Clyde Fitch
Encyclopedia
Clyde Fitch was an American
dramatist.
, he wrote over 60 plays, 36 of them original, which varied from social comedies and farces to melodrama and historical dramas.
As the only child to live to adulthood, his father, Captain William G. Fitch, a graduate of West Point
and a Union officer in the Civil War
, encouraged him to become an architect
or to engage in a career of business, but his mother, Alice Clark, in whose eyes he could do no wrong, always believed in his talent. She would hire the architectural firm of Hunt & Hunt to design the sarcophagus
set inside an open Tuscan
temple for his final resting place at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York. Fitch graduated from Amherst College
in 1886, where he was a member of Chi Psi
Fraternity.
He was the first American playwright
to publish his plays. His first work of note was Beau Brummell
(1890), a major work set in the English Regency
which became a showcase for actor Richard Mansfield
(1857–1907), who would play the title role for the rest of his life. His 1892 play Masked Ball (an adaption from Alexandre Bisson's
Le Veglione) would be the first time that Charles Frohman
put Maude Adams
opposite John Drew Jr.
which led to many future successes. In 1900, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines
, made a star of Ethel Barrymore
.
He is remembered particularly for his works such as Nathan Hale
(1898), The Climbers
(1901), The Girl with the Green Eyes (which ran 108 performances at the Savoy Theatre
in 1902, and starred Robert Drouet
as John Austin), The Woman In the Case, (which also starred Drouet and ran 89 performances at the Herald Square Theatre in 1905),The Truth
(1907) and The City (1909). His works were popular on both sides of the Atlantic. His play based on the heroine of John Greenleaf Whittier
's poem Barbara Frietchie
met with mixed reviews in 1899 because of the romance he added to the tale, but it would be successfully revived a number of times. In 1896 he wrote the lyrics to a popular song Love Makes The World Go 'Round, with the arrangement by William Furst
.
His career spanned a brief two decades, but he earned upwards of $250,000 from his plays at a time when a dollar a day was the working wage. He directed a few of his plays and was closely involved in the production of them all. Working with Edith Wharton
he wrote and directed the stage adaptation of The House of Mirth
in 1906. He was the first American playwright to be taken seriously and at one time managed to have five plays running simultaneously on Broadway
.
A generous host with an engaging personality, he was renowned as a raconteur. His invitations to "Quiet Corner" in Greenwich, Connecticut
were sought after. A close friend of Elsie de Wolfe
, she would help him find many of the furnishings for this house as well as others. At one point she said "he knows more about women, than most women know about themselves." A dandy by his early teens, he knew that in school he was seen as a sissy, but he said, "I would rather be misunderstood than lose my independence." In fact, he seems to have been understood all too well; correspondence of the time points to a likely relationship, however brief, with Oscar Wilde
.
He suffered from attacks of appendicitis
but refused his American doctor's recommendation of surgery, instead trusting the specialists in Europe who assured him that they could effect a cure over time without surgery.
While staying at the Hotel de la Haute Mère de Dieu at Châlons-sur-Marne
, France
, he suffered what would be a fatal attack. He underwent surgery by a local doctor, rather than travel to Paris, and died from blood poisoning. His body was returned from France where it was entombed for a time in the Swan Callendar Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery which belonged to a friend.
In 1910, the body was removed and taken to New Jersey
for cremation and the ashes were returned to the Swan Callendar Mausoleum until the Hunt & Hunt monument was finished. His ashes were then placed in the sarcophagus where his parents' ashes would later join his own. An additional memorial exists in the form of the Clyde Fitch Memorial Room in Converse Hall at Amherst.
Since his death, some of Fitch's works have been revisited in repertoire theater and more recently have been made into motion pictures and television dramas. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
dramatist.
Biography
Born William Clyde Fitch at Elmira, New YorkElmira, New York
Elmira is a city in Chemung County, New York, USA. It is the principal city of the 'Elmira, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area' which encompasses Chemung County, New York. The population was 29,200 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Chemung County.The City of Elmira is located in...
, he wrote over 60 plays, 36 of them original, which varied from social comedies and farces to melodrama and historical dramas.
