John Van Druten was born in Stamford Hill, London in 1901. His mother and father were both of Dutch ancestry (Van Druten 26). Van Druten was always interested in writing , beginning with writing novels until it ultimately turned into playwriting. In his autobiography, The Way to Present: A Personal Record, he stated, “If I was born with anything, it was that: an instinct for the theatre” (67). He started writing from a young age. He served as editor of his secondary school newspaper , and the headmaster encouraged him to pursue writing (86). His parents encouraged his writing as well, but when it came time to pursue a career, his father insisted on a more lucrative profession (123). He settled on law. In the summer of 1917, Van Druten started work at a small law firm in the city and attended the Law Society’s school in Chancery Lane. Somewhere between 1921 and 1922 Van Druten met Henzie Raeburn who was the Assistant Stage Manager at the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead. Van Druten credits Henzie with the feat of “[carrying him] over the first hurdles in the career of a playwright” (225). Henzie took Van Druten under her wing and introduced him to the life of theatre, encouraging him to become a playwright. In order to pursue his writing, Van Druten decided that teaching law would be a better use of his time rather than practicing law. In 1923, he obtained his LL.B. from the University of London and secured a job as a special lecturer at the University of Wales, a position he retained until 1926 (560). He continued his writing and sent a finished copy of his play, The Return Half (1924) to Henzie in 1924. Van Druten described the play as, “a slight, innocuous comedy with a conventional plot” (254-255). The ex-Students’ Society of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art play produced the play in London. This play was the springboard to Van Druten’s career as three agents contacted him after the production. He then began to work with J.L. Campbell, one of the most successful play agents in London at the time. Van Druten’s next play, Young Woodley (1925) is the work that established him as a professional playwright. Censors banned the play in London on the claims that it “disparaged the English public school system” and wouldn’t run in London until 1929. The play travelled to New York and enjoyed a successful premier. Not long after, Van Druten moved to the United States to follow his play’s success (Rossini 560).
Van Druten found success as a playwright. Several of his works went on to become commercial hits, including I Remember Mama (1941), which was an adaptation of stories by Kathryn Forbes. The play is about a Norwegian-American family who attempting to follow the American dream. According to Jon D. Rossini, the strength of this play comes from Van Druten’s ability to capture the “depth and humor of their lives in a direct and touching way” (560). I Remember Mama ran for 713 performances. Another of his most successful plays was Bell, Book, and Candle (1950), which was a comic fantasy about a modern day witch who casts a love spell on an unsuspecting man. It ran for 233 performances. (Rossini 560).
Van Druten’s I Am a Camera (1951) exists solely because of the intervention of playwright, novelist, and former actress Dodie Smith, and her manager and husband, Alec Beesley. The pair were friends of both Van Druten and Christopher Isherwood, author of The Berlin Stories. Around 1951, a duo of young playwrights, Speed Lamkin and Gus Field, attempted to adapt Isherwood’s stories into a play. Smith and Beesley read the adaptation and were thoroughly dissatisfied with the attempt. They proposed the idea of adapting the story of Sally Bowles, the captivating young woman depicted in The Berlin Stories to Van Druten. He accepted the challenge, and soon thereafter, read his first draft to Isherwood himself. Isherwood took issue with some of the character changes Van Druten made. Isherwood’s chief complaint regarded the depictions of the landlady, Fraulein Schroeder and Sally Bowles. Van Druten altered the characterization of the landlady, changing her from a prudish woman who was scandalized by anything of a sexual nature to a woman who was openly bawdy and lewd. Isherwood insisted that Van Druten then changed the landlady’s name (from Schroeder to Schneider) because Isherwood disliked his handling of the character so thoroughly (Garebian 9). Isherwood also thought that Van Druten made Sally “too cute and too naughty.” As a result, the character lost the gritty edge she had in The Berlin Stories (Sawyers 97). Isherwood also disliked the depiction of the protagonist, Christopher, and the speeches Van Druten included about the persecution of Jews. Overall, it appeared that Isherwood decided to separate himself from I Am a Camera, accepting that the story was evolving past the vision that he himself had for it. This idea is supported by an entry Van Druten made in his diary on November 8, 1951, “This isn’t my own child, but it certainly is a milestone” (Garebian 9).
I Am a Camera premiered at Broadway’s Empire Theatre on November 28, 1951. Van Druten directed the production himself, which ran for 214 performances. Boris Aronson served as the scenic and lighting designer and Ellen Goldsborough was the costume designer. The cast included William Prince (Christopher Isherwood), Olga Fabian (Fraulein Schneider), Martin Brooks (Fritz Wendel), Marian Winters (Natalia Landauer), Edward Andrews (Clive Mortimer), Catherine Willard (Mrs. Watson-Courtneidge), and Julie Harris (Sally Bowles) . The production received a wide range of reviews. The New Yorker called it “a little obvious and immature,” while The Saturday Review called the small details of anti-Semitism “enormously touching” (qtd. in Garebian 12). Walter Kerr gave one of the harshest reviews in The New York Herald Tribune - “Me no Leica”. Leica is a German camera company; his review is an extremely dismissive pun. Despite the negative reviews, I Am a Camera went on to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play (Rossini 560). Julie Harris also won her first Tony Award for her portrayal of Sally Bowles.
Around the time when Van Druten wrote I Am a Camera, his career started to slow down. In 1951, he directed the original Broadway production of The King and I. He published his final autobiography in 1957, called The Widening Circle. In the book, Van Druten reflects on his life, including the final years when he spent most of his time studying religion. (Rossini 561) Later that year, on December 19, 1957 Van Druten passed away.
The Return Half (1924)
Chance Acquaintance (1927)
Young Woodley (NY 1925, London 1928)
Diversion (1928)
The Return of the Soldier (from Rebecca West's novel, 1928)
After All (1929, NY 1931)
London Wall (1931)
Sea Fever (with Auriol Lee, from the French, 1931)
There's Always Juliet (1931, NY 1932)
Hollywood Holiday (with Benn W. Levy, 1931)
Somebody Knows (1932)
Behold, We Live (1932)
The Distaff Side (1933, NY 1934)
Flowers of the Forest (1934)
Most of the Game (1935)
Gertie Maude (1937)
Leave Her to Heaven (1940)
Old Acquaintance (1940, NY 1941 and London with Edith Evans)
Solitaire (adaptation, 1942)
The Damask Cheek (with Lloyd Morris, 1942)
The Voice of the Turtle (1943), which ran for three seasons in New York
I Remember Mama (adaptation of Kathryn Forbes' family memoir, Mama's Bank Account, 1944)
The Mermaids Singing (1945)
The Druid Circle (1947)
Make Way for Lucia (1948)
Bell, Book and Candle (1950; filmed in 1958 starring James Stewart and Kim Novak)
I Am a Camera (1951) from Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories. New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for 1951–52
I've Got Sixpence (1952)
Garebian, Keith. The Making of Cabaret. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Rossini, Jon D. “Van Druten, John (William) (1901-1957).” The Facts on File Companion to
American Drama, edited by Jackson R. Bryer, Facts On File, 2010, pp. 560–561.
Sawyers, June Skinner. Cabaret FAQ: All That's Left to Know about the Broadway and Cinema
Classic. Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, an Imprint of Hal Leonard LLC, 2017.
Van Druten, John. The Way to the Present, by John Van Druten. Michael Joseph, 1938.
Van Druten, John Van. THE WIDENING CIRCLE. SCRIBNER, 1957.