Wisconsin Public Television University Place  Thorton Wilder: Wisconsin Roots  Penelope Niven, et al.  4/19/13 UP861  cc >> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. Thornton Wilder was an internationally acclaimed author and playwright, famous most particularly for winning three Pulitzer Prizes. His work The Bridge of San Luis Rey made him famous from the age of 30 and following that in pretty close order, we had Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth and other great works lesser known for one reason or another. Thornton Wilder said that he wrote for everybody and about everybody, but he was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1897, leading me to wonder how much of that great output of Thornton Wilder's was influenced by his experiences, his early experiences and his family's experiences in the Midwest. And answering that question and a fair number of others in this conversation, two people who are actually relatives of Thornton Wilder, although one of them didn't know it until fairly recently. I have with me the playwright and author's nephew, Tappan Wilder, and also his biographer, Penelope Niven, who wrote this volume and relied heavily on information, materials that were not available until fairly recently. Welcome to University Place Presents. >> Thank you very much. 

>> Thank you for having us. >> So, the first question, why were these materials not available until recently? Apparently it was quite a bit of material. Letters and journals and even bank books and all kinds of documents. >> Well, I guess, let me start by saying that I think you discover in this business that one of the great gifts to a biographer is death. [LAUGHTER] My father and my aunts and uncles lived very long lives, and after you die, it takes a long time to access papers. And, in fact, papers get overlooked, and so my father was 97, Isabelle Wilder, his sister, was 95, and Yale had tons of stuff that simply, if you read Penny's book you'll see, uncataloged. They were still to be cataloged They were overlooked, and also my family and I had holdings that we've only recently given to the university, but we gave them to Penny first. She's seen everything. I mean, we buried this woman in paper, and it's because they just lived so long. >> Did you know when you contacted Penny to write this biography that she was, in fact, related, however distantly, to Thornton Wilder? >> Well, I was just intrigued with the name, and don't you run into Nivens every day. 

>> And it's Thornton Niven Wilder. >> Thornton Niven Wilder, and Penelope Niven is indeed her name. And it was intriguing, and I thought it was sort of fun. I didn't know, in fact, we're kith and kin, as they say. How do they say it in the south, Penny? >> Kissing kin? Kissing cousins. >> Kissing cousins, right. Right. >> So there is kind of a sense of fate here, perhaps. >> Well, we didn't know the connection, and Penny put it in the book, right? >> I did. In fact, barely got it into the book because we only made the final documentation about a year and a half ago. 

So there's a little note in the acknowledgments to say that yes, indeed, we've discovered this link. I wondered when I was a teenager first reading Our Town if there might possibly be some family connection. >> Well, since you've mentioned Our Town, let's look at some of the most famous work of Thornton Wilder before we go back and look at his family and those Midwestern origins. And the novel that really put him at the map very suddenly at the rip old age of 30 in 1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. >> Right. And thank you for saying it properly. Most people say San Louie Rey. They don't know it's Spanish. >> And this is set in South America. Why would he have, now I realize he traveled very broadly, but what was the inspiration for it? >> Why put it in Peru in the 18th century? I can't really tell you. 

[LAUGHTER] I wish I could. But obviously he was looking for a place which was exotic. He was looking for a place which was exotic to tell a story far away that by distance and whatnot in terms of telling the story would become very real to his readers. So it couldn't be set in Manhattan and that sort of thing. >> And it's not exactly a novel in the usual sense. It's more like this series of tableaus in explaining why these various people who died when this bridge collapsed happened to be there, and then these sort of ruminations about life and death as expressed through this priest who has witnessed the situation. >> Poor Brother Juniper, who, of course, dies in the flames for trying to answer something for which there wasn't an answer. According to the inquisition. >> So, despite or perhaps because of it's rather unorthodox structure approach to the novel, it became a runaway success. >> Yes. 

It was a big surprise to his publishers, I can assure you. They published, I figured it out, about 4,000 copies in the first run. That was a few more than his earlier first book, The Cabala. And they thought they were publishing a book for a very refined, sort of upper level literary, slightly haughty set, and it was a huge, huge runaway. >> And you can see here, this is just a list of some of the first printings of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. >> Well, yeah. It was published in late November 1927, and in the next month, December, there were seven printings of increasing, I think, nobody quite knows, but I figured out 10,000 this one, 11,000 the next. They could hardly keep up with it. And by the end of the thing, it was well over 300,000 copies if you count in English too, which was also a runaway success. It was a huge story. 

