Avery Hopwood’s Legacy

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Avery Hopwood graduated from the University of Michigan in 1905. He became a successful Broadway playwright, by most accounts the “richest” of his era, and at his death endowed the prize that bears his name. This year the Hopwood Awards Program observes its 75th anniversary. The first awards were offered—and the inaugural lecture delivered—in the academic year 1931–32. No other program in the nation equals it; no other system of institutional reward has recognized so many with so much and for so long.

That may sound like hyperbole, but it is researched fact. In the world of higher learning, the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Awards reign supreme. As of this present moment, we have awarded more than 2300 separate young writers more than 3000 prizes. In aggregate, the program has dispersed well over $2 million, and though it may happen in the future that some other university decides to challenge or surpass our record of institutional generosity, that day has not yet come.

“Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, wherein he puts alms for oblivion.” So wrote a greater playwright than the one who is our subject here. As Shakespeare reminds us in “Troilus and Cressida,” oblivion of one sort or another is the necessary fool of time, and none of us escapes that necessary end. Still, some oblivions are more absolute than others, and some provisions against it may in fact endure. The reputation of Avery Hopwood now rests almost entirely on the “alms” he provided to his alma mater, and to the program thereby established in order to encourage young writers. Today the once wildly popular author of such entertainments as “Nobody’s Widow,” “Fair and Warmer,” “Getting Gertie’s Garter,” “The Best People,” and “Ladies’ Night (In a Turkish Bath)” is best remembered for the prizes in his name.

The Wheel of Fortune turns. The pendulum swings, then swings back. It’s possible to argue, even, that theatre is in its nature ephemeral: since performance must be evanescent, such fleetingness is part of the drama itself. Yet a man with four productions at once on The Great White Way need not go so completely “dark” within the century. If only as a cautionary tale about the nature of success, the life of Avery Hopwood should be better understood and the work more widely known.

As the events schedule will suggest, we are attempting, this semester, to do exactly that. The University of Michigan Press will publish a volume of work by Hopwood winners; we will offer a “mini-course” of films produced by such alumni as Lawrence Kasdan and Arthur Miller, as well as The Gold Diggers of 1933—a film based on the play the Theatre Department will present in February. We will offer readings and lectures by former Hopwood winners and members of the faculty who served on the Hopwood Committee (Alice Fulton and Charles Baxter). We will display manuscripts and memorabilia in the Rare Book and Manuscript Room of Hatcher Library and conclude with a festival of Hopwood winners and their books.

All are welcome; please do come.

Nicholas Delbanco
Director, The Hopwood Awards Program
Robert Frost Collegiate Professor of English