John Howard Lawson (September 25, 1894 – August 11, 1977) was an American playwright, screenwriter, arts critic, and cultural historian. After enjoying a relatively successful career writing plays that were staged on and off Broadway in the 1920s and '30s, Lawson relocated to Hollywood and began working in the motion picture industry. In 1933, he helped to organize the Screen Writers Guild and became its first president. In the ensuing years, he was credited with a number of notable screenplays including Blockade (1938), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), and Counter-Attack (1945).
In 1947, Lawson was one of the Hollywood Ten, the initial group of American film industry professionals to appear before Congress as part of an investigation into communist influence in Hollywood. Because he and the other nine screenwriters and directors refused to answer questions about their alleged Communist Party affiliation, they were cited for contempt of Congress. In 1948, Lawson was sentenced to a year in prison; he began serving in 1950. When he got out, he like the others found himself blacklisted by the studios. He wrote, uncredited, the screenplay for Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), an adaptation of Alan Paton's anti-apartheid novel about South Africa. With his Hollywood livelihood largely cut off, Lawson turned his attention to scholarship. He taught at several California universities. He authored books about drama, film-making, and cultural history. Unlike other members of the Hollywood Ten, Lawson was never "un-blacklisted". He remained a pariah in the film industry until his death in 1977.
Life and career Childhood and education John Howard Lawson was born on September 25, 1894, in New York City to affluent Jewish parents, Simeon Levy and Belle Hart. In the 1880s, Simeon had lived in Mexico City, where he started the Mexican Financier newspaper. After he met Belle, he moved to New York City and became an executive with Reuters. Before his first child was born, Simeon changed the family name from Levy to Lawson, later saying half-jokingly that he did it so he could "obtain reservations at expensive resort hotels", many of which refused to accommodate Jews.
When John was five, his mother died of breast cancer, which was a profound loss that scarred him. Belle had named her three children after people she admired: Wendell Holmes Lawson was named for the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes; Lawson's sister Adelaide Jaffery Lawson was named for a friend of Belle's who was active in social causes; John Howard Lawson was named for prison reformer John Howard.
As a successful businessman, Simeon was able to send his children to private schools. At age seven, John attended the experimental school, The Playhouse, run by Elizabeth and Alexis Ferm.Avrich, Paul. The Modern School Movement, Princeton University Press, 1980, 265. Later, he and his siblings went to Halstead School in Yonkers, New York and then to Cutler School in New Rochelle, New York. In 1906, Simeon sent his three children on a tour of Europe where they saw many theatrical productions. John took notes on the set designs, actors, and plays. In 1909, the children toured the United States and Canada.
Lawson entered Williams College in 1910. He contributed to The Williams College Monthly literary magazine. He edited the senior yearbook and was a member of the varsity debating team. But he also encountered antisemitism. During his sophomore year, he was denied election to The Williams College Monthly editorial board because some students raised questions about his Jewish background. He would later say it was a good experience since it forced him "to begin his struggle to come to terms with his Jewish identity." As previously stated, his father had changed the family surname from Levy to Lawson; Simeon also insisted the family belong to a Christian church. They joined the First Church at 96th Street and Central Park West. As a boy, John recalled going to the house of a Christian schoolmate. He happened to mention his father's real name was Levy; he was not invited to that house again. But despite Simeon's wish for the Lawson family to assimilate, John would adhere to Jewish dietary laws all his life.
Lawson's reputation at Williams was as a good-natured iconoclast and a frequent speaker at undergraduate meetings. His older brother Wendell was meanwhile studying music and art in Germany. On a trip back to the U.S. in 1913, Wendell brought a copy of Karl Kautsky's The Class Struggle. According to one biographer, "This book gave [John Howard] Lawson his first knowledge of Marx and Marxism, with which he first disagreed, though he brought Kautsky's book to Socialist Club meetings and, to the faculty sponsor's annoyance, quoted from it as a basis for discussion." After graduating from Williams in 1914 with a B.A., he worked as a cable editor for Reuters from 1914 to 1915.
Early plays Lawson wrote his first play, A Hindoo Love Drama, while at Williams. Mary Kirkpatrick, faculty leader of the Williams College Drama Club, was impressed by this effort and became his first agent. Lawson was inspired to write three plays in 1915-16: Standards, The Spice of Life, and Servant-Master-Lover. Standards was bought by George M. Cohan and Sam Harris, and was given a tryout in Albany and Syracuse in 1915. It never made it to Broadway. Oliver Morosco produced Servant-Master-Lover in a run in Los Angeles, but received bad reviews.
