wanted her to make her way through life reputably, usefully, and felicitously. It has been said that Born Yesterday is a Pygmalion tale inasmuch as Billie’s so-called intel- lectual transformation can be compared to the physical and mental transformation of Eliza Doolittle. Eliza, in George Bernard Shaw’s famous play, was molded into something beautiful, something statuesque, but her sculptor was startled when from the statue, a soul emerged. And while, with Born Yesterday, we do start to see the woman inside emerge from somewhere blank and uninteresting, what occurs inside of Billie could be more appropriately defined as an awak- ening rather than a transformation--an awakening to things previously known--an empower- ment. Obvious parallels can be drawn between Billie’s childhood and the American democratic structure and between the non-nurturing environment of stifling dominance and vicarious liv- ing which she experienced with Harry Brock and the human condition found under a despotic dictator. If Harry Brock is a metaphor for dictatorship, Billie Dawn can either be an allegory rep- resenting the countries who had been invaded and used, or one for an unconscious America strangely inviting to people in power. Either way, Kanin did not condone the misuse of power. Much like Shakespeare, Kanin was able to make political commentary safely through his characters. For instance, Paul Verrall, at the end of Act 3, sums up best what Garson Kanin was trying to tell us: “It’s enough to break your heart. You see a perfect piece of machinery--the democratic structure--and some- body’s always tampering with it . . . trying to make it hit the jackpot.”

Utah Shakespeare Festival 9 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Born Yesterday: Well in Advance of Its Time By Lawrence Henley From Midsummer Magazine, 2003 Born Yesterday, a play written well in advance of its time, is a comic drama whose subject matter foreshadowed a number of socio-political developments that slowly began to gain momentum soon after- ward. The play’s subject matter portended such significant trends as the rise of women’s movement, con- sumerism, the resurgence of higher education, and the phenomenon our generation has come to know as “whistle blowing.” Playwright Garson Kanin could scarcely have imagined the progressive changes that would develop as a residual of societal reform movements in the fifty years since Born Yesterday was penned in 1947. Astonishingly, the behavioral tendencies of his characters have a shared resemblance to numerous social and political developments that have taken place during the ensuing six decades. Kanin, also husband to legendary actress Ruth Gordon, wrote and directed numerous works for the Broadway stage, as well as several more for the silver screen. At the head of the class stands Born Yesterday, most likely due to its enlightening power over postwar America, just beyond the midpoint of the twentieth century. The play was more than entertainment: it served a dual purpose, offering an acces- sible model for the way attitudes about ethical behavior, the pursuit of knowledge, and male-female rela- tionships might be reformed. Born Yesterday made its New York debut at George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s Lyceum Theatre, premiering on February 4, 1946, subsequently moving to Henry Miller’s Theatre on 42nd Street. The show ran for a whopping 1,642 performances, a staggeringly large number of outings for a non-musical. Shortly after it closed, Kanin signed a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to have the play adapted for nationwide distribution in Hollywood. The screen version was to be directed by the late, great (also the director of The Philadelphia Story, A Star is Born, and My Fair Lady). Both of the original productions of Born Yesterday received an enormous boost from the performances of one of the greatest stars of the 1950s, the inimitable and somewhat forgotten Judy Holliday, who was featured as the female lead in both mediums. Holliday was born Judith Tuvim (her surname can be loosely interpreted in Yiddish as “holiday”) on June 21, 1921. Her Queens, New York family was of Russian-Jewish descent. Attracted to the performing life well before her teenage years, Holliday eventually signed on with ’s group of nightclub- bing post-vaudevillians, The Revuers, after turning eighteen. By the early 1940s, this reasonably suc- cessful act found itself in Los Angeles, and, like so many other performers of the era, both Judy and her colleagues signed on as Hollywood contract players at Twentieth-Century Fox. After being dropped by the studio, she returned to New York where she was almost instantly recruited to replace less than a week before Born Yesterday’s out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia. Holliday seized the opportunity and turned it into gold, becoming an “overnight” sensation in what became her career-making signature role. Her character, Billie Dawn, was the seven-year “fiancée” and trophy girl of shifty New York junk-tycoon Harry Brock (played brilliantly on Broadway by and matched on film by tough guy Broderick Crawford). In the role, Holliday successfully masked her innate intelligence, transforming herself into the classic ditzy blond and ex-chorus girl. For her efforts, she was honored with the ultimate trifecta of awards for an actress in a leading role: a clean sweep of the Tony, the Oscar, and the Golden Globe! This past century-and-a-half of American history is full of non-fictional characters that should

