I know, as a sane man of middle age, that the lives around me are not always dull, drab, base or unhappy. I was acquainted with a mother, she was in fact a member of my own household, who had given up a career for her children and who was neither heartbroken nor neurotic; her children weren’t idiots, ungrateful brats or headed either for the gallows or an early grave. I had seen her make sacrifices for them that were well made and well worth the making. On the whole in this world I have seen men and women reap what they have sown, and I have looked closely at life with a trained eye for a great many years and found it good. I wanted to say something like this in a natural, true and unsentimental way and I couldn’t do it. I don’t in the least know why it can’t be done, but so far it hasn’t been. I don’t propose to take all the blame for this. I’ll admit that NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL said that virtue always won out in the end, but before Nellie’s time that statement had been made in platitude. It may be that the sugar-coated play has killed the possibility of optimistic play writing, but I didn’t want to write about life’s being worth living just to trick a happy ending. I simply wanted to say that life was worth living because that is the way I have found it. I have lived fifty-six years very happily. I have been fortunate in having the sort of wife and the sort of children that have added very greatly to that happiness. I love my work and as a result I have never had any trouble in making all the money necessary for comfort and decency. I am strong and well and those I love are well—why should I write of a sorrowful world? Yet for some reason every time I tried to write a true play the note of futility crept into it. I floundered about for the next year or two, turning out a few plays, most of which I would have described in the far-off days when I had worked for the Kentucky Coal Company as “run of the mine.” LAZYBONES had some good points, THE DONOVAN AFFAIR made money, but always I was trying for that real play that wouldn’t come. The best work I did at this time was a dramatization of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel THE GREAT GATSBY. The character of Gatsby made a strong appeal to me, and here was another chance to do a play with Mr. Brady, who seemed anxious for me to come in with him once more. The play was really good, and moderately successful, but here was another time when the truth was bitter and cruel and hard for the public to take.