As the only child to live to adulthood, his father, Captain William G. Fitch, a graduate of West Point
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
and a Union officer in the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, encouraged him to become an architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
or to engage in a career of business, but his mother, Alice Clark, in whose eyes he could do no wrong, always believed in his talent. She would hire the architectural firm of Hunt & Hunt to design the sarcophagus
Sarcophagus
A sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...
set inside an open Tuscan
Tuscan order
Among canon of classical orders of classical architecture, the Tuscan order's place is due to the influence of the Italian Sebastiano Serlio, who meticulously described the five orders including a "Tuscan order", "the solidest and least ornate", in his fourth book of Regole generalii di...
temple for his final resting place at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York. Fitch graduated from Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
in 1886, where he was a member of Chi Psi
Chi Psi
Chi Psi Fraternity is a fraternity and secret society consisting of 29 active chapters at American colleges and universities. It was founded on Thursday May 20, 1841, by 10 students at Union College with the idea of emphasizing the fraternal and social principles of a brotherhood...
Fraternity.
He was the first American playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
to publish his plays. His first work of note was Beau Brummell
Beau Brummell
Beau Brummell, born as George Bryan Brummell , was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV...
(1890), a major work set in the English Regency
English Regency
The Regency era in the United Kingdom is the period between 1811—when King George III was deemed unfit to rule and his son, the Prince of Wales, ruled as his proxy as Prince Regent—and 1820, when the Prince Regent became George IV on the death of his father....
which became a showcase for actor Richard Mansfield
Richard Mansfield
Richard Mansfield was an English actor-manager best known for his performances in Shakespeare plays, Gilbert and Sullivan operas and for his portrayal of the dual title roles in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
(1857–1907), who would play the title role for the rest of his life. His 1892 play Masked Ball (an adaption from Alexandre Bisson's
Alexandre Bisson
Alexandre Charles Auguste Bisson was an important French playwright, vaudeville creator, and novelist. Born in Briouze, Orne in Lower Normandy, he was successful in his native France as well as in the United States...
Le Veglione) would be the first time that Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman was an American theatrical producer. Frohman was producing plays by 1889 and acquired his first Broadway theatre by 1892. He discovered and promoted many stars of the American theatre....
put Maude Adams
Maude Adams
Maude Ewing Kiskadden , known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American stage actress who achieved her greatest success as Peter Pan. Adams's personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more...
opposite John Drew Jr.
John Drew Jr.
John Drew, Jr. was an American stage actor noted for his roles in Shakespearean comedy, society drama, and light comedies. He was the eldest son of John Drew, who had given up a blossoming career in whaling for acting, and Louisa Lane Drew, and the brother of Louisa Drew, Georgiana Drew & Sidney...
which led to many future successes. In 1900, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines
Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines
Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines is an opera in three acts by Jack Beeson written in 1975 to a libretto by Sheldon Harnick after the play by Clyde Fitch....
, made a star of Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors.-Early life:Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew...
.
He is remembered particularly for his works such as Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale was a soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission in New York City but was captured by the British...
(1898), The Climbers
The Climbers
The Climbers is a band formed by Nick Hemming and Christian Hardy of The Leisure Society with their childhood friend, Tim West. West actually introduced Hemming and Hardy to one another and for a period the three lived together in South London....
(1901), The Girl with the Green Eyes (which ran 108 performances at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in 1902, and starred Robert Drouet
Robert Drouet
Robert Drouet was an American actor and playwright.Robert Drouet , was born in Clinton, Iowa. He married Mildred Loring, daughter of M. A. Loring, October 1897, and died in New York City from heart disease.Drouet joined a theatrical company at 16 and later took out his own Shakespearean repertoire...
as John Austin), The Woman In the Case, (which also starred Drouet and ran 89 performances at the Herald Square Theatre in 1905),The Truth
The Truth (play)
The Truth is a play in four acts by Clyde Fitch, first performed in 1906.-Synopsis:Becky Warder is a 1903 society matron who suspects her husband, Tom, of having an affair. She hires a private detective to follow him around. The situation is complicated by Becky's view of reality, that she can lie...
(1907) and The City (1909). His works were popular on both sides of the Atlantic. His play based on the heroine of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...
