Both Your Houses

Both Your Houses (1933), a play by Maxwell Anderson. [Royale Theatre, 120 perf.; Pulitzer Prize.] After Alan McClean (Sheppard Strudwick) was fired for exposing misappropriations at his school, his muckraking publisher father used the incident as a springboard to elect Alan to Congress. Advised that their freshman colleague is “Serious. Wears mail‐order clothes. Reads Thomas Jefferson,” the older congressmen on the Appropriations Committee are alarmed. Their fears are quickly justified when Alan denounces the very contractors who supported his election bid and argues against money for a dam in his district. When he fails to defeat a carefully negotiated pork‐barrel bill, he does an about‐face and offers his own bill, which includes money for every congressman's request, no matter how absurd. To his disgust the bill passes, and he is hailed as a political genius. This preachy, bitter, but powerfully written play, with perceptive portraits of a variety of congressmen, was only a modest hit, and the Theatre Guild production had already begun its post‐Broadway tour when it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. It was hastily returned to New York for a short additional run.