1930's The Arts | People in the News

In November-December 1938 poet Stephen Vincent Benét, novelist Willa Cather, novelist-playwright Thornton Wilder, and novelist Ellen Glasgow were elected to fill vacancies in the fifty-member American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In January 1930 novelist Louis Bromfield went to Hollywood to write screenplay for the new sound motion pictures, telling reporters: "There is intelligence and talent gathering in Hollywood as it never gathered there before.… I am fed up with Europe. It gives me a stomach-ache."

In December 1938 the Limited Editions Club presented a gold medal to literary critic Van Wyck Brooks, proclaiming his 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Flowering of New England "the most likely to become a classic" of all the books published in the last three years.

In March 1937 director George Cukor said the actress he selected to play Scarlett O'Hara in...