>> And so what we saw just a  second ago, there was a page from the book that looked like it was perhaps rather hastily put together. >> Well, they wanted to charge $2.50 for the book and the book was too short and so they did what publishers did and the bulked up the paper, heavy paper and they created wide margins and they threw in illustrations and they created, really, a pretty ugly book. [LAUGHTER] And it was so noted in the press. It was not terribly well designed but it worked as a novel. My family, apparently they used to go to New York and just watch the pile of books in the great book stores on 5th Avenue just melt away. >> And here's that early printing history that I mentioned. >> Yeah. >> Gives us some sense of how quickly these things few off the shelves. >> Yeah, today we're used to books being sold in the millions, but in the 1920s this was a huge story. A huge story. 

It made him overnight, in current dollars, a millionaire. >> And enabled him to build, let's see, this house, I think. >> It led to a house. The house The Bridge built which was still remembered and still standing in Hamden, Connecticut. Yes, he built that first house his family had ever had as a base. They never lived in a home before, and that's as it looks very much today as it looked when it was built in 1930. >> And The Bridge of San Luis Rey became, pretty quickly, the stuff of film too, surprisingly so. There was a silent film made of it. So we're talking still late '20s. >> Yeah but they've all been failures. 

In view at least. >> Well, a tough novel to adapt by the sound of it. >> You used the word tableau. It's a series of tableaus. How do you turn these beautiful jewel-like chapters into a dramatic story with a storyline? And the biggest failure was a few years ago with Robert De Niro, Kathy Bates, F Murray Abraham. Can you ask for a bigger cast? It was a total disaster. And you can get it on DVD and see for yourself the problem of how you dramatize a jewel. It was filmed in Spain, and it was terrible. It's what I call a Harvard Business School case study in how to screw up a film. [LAUGHTER] >> And yet, at least in one case, the work of Thornton Wilder was, you might say, kind of pulled out of the fire of failure. 

What was the story that Hello, Dolly! was ultimately based on? That was one that was one of his less successful ones, but then years later, through a couple of adaptations, suddenly we've got Carol Channing and that whole phenomenon. >> It was a failure of The Merchant of Yonkers. >> Yeah. The Merchant of Yonkers. >> That's right. It started as The Merchant of Yonkers and failed, and that was very soon after the great success of Our Town. Then it was transformed slightly, actually if you look at the script, the revisions are rather slight to convert The Merchant of Yonkers into The Matchmaker which was much more successful as a play. And then The Matchmaker morphs into Hello, Dolly! which is a wonderful ongoing success adaptation of Wilder's work. >> Yeah. And that's a great story of his life. 

That failure on Broadway, the original play yes, but after it failed on Broadway it began to be done. The Merchant actually began to be done by schools and groups and was published, and it was even a proposal to be made into a musical in the '40s. It cried out to be a musical. It sure happened. And it was a great big smash. >> And by then, of course, he has Our Town to his credit. That's 1938. Talk about success on every stage in the country. One of the sort of almost crassly practical turns, one of the advantages of Our Town is Wilder's specification that sets and props just really get in the way of the intensity of the emotions that he wanted to depict. It's natural for somebody on a shoestring budget. 

You don't have to worry about building a castle or a temple or something. >> Yes and no dirty words. [LAUGHTER] >> Well, we'll get into that a little later too. But yes, speaking of the Midwest, I guess we can tip our hand a little bit at this point. >> Sure. >> Wilder's father was very, very straight-laced and expected his children to conform. >> And not to swear among other things. >> Not to drink, not to swear, and to even walk a certain way. >> Yes. How do we describe, in your wonderful biography, Penny, you more than once, I think, referred to the way his father handled his children as chess. 

Is that fair? >> Exactly. Thornton, in fact, wrote to his brother and sisters that he felt that their father manipulated them like chess pieces. So they often, after that, referred to each other in that way. He's moved the chess pieces to this place or that place. >> Did we have those letters until your biography? >> Yes. >> The letters from father to children? >> Thanks to the generosity of the literary executor here, I've been able to quote freely from the letters that this letter-writing family exchanged regularly over a period of years and fortunately saved so many of the letters. So yes, you can hear them speak in their own voices. I don't have to filter them at all. You can hear them close up in a very personal way. >> There were already a vast archive at Yale before Penny began, and those have father's letters. 

