The ''Sidney Howard Memorial Award'' was a notable but short-lived theater prize established in 1939 by the

Playwrights' Company The Playwrights Company (1938–1961) was an American theatrical production company. History Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, Elmer Rice, Robert E. Sherwood and John F. Wharton established The Playwrights Company in 1938 (incorpo ...

. It was designed to support new playwrights who had no notable successes but had shown promise. Among the awardees are

Robert Ardrey Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writing, science writer perhaps best known for ''The Territorial Imperative'' (1966). After a Broadway (theatre), Broadway and Cinema of th ...

and

Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three ...

Sidney Howard

Sidney Howard (1891-1939) was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the

Pulitzer Prize for Drama The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were a ...

in 1925 for his play They Knew What They Wanted, which was later adapted for the screen by the first Memorial Award winner,

. In 1932 he was nominated for an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

for his adaptation of the

Sinclair Lewis Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the America ...

novel '' Arrowsmith'', and he was nominated again in 1936 for '' Dodsworth'', which he had adapted for the stage in 1934.Berg, A. Scott. ''Goldwyn: A Biography.'' New York: Riverhead, 1998. In 1940 he was awarded a posthumous

for the screenplay for ''

Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind most often refers to: * Gone with the Wind (novel), ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell * Gone with the Wind (film), ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind ...

''. During his career he wrote or adapted over seventy plays and eleven films. Sidney Howard was one of the founding members of the Playwrights' Company. Howard died in 1939 at the age of forty-eight. He was working on his farm in Massachusetts when he was accidentally crushed to death by a tractor. Books Atkinson called the event "A Broadway calamity."Atkinson, Brooks. ''Broadway.'' New York: Atheneum, 1970. P. 268. Print. Following his tragic death his colleagues from the Playwrights' Company established the prize in his memory.

The Award

''Literary Prizes and their Winners'' gives the following description of the prize:

In 1939 the five directors of the
Playwrights' Company The Playwrights Company (1938–1961) was an American theatrical production company. History Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, Elmer Rice, Robert E. Sherwood and John F. Wharton established The Playwrights Company in 1938 (incorpo ...
,
Maxwell Anderson James Maxwell Anderson (December 15, 1888 – February 28, 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist, and lyricist. Anderson faced many challenges in his career, frequently losing jobs for expressing his opinions or supporting ...
,
S. N. Behrman Samuel Nathaniel Behrman (; June 9, 1893 – September 9, 1973) was an American playwright, screenwriter, biographer, and longtime writer for ''The New Yorker''. His son is the composer David Behrman. Biography Early years Behrman's parents, Z ...
,
Elmer Rice Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays '' The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Sce ...
,
Robert E. Sherwood Robert Emmet Sherwood (April 4, 1896 – November 14, 1955) was an American playwright and screenwriter. He is the author of ''Waterloo Bridge, Idiot's Delight, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, There Shall Be No Night'', and ''The Best Years of Our Li ...
, and John F. Wharton, established the Sidney Howard Memorial Award of $1500. The prize ... is given annually to a new American playwright who, with no previous noteworthy success in the theater, has shown talent through the production of one or more of his plays in New York. The award is not designed to honor the "best play of the season," but to give support to a promising playwright."

The inaugural prize was awarded to

for his play Thunder Rock,Anderson, Maxwell. ''Dramatist in America: Letters of Maxwell Anderson, 1912-1958.'' Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Books, 2001. Print which had floundered on Broadway but went on to be an international classic.

Awardees

References

{{reflist American theater awards Dramatist and playwright awards