High Tor (play)

High Tor
Poster for Federal Theatre Project presentation of "High Tor" at the Belasco
Written by	Maxwell Anderson
Date premiered	January 9, 1937
Place premiered	Martin Beck Theatre New York City, New York
Original language	English
Genre	Drama
Setting	sections of High Tor

High Tor is a 1936 play by Maxwell Anderson. It received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play of the 1936–37 season. Twenty years after the original production, Anderson adapted it into a television musical with Arthur Schwartz.

The play is named for a summit overlooking the Tappan Zee portion of New York's Hudson River, near where Anderson lived in Rockland County. The story was inspired by the real life controversy over quarrying the palisades along the lower Hudson. The play also shares the plot element of a ghostly crew of Dutch sailors on the Hudson with Washington Irving's short story Rip Van Winkle.

Anderson began writing the play in May 1936. It was first presented onstage in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 1936, with Burgess Meredith (Anderson's neighbor in Rockland County) and Peggy Ashcroft in the lead roles. The production moved to Broadway ten days later in January 1937, where it played 171 performances.

High Tor received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for the best American play of the 1936–1937 season. The award included this citation:

In 1942, Anderson helped organize and served as the chairman of the Rockland County Committee To Save High Tor, which helped raise money to purchase the property in 1943 for the creation of a public park.

The play was broadcast as an episode of The Philco Television Playhouse on NBC, September 10, 1950, with Alfred Ryder and Felicia Monteleagre in the lead roles.