Playwright/screenwriter/lyricist Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959) was born in Atlantic, Pa., and educated at the University of North Dakota and Stanford University. A teacher and journalist before becoming one of America's most distinguished playwrights, he was first associated with films when his play What Price Glory? was adapated for the screen in 1926.

Among other noted films based on Anderson's plays in the 1920s and '30s are Saturday's Children (1929), Mary of Scotland (1936), Winterset (1936) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, adapted from Anderson's play Elizabeth the Queen and starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn as Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex. The 1940s saw a remake of Saturday's Children (1940), along with adaptations of Knickerbocker Holiday (1944), The Eve of St. Mark (1944) and Joan of Arc (1948), based on Anderson's Joan of Lorraine and starring Ingrid Bergman in the title role. Key Largo (1948) John Huston and Richard Brooks' adaptation of Anderson's play, took considerable liberties with the original, turning its blank verse into a terse film noir dialogue spoken by Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall and Oscar®-winner Claire Trevor.

What Price Glory was remade in 1952, and The Bad Seed, Anderson's striking melodrama about a child murderess, was filmed in 1956. Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), a screen version of Anderson's blank-verse historical play, starred Richard Burton as Henry VIII and Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn.

Anderson also adapted other authors' works for film, including Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Somerset Maugham's Rain (1932) and Alberto Casella's Death Takes a Holiday (1934), a charming fable in which Death (personified by Fredric March) calls a temporary halt to dying on Earth.

In addition to his plays and screenplays, Anderson wrote the lyrics for a number of songs, most notably "The September Song," "Lost in the Stars" and "It Never Was You."

The films in TCM's salute to Maxwell Anderson are Death Takes a Holiday (1934), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), The Bad Seed (1956), Key Largo (1948) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).

by Roger Fristoe