Sunrise at Campobello has been called a pet project for veteran filmmaker Dore Schary, earning him, incidentally, the most notoriety as a playwright during his lifetime. He produced both the movie and the play versions, in addition to authoring the play after a career at MGM. The result of his efforts on the stage earned the play two Tony Awards in 1958. While it was a smashing success, Clancy Sigal, in an interview for the Los Angeles Times insists that ‘‘Schary substituted good intentions for good movies.’’ It has also been said that Schary’s autobiographical works are devoid of facts, that he was a Hollywood revisionist historian who put a spin on his career and the movie business consistent with his own productions. This comment may or may not be consistent with Dore Schary’s own explanation of the work. He admits in the Forward of Sunrise at Campobello that the ‘‘facts’’ he uses to support his work are built on fragments of recalled conversation and family correspondence. Perhaps consequentially, the characters of the play, particularly FDR, are very predictable, sentimental creations, idyllic to a fault.

Critics have panned Schary’s work for its superficiality. Clancy Sigal asserts that although Schary knew that he was not challenging his audiences, the filmmaker had ‘‘neither the talent nor the imagination to really buck the system.’’ He further calls Schary shrewd, the ‘‘Perfect Man in the Grey Flannel Suit who made gray flannel movies for Hollywood,’’ tailoring his movies in response to the House Un-American Activities Committee, in favor of substance. There are others, however, who disagree. Deborah Dash Moore comments on Schary’s career in the Dictionary of American Biography, describing a playwright who ‘‘repeatedly clashed with Mayer, arguing that ‘movies must reflect what is going on in the world.’’’