This Day in Theater History (Philip Barry's 'Second Threshold' Staged Posthumously)

Jan. 2, 1951--The final play of Philip Barry (pictured)– best known nowadays for two Katharine Hepburn vehicles, The Philadelphia Story and Holiday – premiered in New York City, running for 126 performances.

The “dramedy” Second Threshold was completed posthumously with the assistance of Barry’s longtime friend Robert Sherwood (Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Roosevelt and Sherwood). Though the play was primarily inspired by the death of Barry’s infant daughter and friend Robert Benchley, the situation of the major character – a high government official driven to suicidal despair – owes much to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.

Forrestal’s suicide in 1947 shocked Washington. More than a decade later, a mutual friend of the playwright and cabinet secretary, novelist John O’Hara, used elements of the tragedy in his sprawling From the Terrace, mixing it with traces of the life of recently fallen British Prime Minister Anthony Eden.

As I’ve argued in an article for The Record: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society (“The ‘Fox’s Eye’: The Celtic Sensibility of Philip Barry,” Vol. 15, No. 2, Fall 2002), this final play of Barry’s attempts to mix the bright social comedy of manners of his most famous works with a more serious moral element running like a subterranean element through the rest of his work. As such, the play could profit from a revival.