's poem Barbara Frietchie
Barbara Frietchie (play)
"Barbara Frietchie, The Frederick Girl" is a play in four acts by Clyde Fitch and based on the heroine of John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "Barbara Frietchie"...
met with mixed reviews in 1899 because of the romance he added to the tale, but it would be successfully revived a number of times. In 1896 he wrote the lyrics to a popular song Love Makes The World Go 'Round, with the arrangement by William Furst
William Furst
William Wallace Fuerst was an American composer of musical theatre pieces and a music director, best remembered for supplying incidental music to theatrical productions on Broadway.- Career :...
.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
he wrote and directed the stage adaptation of The House of Mirth
The House of Mirth
The House of Mirth , is a novel by Edith Wharton. First published in 1905, the novel is Wharton's first important work of fiction, sold 140,000 copies between October and the end of December, and added to Wharton's existing fortune....
in 1906. He was the first American playwright to be taken seriously and at one time managed to have five plays running simultaneously on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
.
A generous host with an engaging personality, he was renowned as a raconteur. His invitations to "Quiet Corner" in Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
were sought after. A close friend of Elsie de Wolfe
Elsie de Wolfe
]Elsie de Wolfe was an American actress, interior decorator, nominal author of the influential 1913 book The House in Good Taste, and a prominent figure in New York, Paris, and London society...
, she would help him find many of the furnishings for this house as well as others. At one point she said "he knows more about women, than most women know about themselves." A dandy by his early teens, he knew that in school he was seen as a sissy, but he said, "I would rather be misunderstood than lose my independence." In fact, he seems to have been understood all too well; correspondence of the time points to a likely relationship, however brief, with Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
.
He suffered from attacks of appendicitis
Appendicitis
Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is classified as a medical emergency and many cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of the risk of rupture leading to...
but refused his American doctor's recommendation of surgery, instead trusting the specialists in Europe who assured him that they could effect a cure over time without surgery.
Châlons-en-Champagne
Châlons-en-Champagne is a city in France. It is the capital of both the department of Marne and the region of Champagne-Ardenne, despite being only a quarter the size of the city of Reims....
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, he suffered what would be a fatal attack. He underwent surgery by a local doctor, rather than travel to Paris, and died from blood poisoning. His body was returned from France where it was entombed for a time in the Swan Callendar Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery which belonged to a friend.
In 1910, the body was removed and taken to New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
for cremation and the ashes were returned to the Swan Callendar Mausoleum until the Hunt & Hunt monument was finished. His ashes were then placed in the sarcophagus where his parents' ashes would later join his own. An additional memorial exists in the form of the Clyde Fitch Memorial Room in Converse Hall at Amherst.
Since his death, some of Fitch's works have been revisited in repertoire theater and more recently have been made into motion pictures and television dramas. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers.
Miscellany
- Barbara StanwyckBarbara StanwyckBarbara Stanwyck was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra...
took her name from a combination of the name of his play Barbara Frietchie and its star, the British actress, Joan Stanwyck. - His name comes up in All About EveAll About EveAll About Eve is a 1950 American drama film written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, based on the 1946 short story "The Wisdom of Eve", by Mary Orr.The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star...
when Margo Channing (played by Bette DavisBette DavisRuth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
) states that Fitch was "well before [her] time".
Publications
- Montrose Jonas MosesMontrose Jonas MosesMontrose Jonas Moses was an American author, born in New York, where he graduated from the City College in 1899....
, The American Dramatist (Boston, 1911) - WinterWilliam Winter (author)William Winter was an American dramatic critic and author.-Biography:Born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Winter graduated from Harvard Law School in 1857...
, The Wallet of TimeThe Wallet of TimeProduced in 1913, The Wallet of Time is a publication by William Winter, in two volumes. Its title is taken from the words of William Shakespeare: "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,..." American stage actors and actresses, most of whom had been born in...
(two volumes, New York, 1913)
External links
- Fitch Papers, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
- Clyde Fitch's biographic sketch at Find A GraveFind A GraveFind a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.-History:...
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- "Who Was Clyde Fitch?" at The Clyde Fitch Report