the matchmaker - Stratford Festival

Thornton WilderPlaywrightBorn in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 17, 1897,Thornton Niven Wilder spent part of his childhoodin Hong Kong and Shanghai, where his fatherserved as United States Consul General. Onthe family’s return to the U.S., the young Wilderattended the Thacher School in California, wherehis first play, The Russian Princess, was performedby fellow students when he was just fifteen.After briefly serving in the U.S. Army’s CoastArtillery Corps during the First World War, heattended Oberlin College before switching to Yale,where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1920.He also received a master’s degree in Frenchfrom Princeton University. In 1926, while he wasteaching at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, hepublished his first novel, The Cabala, and his playThe Trumpet Shall Sound was produced in NewYork. The following year, he published his secondnovel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, for which hewon the Pulitzer Prize.During the 1930s, he taught at the University ofChicago, spent time in Hollywood and continued towrite novels and plays. He won a second PulitzerPrize for Our Town, which opened on Broadwayin 1938; Wilder himself played the Stage Managerin the production for two weeks. Later that year,The Merchant of Yonkers, which he had adaptedfrom a farce by the Austrian playwright JohannNestroy, proved a flop, closing after just thirty-nineperformances. It was followed, however, in 1942by another hit, The Skin of Our Teeth, which wonWilder his third Pulitzer.Volunteering for the Second World War at the ageof 45, Wilder served as an intelligence officer inNorth Africa and Italy, rising to the rank of lieutenantcolonel and receiving several military decorations.In the early 1950s, encouraged by TyroneGuthrie, the first Artistic Director of the StratfordShakespeare Festival, to revisit The Merchantof Yonkers, Wilder came to Stratford to workon a new version. The result, The Matchmaker,made its debut at the Edinburgh Festival inScotland, transferred to London’s West End andthen opened in New York on December 5, 1955.With Ruth Gordon in the title role, it becameWilder’s biggest Broadway hit, running for 486performances and winning a Tony Award forthornton wilderGuthrie as its director. It later became the basisfor the hit 1964 musical Hello, Dolly!, with bookby Michael Stewart (who would go on to co-write42nd Street) and score by Jerry Herman.Wilder’s body of work also included adaptationsof plays by Ibsen and Sartre, opera libretti, sevennovels and the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s1943 film Shadow of a Doubt. Other honours hereceived included the National Book Award forhis 1967 novel The Eighth Day, the National BookCommittee’s Medal for Literature, the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction,the German Booksellers Peace Prize and thePresidential Medal of Freedom. Wilder died at hishome in Hamden, Connecticut, on December 7, 1975.5