The Wonder Hat, and Other One-Act Plays

New York/London: D. Appleton and Company. Very Good. 1925. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [modest shelfwear, light surface deterioration along left edge of front cover and edges of rear cover, slight fading to spine]. (The Stage Guild Plays, No. 1) Series Five one-act plays by Goodman and Hecht: "The Wonder Hat"; "The Two Lamps"; "An Idyll of the Shops"; "The Hand of Siva"; and "The Hero of Santa Maria." Only two of these bear dates, but all reflect the intermittent collaboration between Goodman and Hecht, which took place in Chicago around 1915-1916 period; Hecht, in his autobiography, referred to these early works as "sane and practical little plays." Kenneth Sawyer Goodman was a Chicago-born playwright; a Princeton graduate and the son of a millionaire lumber baron, he was involved in Chicago's Little Theatre movement and was the author (both solo and in collaboration) of numerous one-act plays, which ranged from light comedy to melodrama to social criticism. He unfortunately had died of pneumonia in November 1918, at the age of 35; the present volume was issued almost simultaneously with the 1925 opening of the Goodman Theatre at the Art Institute of Chicago (referenced in the last paragraph of Thomas Wood Stevens's prefatory note), established in tribute to his son by Goodman's father. .