Quote of the Day (Behrman)

“A wonderful discovery, psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple people feel they're complex.” – S. N. Behrman
(Behrman, who during his life was sometimes referred to as the “American Congreve,” was born on this date in 1893 in Worcester, Mass. Though he wrote a number of screenplays for Hollywood, including Greta Garbo’s Queen Christina and the David O. Selznick adaptation of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, he is probably held in highest esteem for his 18 plays. In his heyday during the 1920s and 1930s, he, Philip Barry, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart produced the American answer to Britain’s stylish Restoration comedies – witty, stylish, sometimes racy. A consistent theme of these comedies—including one of his best, Biography, which I saw last year at New York’s Pearl Theatre Co.—is the necessity—and vulnerability—of tolerant people, in a world besieged by the corrupt and the fanatical on both ends of the political spectrum. Somehow, this vision of the “golden mean” still has not lost its relevance.)