columnist playwright theater critic writer author
Ward Morehouse was born on November 24, 1895, in Savannah, Georgia, the son of Augustus Ward Morehouse, a writer, and Sara McIntosh. His interest in the theater began in his teens, when he organized a stock company to produce plays that he wrote, directed, and acted in.
Morehouse attended North Georgia College in 1916.
His first experience as a newspaperman came early, when Morehouse joined the Savannah Press as a reporter. He left in 1916 to work for the Atlanta Journal, where he was assigned to the city room until 1919. One of his fellow staff members on the Journal was the future playwright Laurence Stallings.
In the fall of 1919, Morehouse went to New York City, even though the city terrified him. By the next year, he was writing about the theater for the New York Tribune and, later, the New York Herald-Tribune.
In 1926 he commenced a twenty-five-year association with the New York Sun, for which he wrote "Broadway After Dark, " a lively and entertaining column that included theatrical interviews, anecdotes, reminiscences, and comments on current shows. His sprightly style attracted a wide readership. His pungent personality sketches became renowned, and his acquaintances in the theater seemed numberless. One of his favorite places for conducting interviews was the 21 Club. Morehouse also served as a drama critic for the Sun and, as such, came to have a profound respect for Maude Adams, Jeanne Eagels, and Laurette Taylor, among others.
In the 1930's and 1940's he was particularly impressed by the work of Richard Harrison as De Lawd in The Green Pastures (1930), Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Reunion in Vienna (1931), and Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie (1945). Although Morehouse was influential as a critic, he believed that the power of theater critics was frequently overrated and that they themselves were never above criticism. Morehouse was often kind and generous in his critical comments about performers, and when he noticed a spark of talent in a young player, he did his best to be helpful.
In 1928, Morehouse wrote the play Gentlemen of the Press, which ran for 128 performances on Broadway, but unfortunately it had to compete with the classic newspaper drama The Front Page. Later, his play was adapted for motion pictures (1929).
During the late 1920's and early 1930's, Morehouse worked in Hollywood as a scenarist for Universal, Warner Brothers, and Paramount Pictures, but he had a strong preference for the legitimate theater. He wrote that Hollywood devoured actors and actresses and robbed the stage of exciting players. He also thought that the work of playwrights suffered when they became involved with the business of writing for motion pictures. His other plays were Miss Quis (1937) and U. S. 90 (1941), which met with only modest success. A prolific writer, he was the author of Forty-five Minutes Past Eight (1939), which the New York theater critic John Anderson said was "full of grease paint and lobby smoke"; George M. Cohan: Prince of the American Theater (1943); Just the Other Day (1953); and other books. They established him as a theater historian as well as a critic.
Morehouse was an inveterate traveler, and he sometimes served as a roving correspondent for the Sun. He crossed the United States twenty-three times, writing about obscure as well as famous people and places that he encountered along the way. In three trips around the world he visited about eighty countries. His travels gave him an opportunity to broaden his interest in wild animals; he once bought a bear in Thailand and lion cubs in South Africa.
During World War II, he crossed the Atlantic on a United States Navy destroyer escort and wrote about his experiences in a column called "Atlantic After Dark. " When Morehouse reached London and Paris during and immediately after World War II his columns were known as "London After Dark" and "Paris After Dark, " and his treatment of personality stories was in the same style as his Broadway column. In 1946 he traveled across the United States and interviewed such people as "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, a former governor of Oklahoma; Sergeant Alvin York, the World War I hero; and "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, the baseball player.
When the Sun ceased publication in 1950, Morehouse continued to write "Broadway After Dark" for the New York World-Telegram and Sun. By this time, he was of the opinion that the theater was a victim of prohibitive costs and that there was a grave need to develop young playwrights and players.
In 1956 he joined the S. I. Newhouse newspaper chain as a Broadway critic and columnist. He usually produced two pieces each week, one a theatrical interview and the other a brief review of a new play or a miscellany of anecdotes. He also wrote for the General Features Syndicate until his death on December 7, 1966, in New York City.
Ward Morehouse was the legendary Broadway critic whose "Broadway After Dark" column ran for decades in the New York Sun. His interviews with Eugene O’Neill, William Gillette, Laurette Taylor, Gloria Swanson and many other stars bring back memories of the glorious days of the Broadway stage. His column for this trip, "Report on America, " received an award from the Society of Silurians, an organization of veteran New York City newspapermen, for the best editorial achievement of the year.
A short, somewhat stout man, Ward Morehouse was witty, energetic, and a skillful raconteur.
Ward Morehouse was married four times. He and his first wife, Ruth Nisbet, divorced in 1925. He next married Jean Dalrymple, but the union ended in 1937. On January 24, 1941, he wed Joan Marlowe. That marriage ended, and he married Rebecca Franklin on August 13, 1949. In all, he had two children.
Jean Van Kirk Dalrymple was an American theater producer, manager, publicist, and playwright.
