“First Connections with Stagecraft”: S. N. Behrman Finds His Vocation

Abstract

This article discusses previously unpublished material from the S. N. Behrman Papers that marks S. N. Behrman’s first encounter with live theater. This material is thus a significant contribution to the biographical record on Behrman. A theater memoir submitted to but rejected by The New Yorker sheds light on Behrman’s early experiment in vaudeville, and records his early encounter with high comedy in the work of Somerset Maugham and his early fascination with actors, a primary focus of his theatrical career. The unpublished material discussed here was intended as part of his New Yorker series about growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in central Massachusetts, reminiscences seen as a resource for information about Behrman’s adolescence and early adulthood. Since Behrman’s book The Worcester Account (1954) offers only passing mention of the author’s eventual career in drama, the material covered here illuminates his choice of a vocation in the world of theater.