But I think, subsequently, we found many more. Is that not true? >> Absolutely. >> We found many more letters. >> Papers that had not yet been cataloged, wonderfully personal detailed letters to and from the father. >> And what picture emerges, new, revitalizing picture emerges from the material that you didn't have until recently? How does it change the picture of Thornton Wilder? >> I think that we see him with all those dimensions. He was such a multifaceted man, and we can not only tell you that, we can demonstrate that, again, through his own words. The other remarkable thing about the Wilder story is just this family who surrounded him. Two brilliant parents, both of whom wrote. A brilliant older brother, Tappan Wilder's father, who was a gifted poet and wrote very deeply and profoundly in so many other areas of his life. And then three sisters who wrote. 

This is a writing family. >> Wasn't it, you think it was, then, a competitive family? >> I don't think the sons were competitive. I don't think Thornton and Amos were at all competitive. I think the daughters were competitive, however. >> Wouldn't be the first such family. >> No. I think they were competing with each other, and I do believe that in some ways they were trying so very, very hard to match what their brother Thornton was doing. >> After he was about 30 or so at least. [LAUGHTER] A tough act to follow, as they say. >> And Tappan knew them all personally, so he may have a different take on that. 

>> Well, if you want to measure the question, no family's perfect by the way. The older I get, the word normal, I don't know what it means. But in this family I think it was harder on the daughters. The sons survived the real blast of their father's chess playing games in a remarkable way and of course turned a lot of it into very important art. They dealt with it that way. I think it was harder for the women. >> I agree. I think it was more difficult personally for them with the father/daughter relationship, and also it was harder then, as even later on, for a woman to establish herself as a writer. So I think that was a big difficulty for Charlotte and Isabelle. >> We have a couple of wedding pictures here waiting in the wings. 

>> Yes. >> Speaking of family. >> Well, it was at my parents wedding on June 26, 1935, that Thornton learned for the first time the old story of the bride not seeing the groom until they met at the alter in the church And my grandmother, my mother's mother, made a very big fuss about that. And a few days after the wedding, and Thornton was the best man, I think you see my father, the good looking bald guy, and my mother in the middle, he started a little sketch called M marries N. And that is in play. And I like to think, I believe it's the oldest line in the play. There were many things already feeding into his mind, but this was sort of a moment that galvanized his thinking. >> Apparently this was considered important enough that this wedding dress is on display. >> Yes this is in Moorestown, New Jersey, a wonderful little town outside Philadelphia. And my mother's wedding dress is now on permanent display in the Moorestown Historical Society. 

Isn't that nice? Veil and shoes. The whole works. >> Well, Our Town, that is the play for which Thornton Wilder, head and shoulders, is known above all else that he wrote, and we can see that it took off, much like The Bridge of San Luis Rey, it seems to have just taken off from the very beginning. >> From the very beginning. It had a very decent run of 300 whatever it was 356, I can't remember, performances on Broadway, nothing particularly special or spectacular, and a 10-week run out of town. And then when it was released, it's really a remarkable story, it was released to the amateur market, summer theaters and high schools. >> Embraced it wholeheartedly. >> It was more than 650 performances in the first 20 months. >> You mean individual places where it was being performed. >> Individual places. 

>> 640 venues. >> We have a list of all those places and have put it on the website and invited people in the 75th anniversary of this year to look and see where their town is and then run down to the library and see what the first reviews were. And this was 1939-1940. The slide you see here, the slides you see here are slides of the Broadway production. The little flier there is the first public flier about the play, one night that it played at Princeton, New Jersey, on its way to Boston on its way to New York. And that's the original flier at the McCarter Theatre. A very successful evening, by the way, from the point of view of the audience. There was a famous critic there who dissed the theater. >> Always an interesting story. >> But the audience loved it. 

>> When you talk about all these places where Our Town was performed as early as 1939, you're including not just professional and community theaters but right on down to high schools. It became a classic for high school performances almost immediately, didn't it? >> Yeah. It becomes associated in the public mind with the high school play. Penny and I, when we talk about it with groups, ask for a show of hands, and you can't believe the number of hands of people who were in it in high schools. Or their grandchildren were in it. >> Or saw it even. >> It's associated as a great high school play, and the hard-boiled critics, of course, are duly suspicious because of it. And it's seen from that perspective, and it's remembered fondly and with great emotion as a cherished memory on the part of many people, don't forget it's a reflection of its times. Through many of the '50s and '60s I like to think of it as it's the story of how Our Town met Leave it to Beaver. [LAUGHTER] And that's what's going on. 

