The Autumn Garden is a 1951 play by Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...

. The play is set in September, 1949 in a summer home in a resort on the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 miles from New Orleans. The play is a study of the defeats, disappointments and diminished expectations of people reaching middle age. For inspiration, Hellman drew on her memories of her time in her aunts' boardinghouse. Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...

, who had been Hellman's lover for 20 years, helped her write the play and received 15 percent of the royalties. Of all Hellman's plays it was her favorite.

Plot

The events of the play unfold over the course of one week at Constance Tuckerman's boarding house on the Gulf Coast. A few of her regular guests are enjoying post-dinner cocktails. Rose Griggs is trying to get her husband, General Benjamin Griggs, to admire her dress, which she has put on for a party. Young Frederick Ellis and his grandmother Mrs. Mary Ellis are reading the galleys for a novel that Frederick is about to publish. His mother Carrie Ellis and Edward Grossman are the other guests in the lounge, as the play opens.

Frederick is engaged to be married to Sophie Tuckerman, who was adopted by Constance and brought to America from France when she was 13. She works with Leon to help Constance run the boarding house. Constance is overwrought with anxiety over the impending arrival of Nina and Nicholas Denery, who will spend the weekend at her house. Nicholas was the love of her life, before he left to become an artist in New York.

It does not take long for the fissures in all of the characters' facades to show themselves. The Griggs are elegantly adversarial towards one another. Carrie is desperate to impose her will on her son. Nicholas, contrary to Constance's continued delusion, is a failed artist, and his marriage to Nina is crumbling. Sophie does not love Frederick, but she believes marrying him will be an acceptable way to end her dead-end existence in the boarding house. Constance is horrified to realize that Sophie will not marry for love, and insists, despite all the evidence surrounding her to the contrary, that marriages must be based on love.

As the week progresses, the characters grow more disillusioned with themselves and each other. Nicholas gets frightfully drunk one night and breaks up with Nina again. Later, he propositions Sophie, who allows him to kiss her. He passes out in her bed. The next morning, the house is scandalized by his presence in her bed, knowing that the neighbors can see through the window, and Sophie will be the talk of the town.

As Nina is leaving, Nicholas talks his way back into her heart, and she is happy to continue their destructive cycle by reuniting. Before she leaves, Nina is cornered by Sophie who demands $5,000 for the shame that Nicholas has caused her. Revealing how sophisticated she really is, she consoles Nina to not think of it as blackmail, but so much as a premium to be paid for the privilege of continuing to play at happiness with Nicholas a little while longer. Nina agrees to pay her the money. Sophie decides that she will use it to return to France.

Rose Griggs presents a letter from her doctor to the General. He has asked her for a divorce, but she reveals that she has heart trouble that could kill her. The doctor's note explains that with the right treatment, she could be healthy again in a year. She begs the General to stay with her for the year and promises to divorce him afterward. The General agrees, and confesses to Edward that he was almost relieved to have an excuse to not go through with the divorce. Constance finally confesses to Edward her feelings for him, and she asks him to marry her. He declines, explaining that he is just a drunk, who gets drunker every year. He confesses that coming to her boarding house every year is a vain attempt to sustain the illusion of a dignified life that he does not actually live.

Principal opening night cast

• Florence Eldridge
  Florence Eldridge
  Florence Eldridge was an American actress.-Personal life:...
  
   ..... Rose Griggs
• Ethel Griffies
  Ethel Griffies
  Ethel Griffies was an English actress of stage, screen, and television....
  
   ..... Mrs. Mary Ellis
• Colin Keith-Johnston
  Colin Keith-Johnston
  Colin Keith-Johnston was a British actor. As well as film appearances, he appeared onstage as Stanhope in the first production of Journey's End in the United States.-Partial filmography:* Somehow Good...
  
   ..... General Benjamin Griggs
• Kent Smith
  Kent Smith
  Kent Smith was an American actor who had a lengthy career in film, theater, and television.Born Frank Kent Smith in New York, New York, Smith made his acting debut on Broadway in 1932 in and, after spending a few years there, moved to Hollywood, California, where he made his film debut in The...
  
   ..... Edward Crossman
• James Lipton
  James Lipton
  James Lipton is an American writer, poet, composer, actor and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He is the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994...
  
   ..... Frederick Ellis
• Margaret Barker ..... Carrie Ellis
• Joan Lorring
  Joan Lorring
  Joan Lorring is a Hong Kong-born American actress.-Early life:Lorring fled with her mother in 1939 following the Japanese invasion...
  
    ..... Sophie Tuckerman
• Maxwell Glanville ..... Leon
• Carol Goodner
  Carol Goodner
  Carol Goodner was an American actress who appeared mostly in British films and television. She was born in New York in 1904 later moving to England where she appeared in her first film Those Who Love in 1929. She retired in 1957.A toe dancer when she was only four years old, she continued to earn...
  
   ..... Constance Tuckerman
• Fredric March
  Fredric March
  Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...
  
   ..... Nicholas Denery
• Jane Wyatt
  Jane Wyatt
  Jane Waddington Wyatt was an American actress perhaps best known for her role as the housewife and mother on the television comedy Father Knows Best, and as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock on the science fiction television series Star Trek...
  
   ..... Nina Denery
• Lois Holmes ..... Hilda

Original Broadway production

Harold Clurman

Harold Clurman

Harold Edgar Clurman was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre...

 directed the 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...

 production that opened on March 7, 1951 at the Coronet Theatre (now the Eugene O'Neill Theatre

Eugene O'Neill Theatre

The Eugene O'Neill Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 230 West 49th Street in midtown-Manhattan.Designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, it was built for the Shuberts as part of a theatre-hotel complex named for 19th century tragedian Edwin Forrest...

), where it ran for 101 performances. Incidental music was composed by Marc Blitzstein

Marc Blitzstein

Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...

, the scenic and lighting design were by Howard Bay

Howard Bay (designer)

Howard Bay was an American scenic, lighting and costume designer for stage, opera and film. He won the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design twice.-Career:...

, and the costume design was by Anna Hill Johnstone.

Critical reception

Hellman's previous work had drawn on the social realism of Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

. In The Autumn Garden the critics perceived an influence of the works of Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

. Individual critics had mixed feelings about the play, finding the characters dislikable and the conclusion unsatisfying but still considering it her best work. For example, John Gassner was not satisfied with the play but nevertheless voted for it to win the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson

Brooks Atkinson

Justin Brooks Atkinson was an American theatre critic. He worked for The New York Times from 1925 to 1960...

 had both praise and criticism, calling it "scrupulous" and the characterization, "written...of knowledge and integrity", but the play "boneless and torpid.".

Awards and nominations

The Autumn Garden was nominated for, but did not win, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Richard Raven won the 1951 Tony Award for Best Stage Technician

Tony Award for Best Stage Technician

The Tony Award for Stage Technician was first given in 1948 and was last presented fifteen years later in 1963.-1950s:* 1950: Joe Lynn, master propertyman – Miss Liberty...

for his work on the Broadway production.