Sidney Howard

Sidney Howard
Sidney Howard, 1909
Born	Sidney Coe Howard June 26, 1891 Oakland, California, USA
Died	August 23, 1939 (aged 48) Tyringham, Massachusetts, USA
Occupation	Playwright, screenwriter
Spouse	Clare Eames (1922-1930↑) Polly Damrosch (1931-1939)
Child(ren)	Jennifer Howard
Information
Magnum opus	They Knew What They Wanted (1925)
Awards	Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1925)

Sidney Coe Howard (June 26, 1891 – August 23, 1939) was an American playwright, dramatist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for Gone with the Wind.

Sidney Howard was born in Oakland, California, the son of Helen Louise (née Coe) and John Lawrence Howard. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1915 and went on to Harvard University to study playwriting under George Pierce Baker in his legendary "47 workshop." (Other alumni of Baker's class included Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Wolfe, Philip Barry and S.N. Behrman. Howard became good friends with Behrman.) Along with other students of Harvard professor A. Piatt Andrew, Howard volunteered with Andrew's American Field Service, serving in France and the Balkans during World War I. After the war, Howard made use of his proficiency at foreign languages and translated a number of literary works from French, Spanish, Hungarian, and German. A liberal intellectual whose politics became progressively more left-wing over the years, he also wrote articles about labor issues for The New Republic and served as literary editor for the original Life magazine.

In 1921, Howard's first play was produced on Broadway. A neo-romantic verse drama set in the time of Dante, Swords, did not do well with audiences or critics. It was with his realistic romance They Knew What They Wanted three years later that Howard established his reputation as a serious writer. The story of a middle-aged Italian vineyard owner who woos a young woman by mail with a false snapshot of himself, marries her, and then forgives her when she becomes pregnant by one of his farm hands, the play was praised for its un-melodramatic view of adultery and its tolerant approach to its characters. Theater critic Brooks Atkinson called it "a tender, original, merciful drama."They Knew What They Wanted won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was adapted three times into film (1928, 1930, and 1940) and later became the Broadway musical, The Most Happy Fella.