It also helped launch the career of Clara Blandick, who later appeared as Auntie Em in the classic 1939 adaptation of The Wizard of Oz.[3]
The play was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1923-1924.
Pulitzer Prize
The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1924.[4] The choice sparked controversy in literary circles and the media because the prize jury had actually selected George Kelly's The Show-Off, but was overruled by Columbia University, which was administering that year's Pulitzers as Hatcher Hughes was a professor there.[5][6]
Plot
Set in the Carolina mountains, late one afternoon to 9 o'clock that evening during the summer. Rufe Pryor is a religious fanatic who works for the Hunts. Sid Hunt returns to the family home from the war. He has a girlfriend, Jude Lowry, who Rufe also is interested in. Rufe inspires old clan rivalry between the Hunts and the Lowrys, in an attempt to remove Sid from the picture. When Rufe's plans are discovered, the two families reconcile. (The play was billed as "A High Spirited Tale of the Blue Ridge.")
^Fischer, Heinz Dietrich and Fischer, Erika J. (ed.) "1924 Award"Drama/comedy Awards, 1917-1996: From Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams to Richard Rodgers and Edward Albee, Walter de Gruyter, 1998, ISBN3598301820, p. 27-30