John William Van Druten was an Englishplaywright and theatre director, known professionally as John Van Druten. He began his career in London, and later moved to America becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.
Biography
Van Druten was born in London in 1901, son of a Dutch father, Wilhelmus van Druten and his English wife Eva. He was educated at University College School and read law at the University of London. Before commencing his career as a writer, he practised law for a while as a solicitor and university lecturer in Wales. He first came to prominence with Young Woodley, a slight but charming study of adolescence, which was produced in New York in 1925. However, it was initially banned in London by the Lord Chamberlain's office owing to its then controversial portrayal of a schoolboy falling in love with his headmaster's wife. In Britain, it was first produced privately and then at the Arts Theatre in 1928. When the ban was lifted, it had a successful run at the Savoy Theatre in the West End with a cast including Frank Lawton, Derrick De Marney, and Jack Hawkins. The play was filmed twice. It was revived at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2006. He was one of the most successful playwrights of the early 1930s in London, with star-studded West End productions of his work including Diversion, After All, London Wall with Frank Lawton and John Mills, There's Always Juliet, Somebody Knows, Behold, We Live with Gertrude Lawrence and Gerald du Maurier, The Distaff Side, and Flowers of the Forest. He later emigrated to America, where he wrote Leave Her to Heaven, a drama set in London and Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex, which was shortly followed by major successes with Old Acquaintance and The Voice of the Turtle, which ran for three seasons in New York and was filmed with Ronald Reagan. In 1944, he became a naturalised citizen of the United States. His play, Make Way for Lucia, based on the Mapp and Lucia novels of E. F. Benson, was premiered in New York and had its first professional British production in 1995. His 1951 play I Am a Camera, together with Christopher Isherwood's short stories, Goodbye to Berlin, formed the basis of Joe Masteroff's book for the Kander and Ebb musical, Cabaret. When I Am a Camera opened on Broadway in 1951, The New York Times drama critic Walter Kerr wrote a famous three-word review: "Me no Leica." In the late 1930s and early 1940s he was in a relationship with Carter Lodge. Lodge was the manager of the AJC Ranch that van Druten, British actress Auriol Lee and Lodge bought together in Coachella Valley. When the relationship ended, Lodge continued to live on the ranch with his new partner, Dick Foote. When van Druten died in 1957, he left the entire property of the ranch to Lodge and also the rights in his work, including "I Am a Camera", which entitled Lodge to earn a percentage from the movie "Cabaret". He died at Indio, California, on 19 December 1957 of undisclosed causes. He is buried in the Coachella Valley Public Cemetery.
Van Druten directed the last nine productions of his own plays. At the St. James Theatre, New York in March 1951 he directed the first production of The King and I. He also restaged this production at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, in London, October 1953. At the Theatre Royal, Brighton in November 1954 he staged a production of The Duchess and the Smugs. Van Druten wrote two autobiographies:
He also published two novels: a version of Young Woodley, and The Vicarious Years in 1955. He also published a book on his work Playwright at Work just after the Second World War.
