The Wingless Victory

Wingless Victory, The (1936), a play by Maxwell Anderson. [ Empire Theatre, 110 perf.] To the horror of his sanctimonious New England family, Nathaniel McQueston (Walter Abel), captain of the ship Wingless Victory, returns to port with a wife, the dark‐skinned Malayan princess Oparre (Katharine Cornell). She is accepted grudgingly only because Nathaniel is so rich. However, with time she recognizes she will never be truly welcome and that she stands in Nathaniel's way and so kills herself and her children. The play, which opened less than a month before Anderson's High Tor, was viewed by many as old‐fashioned melodrama in the guise of blank‐verse tragedy. Stark Young of the New Republic dismissed it as “semitosh from start to finish.”