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267 9 Changing the Message Like a number of men of his generation, Robert Sherwood had taken two turns at war which resulted in vastly different postwar experiences. A private in the trenches during World War I, he returned home to the common global disillusionment over the declared aim of that struggle: to make the world safe for democracy. His anger and disappointment resulted in a drastic shift from supporting militarism to embracing pacifism. Perceiving World War II as a battle against tyrannical fascism, however, cast things in an entirely different light. Being appointed by the president of the United States to head the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information, and then acting as his emissary to General Douglas MacArthur, put Bob in the highest echelons of civilian participation in the war. In addition, from his perspective, the struggle did indeed result in the restoration of democracy in many war-torn countries. Seeing the liberation of the concentration camps, France returned to the French, and the ejection of the Japanese from the Philippines was enough for Bob to feel that his sacrifice in World War II was well warranted. The great irony for him, however, was that while his disappointment in the post–World War I era resulted in his becoming a successful playwright and screenwriter, his sense of satisfaction at the end of World War II led to a decline in his productivity. His immediate major postwar successes included the screenplay for the film The Best Years of Our Lives and the historical biography Roosevelt and Hopkins. The play The Rugged Path was a failure, however, while the musical Miss Liberty met with only moderate success. Other scripts such as On the Beach and The Twilight simply ended up in his closet or in the “unproduced” file of the Playwrights’ Company. While a constant stream of articles on foreign policy and popular culture and almost weekly book reviews kept a steady income flowing into the Sherwood home, in general, the postwar years were a time of frustration and creative failure. The basic problem was that Bob had gone through a career change. As his British propaganda colleague Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart noted: “During the war years, he moved from the literary coterie, in which he had hitherto worked, into the political world. Like many people in war-time, he became a changed man.” When Lockhart saw Bob in 1951, it struck him that he was “still absorbed in politics, 268 Act Two and I felt instinctively that the political bug had gone deep into his system and was interfering with his literary career.”¹ Before Franklin Roosevelt’s death, rumors in Washington, D.C., and speculation among his friends indicated an expectation that the president would reward Bob for his service by naming him librarian of Congress. Roosevelt ’s death, however, abruptly ended Bob’s political career. The loss of savings from the Joe Burden affair and the reduction of his annual income to approximately eight thousand dollars now made it urgent that Bob return to his writing in order to earn a living. During the war, Madeline had been forced to go to secretarial school and take a position in Brooklyn, and her accusation in May 1945 that for the past five years Bob had been “a poor provider” pained him deeply.² Rather than allowing himself a readjustment period, Bob tried his hardest to recapture his prewar life. Besides returning to work, he visited his mother every day. Together, he and a joyful Madeline planned for a renovation of their 25 Sutton Place apartment, and in 1946 the two resumed their tradition of spending summers at Great Enton. He also tried to pay more attention to his daughter. In 1942 Little Mary had become engaged to an army medic she had met only twice. Like so many similar impetuous commitments made during the war years, the relationship fell apart as soon as the two were reunited. Then, in early March 1946, she announced her engagement to Edgar Stillman Jr., or “Bud,” as he was called, a young man she had recently met at a party in Manhattan. The two were wed that fall. Initially, Bob and Madeline were thrilled with Little Mary’s new husband. As her father told her (with a slap at her mother), their marriage did not sound “like the kind of happiness that is compounded of delirium. Nothing is more fatal to the durability of love than...

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