James Avery Hopwood (May 28, 1882– July 1, 1928) was an American playwright of the Jazz Age. He had four plays running simultaneously on Broadway in 1920.
American playwright
Avery Hopwood
Hopwood in 1922
Born
(1882-05-28)May 28, 1882 Cleveland, Ohio, United States
Died
July 1, 1928(1928-07-01) (aged46) Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, France
Occupation
Playwright
Nationality
American
Education
University of Michigan
Genre
Theatre
Early life
Hopwood was born to James and Jule Pendergast Hopwood on May 28, 1882, in Cleveland, Ohio.[1] He graduated from Cleveland's West High School in 1900.[2] In 1901, he began attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. However, his family experienced financial difficulties, so for his second year he transferred to Adelbert College. He returned to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1903, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1905.[3]
Career
Hopwood started out as a journalist for the Cleveland Leader as its New York correspondent, but within a year had his first play, Clothes (1906), produced on Broadway, with the aid of playwright Channing Pollock. Hopwood eventually became known as "The Playboy Playwright"[4] and specialized in comedies and farces, some of them with material considered risqué at the time. One play, The Demi-Virgin in 1921, prompted a court case because of its suggestive subject matter, including a risque game of cards, "Stripping Cupid". The case was dismissed.
In 1906, Hopwood was introduced to writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten. The two became close friends and were sometimes sexual partners.[5] In the 1920s Hopwood had a tumultuous and abusive romantic relationship with fellow Cleveland-born playwright John Floyd.[6] Although Hopwood announced to the press in 1924 that he was engaged to vaudeville dancer and choreographer Rosa Rolanda, Van Vechten confirmed in later years that it was a publicity stunt. Rolanda would later marry caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias.
On the evening of July 1, 1928, at Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera, Hopwood suffered a fatal heart attack while swimming. He was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Cleveland.[7] His mother, Jule Hopwood, inherited a large trust from him, but he had not made arrangements for the disposition of other items, including literary rights. While she was working through the legal issues with his estate, Jule Hopwood fell ill and died on March 1, 1929. She was buried next to her son.[8]
Legacy
Hopwood's plays were very successful commercially, but they did not have the lasting literary significance he hoped to achieve.[9]
Hopwood Award
The terms of Hopwood's will left a substantial portion of his estate to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, for the establishment of the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Creative Writing Awards. The bequest stipulated: "It is especially desired that students competing for prizes shall be allowed the widest possible latitude, and that the new, the unusual, and the radical shall be especially encouraged." Famous Hopwood award winners include Robert Hayden, Marge Piercy, Arthur Miller, Betty Smith, Lawrence Kasdan, John Ciardi, Mary Gaitskill, Edmund White, Nancy Willard, Frank O'Hara, and Steve Hamilton.
The Great Bordello
Throughout his life, Hopwood worked on a novel that he hoped would "expose" the strictures the commercial theater machine imposed on playwrights, but the manuscript was never published. Jack Sharrar recovered the manuscript for this novel in 1982 during his research for Avery Hopwood, His Life and Plays. The novel was published in July 2011 by Mondial Books (New York) as The Great Bordello, a Story of the Theatre.
Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 22102). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
"Comedy at His Majesty's". Geelong Advertiser. No.24855. Victoria, Australia. February 10, 1927. p.9. Retrieved May 21, 2022– via National Library of Australia.
Works cited
Bader, Arno L. (December 5, 1959). "Avery Hopwood, dramatist". Quarterly Review: A Journal of University Perspectives. 66 (10): 60–68.
Sharrar, Jack F. (1998) [1989]. Avery Hopwood: His Life and Plays. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN0-472-10963-4. OCLC924828273.
Sharrar, Jack F. (2005). "Hopwood, Avery". In Harbin, Billy J.; Marra, Kim & Schanke, Robert A. (eds.). The Gay & Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. pp.199–203. ISBN0-472-09858-6. OCLC56481825.
White, Edward (2014). The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN978-0-374-70881-8. OCLC846545238.
Further reading
Broadway, by Brooks Atkinson. NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974.
Matinee Tomorrow, by Ward Morehouse. NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1948.
Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s, by Angela Latham. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Carl Van Vechten Selections from the Daybooks, 1922–1930. Edited by Bruce Kellner. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Avery Hopwood.
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