GOODRICH, Frances and HACKETT, Albert

Nationality: American. GOODRICH, Frances. Born: Belleville, New Jersey, 21 December 1890. Education: Vassar College, graduated 1912; New York School of Social Work, 1912-13. Family: Married 1) Robert Ames in 1917 (divorced 1923); 2) Henrik Willem Van Loon in 1927 (divorced 1930); 3) Albert Hackett in 1931. Career: Actress in stage productions, including Coming Out of the Kitchen, 1916; writer for Paramount, 1943-46, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1948. Died: 19 January 1984. HACKETT, Albert. Born: Albert Maurice Hackett, New York, 16 February 1900. Family: Married 1) Frances Goodrich in 1931 (died 1984); 2) Gisele Svetlik in 1985. Career: Playwright, screenwriter, and actor. Appeared in films, including Black Fear, 1915, The Venus Model, 1918, Coming Out of the Kitchen, 1919, Anne of Green Gables, 1919, Molly O', 1921, The Good-Bad Wife, 1921, The Country Flapper, 1922, The Darling of the Rich, 1922, and Whoopee!, 1930. Awards, with Goodrich: Academy Award nominations, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1934, for The Thin Man, 1935, for Ah, Wilderness!, 1950, for Father of the Bride, and 1954, for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; Writers Guild awards, 1948, for Easter Parade, 1951, for Father's Little Dividend, and 1954, for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; award for best American play, New York Drama Critics' Circle, Antoinette Perry award, best dramatic author, and Pulitzer prize for drama, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, all 1956, all for The Diary of Anne Frank; Writers Guild award, 1959, for The Diary of Anne Frank.Died: 16 March 1995.

Publications

Plays

Up Pops the Devil (produced New York, 1930). 1933.

Bridal Wise (produced New York, 1932).

Western Union, Please (produced 1939). As Western Union, Please: A Comedy in Three Acts, 1942.

The Great Big Doorstep (produced New York, 1942). 1943.

The Diary of Anne Frank: Dramatized by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adaptation of Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (produced New York, 1955). 1956.

It's a Wonderful Life: Screenplay, with Frank Capra. 1986.

Screenplays:

Up Pops the Devil, 1931; The Secret of Madame Blanche, 1933; Penthouse, with Leon Gordon and Hugo Butler, 1933; Fugitive Lovers, with George B. Seitz, 1934; The Thin Man, adaptation of the novel by Dashiell Hammett, 1934; Chained, 1934; Hide-Out, 1934; Naughty Marietta (musical; songs by Victor Herbert), with John Lee Mahin, 1935; Ah, Wilderness!, adaptation of the play by Eugene O'Neill, 1935; Rose Marie, with Alice Duer Miller, 1936; Small Town Girl, with Mahin and Edith Fitzgerald, 1936; After the Thin Man, adaptation of fiction by Hammett, 1936; The Firefly, 1937; Thanks for the Memory, 1938; Another Thin Man, adaptation of fiction by Hammett, 1939; Society Lawyer, 1939; Doctors at War (short film), 1943; Lady in the Dark, adaptation of a Broadway show by Moss Hart, 1944; The Hitler Gang, 1944; The Virginian, adaptation of the novel by Owen Wister, 1946; It's a Wonderful Life, with Frank Capra, adaptation of a story by Philip Van Doren Stern, 1946; The Pirate (musical; songs by Cole Porter), adaptation of the play by S. N. Behrman, 1948; Summer Holiday (musical), adaptation of Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill, 1948; Easter Parade (musical; songs by Irving Berlin), with Sidney Sheldon, 1948; In the Good Old Summertime (musical), adapted from the film The Shop around the Corner, 1949; Father of the Bride, adaptation of the novel by Edward Streeter, 1950; Father's Little Dividend, 1951; Too Young to Kiss, 1951; Give a Girl a Break (musical; songs by Ira Gershwin and Burton Lane), 1954; Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (musical; songs by Johnny Mercer and Gene DePaul), with Dorothy Kingsley, adaptation of "The Sobbin' Women" by Stephen Vincent Benet, 1954; The Long, Long Trailer, 1954; Gaby, adapted from the film Waterloo Bridge, 1956; A Certain Smile, adaptation of the novella by Francoise Sagan, 1958; The Diary of Anne Frank, 1959; Five Finger Exercise, adaptation of the play by Peter Schaffer, 1962.

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Media Adaptations:

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, adapted for Broadway and for television; Society Lawyer, 1939, re-make of Penthouse; Father of the Bride, 1991, remake of the original; Father of the Bride Part II, 1995, remake of Father's Little Dividend; The Diary of Anne Frank, 1980, adapted for the stage, 1997.