It becomes the overwhelming view of the play. The play is a lot more than that, and it's a reflection of the period. And, gosh, it's a wonderful high school play. It's true. It doesn't get the director in trouble with the school board. [LAUGHTER] >> That's true. It's safe from that standpoint. >> But students learn so much about, they create drama on a bare stage. That's a big lesson. And it changes the lives of a lot of people. 

>> And they get to do monologues. A lot of it has to do with an actor, a character kind of explaining his or her situation and what happened. It always reminds me of Spoon River Anthology, the Edgar Lee Masters series of poems, it does much the same thing. These character sketches, the characters revealing themselves through what they say. But you're right. Our Town is the perfect name for a play like this. >> Well, another term for that kind of play somebody calls a warm noodle casserole. >> Yeah. >> It's tough. It's a very tough play. 

>> Yeah and maybe it depends on how it's done too because I'm sure that kind of thing could turn maudlin very easily if it weren't for kind of the nuances of directing and acting and even the staging. And I've seen professional companies put it on where it has more substance than Leave it to Beaver. >> I'm telling you how that is a possible view. >> Oh, for sure. Yeah. If you're not paying very close attention. >> I found a letter from my uncle in the '60s in which he talks about the play, if I remember correctly, as being easily forgettable, rather pathetic, and rather petty. Petty, those were words he used. >> Well, petty in the sense of these are people with small town concerns but they're basic human concerns. Who will I marry? What will I do for my life? What happens when I die? And that kind of thing. 

And also, it's got that Wilder affection for breaking the theatrical conventions. The fourth wall, for example. He has the stage manager talking to the audience directly, as if we're sort of all in this together rather than we're on stage and you're in the audience. >> Precisely what he's trying to do. This is a group effort. Bare stage and whatnot, strip it all away so that he can more easily get to the imagination and memory, which were the goals of this play. >> And very straight talk. I remember one line from the stage manager where he says to the audience, I'm going to say something that's going to hurt you feelings. And of course everybody is on their edge right there. And he says, you know, once a person is dead, they don't really care much about you any more. 

They have other things. They have other things. >> You have a picture, I noticed, of the stamp. >> The stamp, that's right. >> The power of that play and its impact of how he's viewed and understood is beautifully reflected in that stamp of 1997. It's an Our Town stamp. It's nothing else there. He's musing about it and thinking about it, but there's the church and whatnot. It's 32 cents of course, which is a great deal. >> Too bad we couldn't get him on a forever stamp. 

It would be more durable. But it is a little work of art, isn't it? There's a ceremony involving Carol Channing and Thornton Wilder's stamp. How does that work? >> Well, Carol Channing was invited, she was the great star of Hello, Dolly! to come and perform the first lick of this stamp. And it was a huge success. We were all cheering. She's a wonderful person. >> It makes me wonder who got the stamp. [LAUGHTER] >> She licked it. >> Before we leave Our Town, I get the impression that, we've talked about Leave it to Beaver and that kind of side of it, but I gather some latter day interpretations, in particular, put a somewhat darker cast to it. >> Well, I think there have been gifted directors and also the times in which we live. 

These are rawer times. And Wilder's novels and plays, I think, play well when times are raw, high school and our life today. Yes, David Cromer, for example, did an unusual production of the play in New York which ran for over 600 performances and broke all Our Town records in the Barrow Street Theatre. A very small, intimate show, mostly people in blue jeans, and the audience sitting right among the cast. So the intimacy of it made it timeless. There was an unusual third act which we call an act which had a sensory element which is unique and we're not allowed to talk about it. >> Okay. >> But Helen Hunt did a later production and it's been very successful. >> And successfully internationally. >> And others. 

Many other professional productions all bring out, as I say, the sense of community but also the harder edges of the play. So it's in wonderful shape. I call it the golden age of the play. In its 75th anniversary it's, I think, the range, high school all the way through. I don't even mind going to a high school production anymore. They're so interesting. Times are hard in schools. The play is wonderful. >> A little irony, isn't there, in that Our Town, which is so place oriented, so local, is a play that Thornton Wilder wrote while he was traveling. Didn't he finish it while he was in Switzerland? >> Well, this was a man who knew languages and the roots of the play come from Shakespeare and come from German expressionist theater. 