World War I When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Lawson was opposed to enlisting. His father helped him obtain a position in the Norton-Harjes Volunteer Ambulance Corps. In June 1917, he left for Europe. Aboard the ship, he met John Dos Passos, also an aspiring writer. In November, when Norton-Haryes was folded into the American Red Cross's Ambulance Service, Dos Passos and Lawson decided to become drivers. They first served in Italy. At this time, Dos Passos was working on One Man's Initiation: 1917 and Lawson had begun his play Roger Bloomer. They were then outfitted to Paris. While there, Lawson attended performances of the Comédie-Française and Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In January 1918, Dos Passos wrote a letter that was critical of the ambulance company. It somehow reached Red Cross officials, and they forced Dos Passos to resign. Lawson was under suspicion for his attitudes as well, but he managed to stay in Italy and do public relations work for the Red Cross.
Post-war While living in Rome in autumn of 1918, Lawson met and married Kathryn (Kate) Drain. Excerpt from Lawson's unpublished autobiography. She was a volunteer nurse's aide, and would later become a film actress and costume designer. In spring of 1919, they returned home to New York due to a lack of money and the wishes of their families. Their son Alan was born in July 1919. Excerpt from Lawson's unpublished autobiography. In early 1920, the Lawsons moved back to Europe and found residence in Paris, where he completed Roger Bloomer. It would be his first play to reach Broadway when it opened on March 1, 1923. It was put on by the Equity Players and ran for fifty performances. His marriage to Kate did not last; they were divorced in 1923. He had meanwhile met Susan Edmond, whom he would marry two years later, and they remained married till the end of his life.
Lawson's next play, Processional, was produced by the Theatre Guild and opened on Broadway on January 12, 1925. Although the production ran for 96 performances, it failed financially, and the Theatre Guild told Lawson they would not stage any more of his plays written in the expressionistic style. In 1937, the Federal Theatre Project revived Processional and it garnered critical and popular acclaim.
In 1926, the New York International Theatrical Exposition showcased experimental European cubist, futurist, and constructivist plays. Lawson was fascinated by these avant-garde works, which he saw as revolutionary. Along with Dos Passos and Michael Gold, Lawson formed the Workers Drama League to produce revolutionary plays. One production and a few weeks later, however, the three men disbanded the league. They then joined with Em Jo Basshe to establish a radical theatrical group that came to be known as the "New Playwrights Theater". The group survived until 1929 and was largely funded by millionaire businessman Otto Hermann Kahn who was a devoted patron of the arts.
Lawson's play Nirvana premiered on March 3, 1926, at the Greenwich Village Theatre, but ran for only six performances. It calls for "a new religion that can help people survive the swirling cyclone of jazz, new machinery, great buildings, science fiction, tabloids, and radio." But Nirvana never managed to tie together all of those disparate elements into a coherent drama. The fact that the play lasted even six performances was due to "the excellent stage design by Mordecai Gorelik and the reputation Lawson had established with Processional."
In late 1926, Lawson served with Dos Passos and Gold on a committee that attempted to establish the Proletarian Artists and Writers League. A similar Soviet Union organization offered some financial backing to them. The first play produced by the New Playwrights Theater, Lawson's Loudspeaker, opened on March 7, 1927, at the 52nd Street Theatre and ran for forty-two performances. He had been intrigued by the ceremonial laying of the cornerstone at the Theatre Guild playhouse in 1924, an event attended by both New York Governor Al Smith and Otto Kahn. In his play, Lawson explored the concept of Kahn as governor rather than Smith.
In August 1927, Lawson, Dos Passos, and Gold went to Boston to protest the executions of the Italian immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Lawson would later write in his autobiography that during this time period in his life, he could "neither ignore the flaws in American politics and economics nor bring himself to become more deeply involved in the struggle." In his conflicted state of mind, he left New York for Hollywood, where the motion picture industry was clamoring for dramatists to write for the new talking pictures.
Hollywood and New York While Lawson was working in Hollywood in 1928, the New Playwrights Theater in New York decided to produce his expressionistic play, The International, with a set designed by John Dos Passos. It opened on January 12 and ran for twenty-seven performances.
In Hollywood, Lawson was under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and wrote scripts for films such as The Ship from Shanghai, Bachelor Apartment, and Good-bye Love. In the winter of 1930–1931, he wrote a new play, Success Story. The Theatre Guild rejected it, but Harold Clurman, who was a reader for the Guild, saw possibilities. He had recently formed the Group Theatre and needed new dramatic material. Clurman and Lawson reworked the play during the summer of 1932. Success Story opened on September 26, 1932, and ran for 121 performances. Lawson later adapted it into the 1934 film, Success at Any Price.
In 1933, Lawson, Lester Cole, and Samuel Ornitz helped organize the Screen Writers Guild (SWG). Lawson served as SWG's first president from 1933 to 1934. He later recalled how he spent most of his tenure in Washington, D.C. trying to get recognition of the union under provisions of the newly passed National Industrial Recovery Act. Lawson finally succeeded in that task, and the SWG became a viable union that could bargain on behalf of screenwriters. However, the success came at a cost. He was soon fired by MGM, an action he attributed to his union organizing.