Hughes, (Harvey) Hatcher 1881-1945

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HUGHES, (Harvey) Hatcher 1881-1945

PERSONAL:

Born February 12, 1881, in Polkville, NC; died October 18, 1945, in Cornwall, CT; son of Andrew Jackson and Martha (Hold) Hughes; married Janet Cool Ranney (an actress), 1930; children: Ann Ranney. Education: University of North Carolina, A.B., 1907, M.A., 1909.

CAREER:

American writer. Columbia University, New York, NY, lecturer and professor of English, 1910-45. Military service: Served as an army captain during World War I.

MEMBER:

National Institute of Arts and Letters.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pulitzer Prize, 1924, for Hell-Bent fer Heaven.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

A Marriage Made in Heaven, 1918.

(With Elmer Rice) Wake Up, Jonathon (produced in New York, NY, at Henry Miller's Theatre, 1921), S. French (New York, NY), 1928.

Hell-Bent fer Heaven (produced in New York, NY, at the Klaw Theatre, 1924), Harper (New York, NY), 1924.

Ruint (produced in New York, NY, at the Provincetown Playhouse, 1925), Harper (New York, NY), 1925.

Honeymooning on High, 1927.

It's a Grand Life, produced in New York, NY, at the Cort Theatre, 1930.

(And director) The Lord Blesses the Bishop, produced in New York, NY, at the Adelphi Theatre, 1934.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hatcher Hughes was a playwright and educator, who gained renown during the 1920s with a series of folk plays drawn from his knowledge of life in the mountains of North Carolina. He spent the majority of his professional career at Columbia University, first as a lecturer, and then as a professor of English. In addition to directing several plays at Columbia, Hughes taught classes in playwriting and dramatic literature.

Hughes wrote several successful plays and is best known for his plays about mountain life. One of these works, Hell-Bent fer Heaven, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1924. This was one of two plays that resulted from a period Hughes spent vacationing and hiking in the North Carolina mountains in the early 1920s. At this time Hughes was able to study the language and customs of the natives, providing substance for two writing projects. In Hell-Bent fer Heaven, the story's main character is Rufe Pryor, a religious fanatic who believes he is an instrument of the Lord. However, in spite of his self-declared religious values, he manages to resurrect an abandoned feud between two families—the Hunts and the Lowries—which almost breaks up a couple and, more important, almost results in a murder.

Herschel Brickell, writing for the Literary Review, commented favorably about the drama, calling it a "play of genuine distinction, skillfully written, with effective scenes and well-drawn characters." A critic for Outlook had a conflicting opinion, "The average reader will, we think, find it encumbered by too much religious discussion and sermonizing, chiefly by persons whose notions of theology are as primitive as their passions. And this discursive tendency, added to much tedious repetition, makes for dull reading."

The next year Hughes authored Ruint, another folk comedy set in the Carolina Mountains. The main character is a male college student who comes to the area to do missionary work among the native population and ends up getting romantically involved with a local woman. According to a critic in the Literary Review, "Little more than a rather skillfully done skit. Its dramatic content is slight, and while its characters are drawn carefully and credibly and their dialect is impeccable, it is built upon so slight a plot that it slumps badly toward the end, and one is left with a definite feeling of dissatisfaction."

Hughes's other plays for the stage include Wake Up, Jonathon, a successful comedy about family life which he wrote with Elmer Rice; It's a Grand Life, written with Alan Williams; and The Lord Blesses the Bishop, a comedy about paternity outside of marriage.