There Shall be No Night

There Shall be No Night (1940), a play by Robert E. Sherwood. [Alvin Theatre, 181 perf.; Pulitzer Prize.] The Nobel Prize–winning scien‐tist Dr. Kaarlo Valkonen (Alfred Lunt) and his American‐born wife, Miranda (Lynn Fontanne), are reluctant to believe that the Russians will invade his beloved Finland. Nor can they see much purpose in resistance, should the Russians invade. But when war breaks out and their son, Erik (Montgomery Clift) enters the army, Kaarlo joins the medical corps. He concludes that this war will not be the end of civilization, but rather “the long deferred death rattle of the primordial beast.” While many critics felt the acting turned a thin but well‐meant play into an exciting evening, John Mason Brown wrote, “No one can complain about the theatre's being an escapist institution when it conducts a class in current events at once as touching, intelligent and compassionate as There Shall Be No Night.” After the Russian defeat of the Finns, Sherwood changed the locale of the play to Greece and made the Germans the villains.