The international side of it is very real in terms of its intellectual roots. So it's wonderfully appropriate that the play was really pulled together and almost finished in a hotel in Switzerland. In Ruschlikon , a small village, seaside village near Zurich. I think that's fair to say. So here's a picture of where that occurred. Great walks that he made. He liked to walk, didn't he? >> Oh, he did. And he worked on Our Town in that hotel all day, and then often walked several miles for a glass of wine or a little company some place and then back to the solitude of work. You have to realize at this time he has the wonderful house that he's built, the house The Bridge built. He has a writing room, a study there. 

He just can't write there. For one thing, there are too many women talking on the telephone, he says. [LAUGHTER] But he needs the solitude, and, as Tappan says, he travels perennially. So Our Town has its roots everywhere. >> It seems somehow inevitable that the kind of wholesome image, rightly or wrongly, that his writings have would have attracted an opposite, which is to say Alfred Hitchcock. Because Hitchcock liked to cast somebody like James Stewart or even Cary Grant in kind of a dark, shadowy role. This kind of clean cut image and then counter the type. Is that what he was doing when he asked Thornton Wilder to write Shadow of a Doubt? >> Well, this is sort of the dark side of Our Town. He wanted Wilder because there were no secrets about small towns that Thornton Wilder didn't seem to see. And it was a very happy experience for both of them. 

I'm told Hitchcock had kind of a hard time with writers. He never had a happier time with Wilder. And it's a wonderful movie. Still very scary. >> Well, we've talked a little bit about how versatile Thornton Wilder was, but now let's go back and go through some kind of family photos and see how much more versatile he was even then. Because apparently he was a capable musician too. >> Yes, he was. He was a pianist principally, four hands. He loved four hands. But he studied violin, a little bit of organ earlier, and music runs underneath many of his works. 

His hobby was reading sheet music. One of his hobbies was reading sheet music. Is that fair to say, Penny? >> Yes, indeed. >> Apparently he also played the fiddle. >> And he played the fiddle. >> He did. And the piano, as Tappan said, and the organ. And he had a beautiful voice. He sang as well as he played the instruments that he played. >> Wrote librettos for a couple of operas. 

I mean a series. He was a serious musician. >> And we can't overlook him being an actor of course. He did that stage manage role for Our Town, as we are about to see here, a lot of times, right into later life. >> Yes. I think the last, if I remember, was 1957. So at least 12 times, and two weeks on Broadway. >> And the first time he did the role on Broadway, he was very nervous about memorizing the lines. [LAUGHTER] >> That is funny. >> He has wonderful letters about his anxiety that he was going to fluff the lines that he himself had written. 

>> Well, if anybody would have the license to make a change, accidental or otherwise, it would be the playwright. >> That's true. That's very true. >> He was also in the military. Not in one but in two wars, World War I and World War II. >> Briefly in the first war and then a real war in the second war. Penny writes about that wonderfully well. >> It's a fascinating part of his life to see the deep involvement in World War II. He did not want to stay home and write, even to write patriotic films. He wanted to be in the thick of the action, and he was. 

He was an intelligence officer in North Africa and then in Italy. >> And so we saw him celebrating V-J Day there. >> And that was V-J Day with his sister and brother-in-law. It influences what some people feel was his greatest novel, The Ides of March, which comes out after the war. So later it's a very significant part of his life. He was a traveler, though. He was, often 200 days a year at least, roaming to write. Yeah. >> It's kind of a compulsion for him that sounds like. >> Well, yes. 

Penny, I don't know how, yes. >> There's that line about something to the effect of always traveling because there's nothing at home to keep you. >> I think of... >> I think that's part of it. He needed the solitude. He needed the uninterrupted time. He loved riding aboard ship and would choose a slow boat when he possibly could. So I think there was some of that. I also think he was at home wherever he was. You have to realize, in his boyhood, part of which was spent in China, he became very accustomed to travel and to the discovery of other places, and I think that stayed with him. 

But there was also a restlessness. Hard to sit still. >> And I think his happy role was being the eyes on the wall. Watching people. And he particularly liked to get away from people who were asking him what do you think of Proust. There was only so much of that he could take. [LAUGHTER] He wanted to be, he loved to be with, if I use a corny term, but real people. >> The common people. Not too many of those New York cocktail parties. >> Exactly. 

