Philip Barry

Biography

Early life

Philip Barry was born on June 18, 1896, in Rochester, New York, to James Corbett Barry and Mary Agnes Quinn Barry. James died of appendicitis a year after Philip's birth, and the family's marble-and-tile business faltered from then on. His oldest brother, Edmund, who was 16 at the time, left school to take over the business and became a father figure to Philip.

Barry's play The Youngest, written when he was 28, is an autobiographical account of his family history following his father's death. In 1910, at the age of 14, Barry discovered that a New York State interpretation of his father's will entitled him to a share of his father's estate that eventually left him the entire business. Family conflicts ensued; he later claimed he never intended to keep the money, and he eventually signed over the estate to his mother and brothers.

Because of his poor eyesight, Barry was rejected for military service during World War I, but he eventually found a wartime job deciphering cables at the U.S. Embassy in London and left Yale to assume his duties. At the end of the war, he returned to college, where he studied writing with Henry Seidel Canby, and earned his B.A. His mother and two elder brothers strongly demanded that he return to the family in Rochester after college and take a place in the family business. He was, however, determined to strike out on his own and, knowing that he wanted to be a writer, enrolled in George Pierce Baker's playwriting course "47 Workshop" at Harvard University. (Other alumni of Baker's course include Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard, S.N. Behrman, and Thomas Wolfe, as well as numerous critics, directors, and designers.)

Writing career

In 1919, when Barry returned from London, the Yale Dramatic Club staged his one-act play Autonomy. By the time he had enrolled in Baker's class at the end of the year, he was spending all his time writing plays. His first full-length play for the class was A Punch for Judy, written in the spring 1921. The Harvard workshop took the play on tour to Worcester, Massachusetts; Utica, New York; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland; and Columbus, Ohio, but it failed to win the backing of a New York producer. Playwright Robert E. Sherwood met Barry at this time and thought him an "exasperating young twirp". Sherwood would eventually become a good friend and colleague who came to appreciate what he termed Barry's "Irish, impish sense of comedy".

While still living in Cambridge, Barry became engaged to Ellen Semple but was determined to establish himself as a playwright before settling down. Ellen lived in New York while he remained in Cambridge, and there he wrote The Jilts, which reflected his own concern that marital obligations might thwart an artistic career and force him into the business world. The play won the Herndon Prize in 1922 as the best drama written in Baker's workshop. (On July 15, 1922, his doubts calmed, Barry and Semple were married, and their first son, Philip Semple Barry, was born the following year.)

Renamed You and I, the play opened on Broadway on February 19, 1923, and was a critical and commercial success. Barry's Broadway career was launched. Theater critic Brooks Atkinson wrote "If [his story of a businessman who gives up art for the sake of money and family] did not make Barry exactly a revolutionary, it made him a dissenter from the materialistic mythology of America. The story spoke to the tenor of the times, a decade that both glamorized and questioned the energetic pursuit of financial success. You and I ran for 170 performances, was followed by a successful tour and many productions in college and regional theaters, and was later included in Burns Mantle's Best Plays anthology series.

One person who was not happy with Barry's success was a classmate in Baker's seminar, Thomas Wolfe, who struggled to be a playwright before finding fame as a novelist. Wolfe was both envious of Barry's facility and quick rise and unforgiving about his barbed wit; Barry had written a play for their class about North Carolina bootleggers, parodying Wolfe, his background, and his stumbling efforts to write a play.

Plays

Autonomy (1919)

A Punch for Judy (1921)

You and I (1923), filmed in 1931 as The Bargain

The Youngest (1924)

In a Garden (1925)

White Wings (1926), adapted as an opera by Douglas Moore, premiered in 1935

John (1927)

Paris Bound (1927), filmed in 1929 by Edward H. Griffith

Holiday (1928), filmed in 1930 by Edward H. Griffith and in 1938 by George Cukor

Cock Robin (with Elmer Rice) (1928), filmed as Who Killed Cock Robin? in 1938

Hotel Universe (1930)

Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931), filmed in 1932 by Richard Wallace

The Animal Kingdom (1932) filmed in 1932 by Edward H. Griffith and as One More Tomorrow in 1946 by Peter Godfrey

The Joyous Season (1934)

Bright Star (1935)

Spring Dance (1936), filmed as Spring Madness in 1938 by S. Sylvan Simon

Here Come the Clowns (1938)

The Philadelphia Story (1939), filmed in 1940 by George Cukor and as High Society by Charles Walters in 1956