The Diary of Anne Frank

Diary of Anne Frank, The (1955), a play by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett. [ Cort Theatre, 717 perf.; Pulitzer Prize, Tony, NYDCC Awards.] Shortly after the war Otto Frank (Joseph Schildkraut) returns with his former stenographer, Miep Gies (Gloria Jones), to the attic where Mr. Kraler (Clinton Sundberg) had hidden the Frank family and some other Jews from the Gestapo. There Frank discovers the diary kept by his thirteen‐year‐old daughter Anne (Susan Strasberg). His thoughts fly back to the months they spent there, often in silence lest they give away their whereabouts; to happy moments such as a Chanukah celebration and to bitter ones such as catching a fellow Jew stealing their food. The announcement of Allied landings brings hope of a quick release, but shortly before the liberation their hiding place is betrayed. Anne and the others are sent to the gas chambers. Only Mr. Frank manages to escape. Now he reads the last line in the diary. “In spite of everything,” Anne writes, “I still believe people are really good at heart.” “She puts me to shame,” the still bitter Frank acknowledges. The play was based on the real Anne Frank's diary (published in English as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl), which had become a worldwide best‐seller after the war. The Kermit Bloomgarden production was widely praised, Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post noting, “By wisely shunning any trace of theatricality or emotional excess, the playwrights have made the only‐too‐true story deeply moving in its unadorned veracity.” It was successfully produced in almost every major theatre center, with noteworthy New York revivals in 1978 and 1997. New Yorker Albert HACKETT (1900–95) and his wife, Francis GOODRICH (1891–1984), a native of Belleville, New Jersey, began their careers as performers. Their first two plays were the moderately successful comedies Up Pops the Devil (1930) and Bridal Wise (1932). After a long, successful career as film writers they returned to Broadway with the short‐lived The Great Big Doorstep (1942).

Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett 1956

The Diary of Anne Frank, the play adapted from Anne Frank’s famous diary, made its theater debut in 1956. Since then, it has been reproduced countless times on stages across the country and abroad (the playscript, with extensive notes, is readily available from Dramatists Play Service). Collaborators Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, longtime Hollywood writers, had little experience with such a story as that of the Frank family. Previous scripts included sophisticated comedies such as The Thin Man or lively musicals such as Easter Parade. However, Goodrich and Hackett researched the play meticulously, drawing not only on Anne’s diary but also on the experience of visiting Otto Frank and the attic hideout. As Evelyn Ehrlich noted in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Hackett in 1956 said, “We all felt we were working for a cause, not just a play.”

The Diary of Anne Frank was an immediate critical and popular success, with reviewers particularly enthusiastic about Anne’s spirit, optimism, and nobility. The play represented the pinnacle of Goodrich and Hackett’s career. However, over the years, criticism mounted against the play for inaccurately representing Anne’s own words as well as the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. Wendy Kesselman revised the script and mounted a production in 1997, but the commentary brought about by this new version of Anne’s life in hiding contributes to the reader’s understanding of the monumental task that faced Goodrich and Hackett in the 1950s, as they attempted to bring together the contradictory aspects of Anne Frank.

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