The Eagle Screams
Theatre lovers, playwrights, and general history buffs may enjoy this. What follows is a passage from a book entitled Write That Play! and is taken from Chapter 1: “The Eagle Screams or Drama Over America.” Try to guess the period by the end of the passage.
One out of every seven adult members of the population of the United States bought an automobile last year, one out of every ten a radio, and one out of thirty-six an electric refrigerator. Approximately one out of every seventy-five adults in the United States wrote a play last year. That means, in a round number, one million plays. Playwriting in this country is now in the field of big-production statistics. We are entering upon an era of unprecedentedly widespread activity in drama.A recent survey among drama agents and producers in New York established forty-thousand as a conservative estimate of the number of play manuscripts submitted in a year. Out of ten years of teaching playwriting at the University of Michigan and varied associations with the playwriting activity of the state and country at large, I am sure it is safe to estimate at least twenty-five plays written for every one that reaches New York, or one million plays a year.
It was further learned from the survey that except for a concentration from New York and Hollywood the flood of manuscripts reaching the drama agents’ desks come salmost uniformly from every part of the country, and from every class of people. Three plays I saw on one agent’s desk, his morning mail, were from a rancher in Montana, a major in South Carolina, and a young woman, a university student in Illinois. It is evident that playwriting is becoming one of the great national passions and bonds of fellowship, like bridge, golf, and dancing the big apple.
It’s very interesting to look back and see the state of the theatre in the past of our country.
Write That Play! was published in 1939.