Exactly. >> This is a family photo. What do we see in here? >> Well, we're in a little town called Blue Hill, Maine, in the early '50s. His father came from Maine, and this is an early family gathering of the Maine clan. And some of them actually in Canada. There's a man named Charles Todd there, and that's why the name Todd turns up in Our Town. This is a Canadian Todd. But there's a line, Hank Todd went down to Maine to become a parson. Well, Charles Todd lived in St. Stevens. There's my father's cousins and Thornton in the middle with his Maine family. 

>> That will take him back to Madison, too, with this one. >> Yes. Well, that's the first four kids that were born between 1895, my father, and 1900, Isabelle who's held in the lap there. And Mrs. Wilder and that's the nurse we think, right? >> We think so. >> This is an unusual photo that fell out of an envelope. [LAUGHTER] You see anything there, Penny? It's an unusual picture. >> Now, your father, Tappan, was the elder brother of Thornton Wilder. >> Yeah. 1895. Here's my father. 

This is the earliest picture we have of him. That's a Madison picture when he was about two years old, and that's in Madison. Amos Niven Wilder was his name, and he married when he was 40 so I'm almost the child of a skipped generation. Only the oldest and the youngest married. Only my father had kids out of the whole crowd. >> Oh, is that right? Thornton Wilder didn't have any children. >> No, he never. They just don't marry. They write books; they don't get married. [LAUGHTER] >> You can imagine they might be a little busy for that. 

This is his sister. >> This is Charlotte. Charlotte, who was a poet and has a massive break in 1941 and a prefrontal lobotomy in 1947? >> We think so. >> Those were sort of fashionable. >> The were very fashionable. >> For a while there, weren't they? Those lobotomies? >> She'll live until 1982 and is a very gifted and fascinating poet who's being rediscovered, as they all are now. >> And Isabelle. >> That's Isabelle Wilder preaching the Gospel of Wilder. She's the one who lives until 95. Is a novelist in her own right and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. 

>> And, actually, but in her own right and yet she is credited in this book cover of hers as being the sister of Thornton Wilder. I have mixed feelings about that. >> Well, that's the English edition of one of her three novels. It's a wonderful cover. How do we describe her novels? Novels of family, domestic. >> Definitely family themes. Well written novels, not by any means of the quality of her brother's novels, which I think she knew, and I think that troubled her some. But nevertheless, nicely written novels with interesting stories about families who have all sorts of problems. >> Imagine that. >> Yes. 

No surprise. >> And this is another sister. >> That's the youngest who was born 10 years after the last. Every kiss, as we say, was a pregnancy. Janet Wilder. Janet Wilder Dakin. She was a zoologist with a PhD from Chicago, and lived her life out in Amherst. Was a great equestrian and very interested in horses. This was a world champion Morgan that she's on. >> The Morgans were an interest of the Wilders, one of those great American breeds, the Morgan. 

>> Yeah. Well, I guess, I'm told. I don't know anything about horses. But there she is on her horse. And she actually wrote a book about raising Jeffy, who was the champ, and it came out at the end of her life. So they all published books, even Janet as well as her research. >> Now, I gather we don't have a lot of pictures of Thornton Wilder's mother, but this is one of her later in life? >> Well, not in this group. There are pictures. This is the elder Mrs. Wilder, the mother of the clan. A complicated, interesting woman who Penny has brought out of the, never been studied with great care. 

Would you say that fair? >> She has not. And in those uncataloged papers we talked about, we found so much evidence of her life as a poet, her life before her married life. And she was a vital dynamic encourager of the work of all of her children. >> So a little different from the father. >> She read from manuscripts along the way, corrected Thornton's spelling. >> He had a spelling problem. >> This is Thornton's father, that would be the one on the right. The father was posted in Hong Kong in a diplomatic service. >> Well, he leaves his role as running the Wisconsin State Journal in 1906. So this is 1908, and he's in Washington with the representative to Washington of the Chinese government at the time. 

And he then goes on to Shanghai. So he has that career in China. And also a complicated man. This is the man who ran the chess board. >> Yes. He was taking credit for being the first newspaper editor to turn down liquor ads. He was a big temperance advocate. >> To put it mildly. [LAUGHTER] >> Which didn't entirely carry over to his children. >> It didn't last. 

