[Playscript]: Dodsworth

Quarto. 144 leaves typed rectos only in red and black. Bradbound into red Gilbert Miller / Henry Miller's Theatre cloth wrappers. Thin flexible cloth wrappers modestly frayed and with a few short tears on the thin paper, brads a bit tarnished, very good. Hand-titled on the front wrap. This was Sinclair Lewis' agent Ann Watkins' copy with her name and address typed on the first leaf. A play in three acts dramatized by Sidney Howard from Lewis' 1929 novel *Dodsworth* with input from Lewis. This early draft of the play differs substantially from the version that opened at the Shubert Theatre in New York on February 24, 1934, where it ran for a total of 147 performances, as well as from the version published by Harcourt, Brace and Company in 1934. Lewis, who received the first Nobel Prize for Literature given to an American in December 1930, had largely stayed out of playwriting throughout the 1920s. But in 1932 he collaborated with Howard on the dramatization of Dodsworth. Working with an able craftsman like Howard was a good cram course on writing for the stage, and Lewis was brilliant at improvising dialogue on the spot and ruthless in editing his own work. In the end, hardly a sentence from the novel remained. Together, the two of them invented scenes that conveyed in brisk dialogue what Lewis had taken chapters to say in prose. When *Dodsworth* went into production, Lewis attended rehearsals and became so emotionally involved in the autobiographical story that he called out to female lead Fay Bainter, who played Fran Dodsworth, "Be more bitchy, Gracie!" The play opened on February 24, 1934, to positive notices, particularly for the male lead Walter Huston, and had a robust run. Lewis raked in royalties of $650 to $900 per week, at a time when his earnings from novels and magazine work were in a slump. *OCLC* locates a single 1934 version of the script at NYPL (which it designates as a dissertation or manuscript, but is presumably a later version of the script), which notes "Produced at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre, New York, 24, February, 1934." Rare. *OCLC* locates no copies of this early draft.…