10 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 remind audiences of Harry Brock. You know them. They were the low-born, hard-fought success stories of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, Al Capone, and Don King. New York’s infamous Tammany Hall was chock full of Harry Brocks, led most notably by the notorious “Boss” Tweed. Brock’s character can be interpreted somewhat euphemistically as the seething underbelly of modern American business culture: always looking for legally defensible ways to carry out illegal or barely legal (and lucrative) acts. Today, the U.S. continues to be scarred by such scandal. The likes of Enron and World Com have become all-too familiar to us. An easy identification with corruption in the present-day can be made through Harry Brock. Brock, who is without question a bully in both business and personal relationships, believes him- self to have a noose-tight grip on the universe. He is the archetypal “legitimate” business man, forever trotting out weapons from his legal arsenal, men that possess the strong command of non-street education well beyond his grasp. The personification of this is the play’s slick D.C. attorney Jim Devery, an alcoholic who long ago compromised his youthful idealism in exchange for his employer’s tainted money. While he is, admittedly, ashamed of what he has made of his life, Devery represents the antithesis of the whistle-blower. He cultivates and enhances Brock’s hold on power, sustaining it not only through the boss’s heavy-handed tactics, but through the deployment of dexterous legal manipulation. He is responsible for the orchestration of what we know as political “payola.” Brock sees the world as his to control, treating all he encounters as existing to be subservient to his desires. No exception to this is his lackey, Eddie (who happens to be his own brother). Even Brock’s girlfriend is nothing more than a testimonial to his power. Billie Dawn is simply another attractive blond bimbette whose rescue from the tawdry existence of a chorus girl must be repaid through indentured companionship. To be sure, Billie has most everything she could possibly want from a material point of view. Harry has made certain of that: furs, jewels, lavish hotel suites, all in quantity. She has everything except the real love and sense of self-worth that she desper- ately needs, something to which Harry, child of the streets that he is, is completely ignorant of. In truth, despite plentiful material goods, Billie Dawn lives in isolation. Admittedly, she hasn’t seen her family in nearly a decade. She feels a deep sense of guilt resulting from the alienation of her father, a simple and honest man she deeply admires. Worse yet, Brock and Devery continually manipulate her trust, using Billie’s legal signature as a tool with which to create shelters for the slimy cartel they are in the process of engineering. Billie, innocently enough, affixes her name to a plethora of contracts and documents, the true purpose of which she is ignorant. Although Brock, in weaker moments, professes to be “nuts about her,” his treatment of her belies that statement. To make matters worse for Billie, Harry focuses on her social inadequacies. In her uneducated state, she proves herself socially and intellectually incapable of mingling with the wives of Washington politicos. Billie has grown weary of waiting for Harry’s absent proposal of marriage, as well as the rough treatment she often receives from him. Truth be known, she would probably prefer to see her fiancé rot in hell. The couple’s frenetic game of Gin Rummy in the original film version of Born Yesterday exemplifies her streak of defiance. As he rails at her for her lack of social graces during the card game in their hotel suite, she infuriates Harry with her astonishing card playing skills, absolutely dominat- ing him. Through her superiority in card games, she channels her resentment into thoroughly past- ing her hot-headed sugar daddy time after time. Nostalgic for a time in the not-so-distant past when she, in her own mind, could have been a “star,” Billie can see the contrast between those days and the present, becoming restless for some- thing more in life. Unknowingly, Harry provides her with the unlikeliest of keys to this fulfillment, accidentally transforming Billie’s ignorance and isolation into the richness of culture and intellect. Counselor Devery has invited an idealistic young maverick up to Brock’s massive suite. He

Utah Shakespeare Festival 11 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 is Capitol journalist Paul Verrall. Verrall is offered the chance for an inside scoop, an attempt on the part of Devery to employ the “keep your enemies closer” theory of public relations in an effort to improve his employer’s tarnished image. A sudden brainstorm of Harry’s takes the lawyers idea a step further. Impulsively, Brock puts Verrall on the payroll. His assignment will be to educate and sophisticate Billie Dawn, in order that she might advance her compatibility with the Washington cocktail set. Through his initial acceptance of Harry’s offer, Verrall seeks only to dig up as much dirt as he can on Brock’s operation. He takes the money without suspecting the miracle by which his true reward will be paid. The plan backfires completely on a dumbstruck Harry Brock, who sees his plans to corner the scrap iron market by way of bribery and chicanery torn to shreds. Of equal import, he loses both the girl and his corporate shill to a return to idealism inspired by the man he put on his own payroll! A Pygmalion- esque relationship develops between Billie Dawn and the handsome tutor, and she discovers the value and power of consideration, morality, and thought through Verrall’s teachings. To his surprise, Paul is powerless to do anything but fall in love with his pupil, and he demonstrates to Billie exactly how she has been played for a fool by her manipulating boyfriend and his lawyer. Born Yesterday is a play loaded with priceless lines, many of which serve to indicate Kanin’s political and social leanings. In the opening segment of the play, attorney Devery remarks defensively: “Just because I’m a lawyer does not mean I own the law!” From Verrall, we receive the following gem of a thought: “A world full of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in.” Revived both on the New York stage and as a Hollywood film, the show has in modern times featured such luminaries as Edward Asner and Madeleine Kahn in lead roles. In their most recent film reincarnations, Billie Dawn and Harry Brock were played by and John Goodman, with Griffith’s then-husband Don Johnson appearing as Paul Verrall. In conclusion, Born Yesterday is far from an old warhorse in revival. It is a true chestnut, maintaining both strength and substance as a play. In tribute to Kanin’s monumental talent and forethought, it proves that, even in today’s world, we can learn valuable lessons concerning ethical behav- ior, the value of teaching and learning, and human relationships.

12 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880