Dorothy Heyward
*Dorothy Heyward was born on this date in 1890. She was a white-American playwright.
She was born Dorothy Kuhns in Wooster, Ohio, and lived in New York, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC, throughout her childhood. She was interested in literature from an early age and started writing plays. After graduating from high school, she attended Harvard University, where she studied theater to become a playwright. In 1922, Kuhns attended the MacDowell Colony, where she met DuBose Heyward. They married in September 1923, and she changed her name.
In 1924, Heyward wrote her first play, The Dud, for which she won a Harvard Prize and participated in Dr. George Pierce Baker's Workshop 47. The Dud was later retitled Nancy Ann, and Nancy Ann was produced on Broadway in 1924, running 40 performances. When her husband wrote his novel Porgy, Dorothy Heyward saw dramatic possibilities in the story. She convinced him that it would work as a play. They collaborated to adapt it to the stage, ensuring the play's company was cast with only Black actors.
This was a controversial decision during its time, when Black characters were almost always portrayed by white actors in blackface. Nonetheless, the play succeeded, and the 1927 Theatre Guild production ran for 367 performances. Their play was later adapted as the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. This was adapted as a film by the same name in 1959.
Throughout her career, Heyward wrote many plays, most of which did not achieve the same level of success as Porgy. Her play Jonica, co-written in 1930 with playwright Moss Hart, and her plays South Pacific, Cinderelative, and Set My People Free were all performed on Broadway but were ultimately short-lived. In 1939, Heyward collaborated with her husband on their play Mamba's Daughters, which was adapted from DuBose's 1929 novel of the same name.
Many of her works focused on African-American culture and often touched on subjects such as slavery and prejudice. In the 1930s, Heyward wrote several novels, including one in 1930 titled Three-a-Day, and another in 1932 titled The Pulitzer Prize Murders. Dorothy Heyward died on November 19, 1961.
