In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

83 4 The Wyler Touch Dodsworth (1936) in Counsellor-at-Law, Wyler deals with the cultural divide in Depressionera america while touching on the need for community and a concern for what constitutes a meaningful life. in adapting Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, he focuses on Hellman’s thematic study of how evil can unmoor and destroy a group, especially when individuals lack the moral backbone to stand up to it. in Dodsworth, Wyler translates another important literary property: Sidney Howard’s successful dramatic adaptation of Nobel Prize–winning novelist Sinclair Lewis’s work of the same name. While that novel deals, in part, with the Jamesian motifs of the american abroad and the resulting clash of cultures—a subject that would naturally interest Wyler, a european immigrant—it is also the study of a marriage and of the essential american character. These key issues, lightly touched on in Counsellor, receive fuller treatment here. Dodsworth, like much of Lewis’s major fiction, asks what it means to be an american—a question that Counsellor’s George Simon confronts as well. in elmer rice’s work, however, we never gain insight into Simon’s thought process, and this lack undercuts the play’s claim to complexity. Unlike Lewis’s more celebrated works Babbitt and Main Street—both satires that focus on the smug provincialism of small-town american life—Dodsworth explores a wider subject. Here, protagonist Sam Dodsworth moves from small-town Zenith through a variety of european locales where he encounters a larger world and new ideas. Thus investing his tale with an international theme, Lewis downplays the satire and concentrates on a comparative analysis of american and european character, not endorsing either as a cultural standard but trying to isolate what is most valuable in each. in the end, Dodsworth offers a sympathetic view of american values—Lewis admires his countrymen’s naturalness, idealism, and even their business 84 William Wyler sense and vision. Sam Dodsworth may have some of the small-town “hick” in him, but he also possesses the wisdom to judge what is good and bad in the foreign world he encounters and to use what he learns there as a means to grow. Ultimately, he is not intimidated by european culture, and he refuses to be stymied by those who attempt to belittle him. Lewis celebrates Sam’s emerging confidence and sense of self. Sam Dodsworth is introduced as a captain of industry, a wealthy automobile manufacturer and inventor who has made important contributions to the industry. He believes in “the republican Party, high tariffs, and as long as they did not annoy him personally, in prohibition and the episcopal Church.” Lewis takes pains to distance this protagonist from babbitt: “To define what Sam Dodsworth was at fifty, it is easiest to state what he was not. He was none of the things which most europeans and many americans expect in a leader of american industry. He was not a babbitt, not a rotarian, not an elk, not a deacon. He rarely shouted, never slapped people on the back, and he had attended only six baseball games since 1900. He knew, and thoroughly, the babbitts and baseball fans, but only in business.”1 Portrayed as an amiable, energetic, and honest man, he is not crude like many of his associates. He enjoys and appreciates culture, but not people who are pretentious about it. He even looks forward to his european vacation as an opportunity to learn something about the world and about himself. in this novel, published before the stock market crashed, Lewis presents Dodsworth as a capitalist hero. in so doing, he champions american progress, enterprise, and advancement, but he also indicates that he sees some danger signs. Dodsworth sells his revelation automobile Company to the Unit automotive Company, which will absorb it and turn Sam’s high-quality cars into cheaper, mass-produced models. The president of Unit, alec Kynance, prefers assembly lines to european architecture and is more interested in balance sheets and bottom lines than in the quality and excellence of his product. and through him, Lewis raises important questions about the future of american industry as it passes from the hands of true pioneers such as Dodsworth. Will america continue, like Dodsworth, to strive for excellence, or will it settle into the mass-produced mediocrity represented by Kynance? Will america achieve the kind of civilization that will be the envy of europe, or will it slip into decadence...

Share