[LAUGHTER] >> Despite the temperance pledges that he wrote for them to sign in which they signed when they were teenagers. >> We've talked about the international aspect of Thornton Wilder. This, I think, is an image from a Japanese adaptation of Our Town. >> Recent Japanese production. >> Some creative staging with the traps there. >> Very creative, yeah. The play was international from the beginning. It was done, I think, in eight countries by 1940, including many illegal or pirated productions in Spain and Japan during the war, in Romania. >> Isn't that fascinating. >> They weren't happy to have it done. 

In Switzerland. It's been international from the beginning, and I think Americans are often surprised to find that. And it's internationally alive today. >> And apparently even like kamikaze pilots enjoyed productions, wartime productions of Our Town. >> According to recent research being done from Japan, they saw the third act and found it-- I don't know what to say. They liked it. >> Well, yeah, we have to remember that a lot of those pilots were college educated and could appreciate the finer points. >> And this is a cover of a Polish production. >> Polish production of Our Town here from back in the day. And then we also have another here. 

We'll go right to this one. Unsere kleine Stadt. >> Yes. That's a wonderful statement because the Germans, who appreciated Wilder, especially Our Town, that's the publication of the reading edition, that's the Frankfurt skyline. They see it and they know it as more than just a small town American story. >> We're going to go back to small town America here with just a few more images of Wilder and his family. >> Well, Penny, you've had to live with these people, and that is the first four. >> This is a wonderful photograph of Amos, Tappan's father, standing with his younger siblings in the baby carriage. And we are told, we don't have documentation of this, but we are told that Mrs. Wilder was often seen in those years with those four small children walking down the street pushing the baby carriage with a book in her hand. [LAUGHTER] >> Seems to run in the family then, doesn't it? We can see where the younger generation would have picked it up. 

Another early one. >> Another early one. This would be in Madison. There they are all. The first four. Janet comes along 10 years later. Yep. That's just a good Madison picture, and probably somebody will know what park that's in. I can't say. >> Now, how long were they in Madison? Do you know? >> 1895 to 1906. 

>> 1906. >> Okay, so, by which time Thornton would have been about nine years old. >> That's right. >> So old enough to have Madison memories. >> Yes. >> And he did. He saw his first play while he was living as a boy in Madison. He went with his father to the newspaper office and was fascinated to see words appear on paper from the printing press. So, some important seeds were planted during those Madison years. >> And this takes us right back to the beginning, back to that house in Maple Bluff in Madison where Wilder was born in 1897. 

>> Right. >> So, push comes to shove, is Wilder a Midwesterner? Been around the world but a Midwesterner in any sense? >> He was very proud of being a Midwesterner. And I just happen to have a letter here to demonstrate in his own words. He's writing to another writer, and he says, "I was born in the Midwest. I'm proud of being a citizen of the Midwest." He says to this other novelist, "You and I are Middle Westerners. I left my birthplace, Madison, Wisconsin, at the age of nine but returned for two years to Oberlin College and for six years to teach at the University of Chicago." But he says, "More than that, I have a feeling about the Middle West, a feeling about the middle class that is not often found. We don't hate or mock it or sentimentalize it like Booth Tarkington did. Or condescend to it as Sinclair Lewis did. It is, as it were, romantic for us. We rejoice in the whole gamut, from farce to tragedy." >> Well, thanks for giving us a sense of the whole gamut of Thornton Wilder. 

What a fascinating figure. We haven't even talked about The Skin of Our Teeth. We could do a whole program on that subject. >> Well, I think it's entirely appropriate to end with that and to note that novels like Heaven's My Destination and The Eighth Day are great Midwestern novels. And they happen to be my favorites so I have to get that in. [LAUGHTER] And, by the way, for readers who love his one-act plays, there are several one-act plays that are set here, including, at the end of his life, a very remarkable play called Rivers Under the Earth which are his memories based in Wisconsin. So, it's very deep stuff. >> Well, thanks for joining me for University Place Presents. Tappan Wilder, the nephew of Thornton Wilder. You don't mind being identified that way? >> No, not at all. 

>> A person in your own right. >> I am. >> And Penelope Niven, as it turns out a very distant relative of Thornton Wilder and the author of his biography, the most recent one. Thanks for joining me. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I'm Norman Gilliland, and I hope you can join me the next time around for University Place Presents.   His work The Bridge of San Luis