Critical Studies:

Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age by Patrick McGilligan, 1986; The Real Nick and Nora: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Writers of Stage and Screen Classics by David L. Goodrich, 2001.

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Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett's play The Diary of Anne Frank, an adaptation of the famous diary, was first produced on Broadway in 1955 and won the Pulitzer Prize. Goodrich and Hackett, a husband-and-wife MGM screenwriting team, had earlier smash hits such as Father of the Bride and It's a Wonderful Life. Previously, however, they had not written about the Holocaust. Their play, although a huge success, proved to be very controversial and was part of a bitter legal dispute that also involved Otto Frank (Anne Frank 's father), novelist Meyer Levin , and playwright Lillian Hellman. In fact, Levin sued Otto Frank and producer Kermit Bloomgarden on various charges, including plagiarism because the content of Goodrich and Hackett's play was similar to his earlier drama (Levin blamed Frank and Bloomgarden). A jury decided that Frank should pay Levin $50,000 in damages, but after the verdict was thrown out, Frank paid Levin $15,000 for his rights to the play (one of the conditions of the settlement being that Levin could not legally stage his drama anywhere in the world), although it is worth pointing out that similarities between the two plays were inevitable because Levin and the Goodrich-Hackett team obviously used the same source—Anne's diary.

Levin was one of the first people to discern the great potential of the diary, and he brought it to the attention of the American public with his brilliant and laudatory review that appeared on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. The diary became hugely successful in part because he championed it tirelessly and monomaniacally. Inspired by the diary and perhaps feeling a bond with Anne Frank (Levin was present at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, where she had died of typhus a month earlier), Levin convinced Otto Frank to let him write the play based on Anne's diary. Frank agreed but changed his mind after important drama producers and playwrights panned the draft. On Lillian Hellman's suggestion, Goodrich and Hackett were chosen. Goodrich and Hackett immediately immersed themselves in learning about the Holocaust and visited the secret annex where Anne had written the diary. They also met with Hellman for help. Despite Levin's numerous attempts, through lawsuits and the media, to stop Goodrich and Hackett's version from appearing onstage, the play was produced after much revision and a total of eight drafts, and it proved to be enormously successful.

Levin objected to the Goodrich and Hackett version because he considered it too commercial and universal and thought that it thus was not true to the diary and Anne's feelings. He correctly pointed out that Goodrich and Hackett had omitted almost all references to Judaism. In order to appeal to a wide variety of audiences, this play about the Holocaust contains virtually no references to Anne as a Jew, although many comments about her Jewish faith appear in her diary. In their play Goodrich and Hackett transform Anne into an everyman figure, someone to whom everyone can relate. Even Hanukkah is portrayed as a day of presents, not unlike Christmas. There is no parallel made to the persecution of Jews by the Greeks, and the subsequent deliverance, that is part of the Hanukkah story. Cynthia Ozick claims that Goodrich and Hackett, like Otto Frank, wanted the play to be accessible to everyone, a story to which they could relate and a story that would not offend anyone. Levin believed that such a story was then not truly about the Holocaust or the persecution of Jews and thus was a violation of the diary and Anne's thoughts.

Levin also did not approve of the humor in the play. Goodrich and Hackett's play contains much humor and thus was not as somber and intense as Levin's version. Goodrich and Hackett wanted people to enjoy the play and have fun, not to leave the theater feeling depressed. But the diary is about the Holocaust and thus, opined Levin, sad thoughts should be expected. Levin emphasized Anne's statements in the diary about the persecution of Jews while Goodrich and Hackett ignored these remarks, focusing instead on the growing romantic relationship between Anne and Peter as well as the bickering that involved the Van Daans and others. Although Levin believed that Goodrich and Hackett's version stripped the diary of its Jewishness and was a cheap commercial vehicle, it can also be asserted that the poignancy and tragedy of their play is understated, that audience members feel great sadness when Anne and the others in the secret annex are arrested (although no Nazi ever appears onstage). One of the last lines of Goodrich and Hackett's play, and arguably the most quoted line, is Anne's last words in the drama: "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." Thus, the play concludes on an optimistic note that Otto Frank, Goodrich, and Hackett desired. This line, however, is taken out of context from the diary and is actually part of a longer speech in which Anne claims to feel the suffering of millions. The diary entry itself is therefore somewhat pessimistic and bleak, not optimistic; detractors of Goodrich and Hackett's play suggest that such selective quoting from the diary distorts what Anne Frank really wrote and believed. Perhaps Goodrich and Hackett's attempts to universalize the plight of Anne Frank and to make the audience feel optimistic misrepresents Anne Frank's meaning, but perhaps these attempts have helped make The Diary of Anne Frank one of the most successful dramas in the world.

—Eric Sterling

See the essay on The Diary of Anne Frank.