The Miracle Worker | Author Biography

William Gibson was born in the Bronx, New York, on November 13,1914, the son of George Irving, a bank clerk, and Florence (Dore) Gibson. Gibson spent his childhood in New York City and eventually attended the City College of New York, where he studied from 1930 until 1932. After graduation, Gibson moved to Kansas, supporting himself as a piano teacher while pursuing his interest in theatre. It was in Topeka, Kansas, that Gibson had his earliest plays produced. Most of these early works were light comedies; two of them were later revised and restaged: A Cry Of The Players and Dinny and the Witches, both in 1948. Shortly after his time in Kansas, Gibson met a psychoanalyst named Margaret Brenman; the two were married on September 6, 1940, and eventually had two sons, Thomas and David.

William Gibson
William Gibson

Gibson's first major critical and popular success in New York was Two for The Seesaw, which opened on Broadway in 1958. He was praised for the play's brisk dialogue and the compassion with which he endowed the characters. However, it is Gibson's second Broadway production, The Miracle Worker, for which he is best known.

Gibson first became fascinated with Anne Sullivan and her triumph as Helen Keller's teacher while reading the letters that Anne Sullivan wrote in 1887 describing her experiences in the Keller household. It was these letters and also Nella Brady's biography, Anne Sullivan Macy, that inspired Gibson to write about Anne Sullivan's accomplishments. Gibson first attempted to write The Miracle Worker as a solo dance piece but wrote it as a television play for the series Playhouse 90, which was produced by CBS. After The Miracle Worker was warmly received when it aired on CBS on February 7,1957, Gibson received offers to adapt it for stage and film. He decided to write it for the stage because he wished to have more artistic control over the production. Although it opened to mixed reviews, positive press and word-of-mouth led to The Miracle Worker's success on Broadway.

The Miracle Worker was adapted as a feature-length film starring Anne Bancroft as Annie and Patty Duke as Helen in 1962, and was again produced for television in 1979 with Patty Duke playing the role of Annie and Melissa Gilbert as Helen. After The Miracle Worker, Gibson continued to write for the theatre and became a member of the Dramatists Guild. However, after Golden Boy (1964), which was a musical adaptation of Clifford Odets's play of the same name, Gibson largely withdrew from the New York theatre scene. It was during this time in the 1960s and 1970s that he founded and became president of the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Gibson did return to the New York stage, however, during the 1980s; The Monday after the Miracle, his sequel to The Miracle Worker opened on Broadway on December 14,1982, at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. The Monday after The Miracle was a much darker piece than its predecessor and garnered poor reviews and attendance; it closed after a short run. The Miracle Worker continues to be Gibson's best known work and is the drama on which his reputation rests.