John Howard Lawson Biography

American dramatist, born in New York, educated at Williams College. A committed socialist writer, Lawson's theatrical work spanned the years from 1923 to 1937; thereafter, he abandoned the theatre for Hollywood and an important screenwriting career until he was blacklisted in the McCarthy era. Roger Bloomer (1923) and Processional (1925) are notable examples of expressionism, the first about a young rebel's rejection of bourgeois society, the second about a miners' strike in the West Virginia coalfields. Loud Speaker (1927) is a political farce; The International (1928) projects a world-wide workers' revolution; Success Story (1932) is about a man who loses his soul for material power; and Marching Song (1937) returns to the theme of strikers and strikebreakers. In 1936 he published his Theory and Technique of Playwriting.