The Theatre Guild

Theatre Guild, The (New York). The most exciting and responsible producing organization of the 1920s and 1930s, it began as an outgrowth of the defunct Washington Square Players. The group was formally organized in 1919 with a board consisting of, among others, Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Rollo Peters, Lee Simonson, and Helen Westley. Later important additions to the board were Dudley Digges and Theresa Helburn. The first production was Bonds of Interest (1919), but the group's success was signaled by its second mounting, John Ferguson (1919). Other early productions included Jane Clegg (1920), Heartbreak House (1920), Mr. Pim Passes By (1921), Liliom (1921), He Who Gets Slapped (1922), Back to Methuselah (1922), and R. U. R. (1922), all of which were foreign works. Not until its production of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine (1923) did the group begin to mount American works as aggressively as it had mounted imported ones. Among its subsequent productions of note, both American and European, were Saint Joan (1923), The Guardsman (1924), They Knew What They Wanted (1924), The Garrick Gaieties (1925), Ned McCobb's Daughter (1926), The Silver Cord (1926), The Second Man (1927), Porgy (1927), Marco Millions (1928), Strange Interlude (1928), Dynamo (1929), Hotel Universe (1930), Elizabeth the Queen (1930), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), Reunion in Vienna (1931), Biography (1932), Both Your Houses (1933), Ah, Wilderness! (1933), Mary of Scotland (1933), Days Without End (1934), Valley Forge (1934), Porgy and Bess (1935), End of Summer (1936), and Idiot's Delight (1936). By the mid‐1930s political, artistic, and financial disagreements had resulted in the formation of two major breakaway organizations, the Group Theatre and the Playwrights' Company. Thereafter, both the Guild's daring and its success waned, although over the next few years it produced The Philadelphia Story (1939), The Time of Your Life (1939), There Shall Be No Night (1940), and The Pirate (1942). It was on the verge of financial collapse when the success of Oklahoma! (1943) saved it, but it was never again so important a producer. Its later offerings included the Robeson‐ Ferrer Othello (1943); Carousel (1945); The Iceman Cometh (1946); Come Back, Little Sheba (1950); and Sunrise at Campobello (1958), as well as several other hits. By the 1970s the Guild existed only on paper, its productions so infrequent that most thought the group was gone. Its last official offering was as co‐producer of the unsuccessful musical State Fair (1996). In its heyday the Guild was the principal producer of such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O'Neill, Maxwell Anderson, and Robert Sherwood and greatly advanced the careers of such players as Lunt and Fontanne. Its pioneering subscription plan guaranteed audiences in New York and elsewhere the best in modern theatre, and in turn assured the Guild a loyal, knowledgeable group of playgoers.