Sherwood, Robert E. (Robert Emmet), 1896-1955

American playright, Academy Award winner, and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Emmet Sherwood was born on April 4, 1896 in New Rochelle, New York to Rosina Emmett (1854-1948) and Arthur Murray Sherwood (1856-1928). Sherwood Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but failed his freshmen rhetoric course. He performed well writing for the Lampoon, a campus comedy magazine, as well as writing the annual comedic musical for the school. Sherwood joined the Canadian military prior to graduation and served in France and was dircharged after a gas attack in 1919.

Sherwood returned and became the drama editor for Vanity Fair from 1919 to 1920, which earned him a place at the Algonquin Round Table, a literary coterie in New York. He then moved to Life magazine working as associate editor for four year and eventually editor for another four years. Sherwood wrote his first play in 1927, entitled The Road to Rome, which criticized the pointlessness of war. He also assisted in writing Howard Hughes' now lost film, The Age for Love (1931). Sherwood was awarded an Academy Award in 1947 for Best Screenplay with The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).He earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1936, 1940, and 1941. for Idiot's Delight, Abe Lincold in Illinois, and There Shall Be No Night, respectively. His final distinction was the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Roosevelt and Hopkins, which he worked on prior to his time as a speechwriter and advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and time spent as a special assistant to both the secretary of war and secretary of the navy.

Sherwood married twice. First, to Mary Judah Brandon in New York, New York on October 29, 1922. The couple had one chile, Mary Jameson Sherwood (1923-1962). After the divorce, Sherwood married Madeline Hurlock in Budapest, Hungary on June 15, 1955. He died on November 4, 1955 in New York, New York.

Source:

Genealogy files about "Robert Emmet Sherwood." Accessed on October 28, 2021 on FamilySearch.org.

"Robert E. Sherwood." Encyclopedia Britannica, March 31, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-E-Sherwood.