In looking at Ketti Frings’ list of publications as noted in Women in World History, you might conclude that she had a literary guardian angel. Her successful work, created for screen and stage, drew often on her skill in the art of adaptation. Two of her best-known successes, a dramatic adaptation of Look Homeward Angel,(link to book) by novelist Thomas Wolfe, and a film version of William Inge’s play, Come Back Little Sheba, became successful, award-winning vehicles for some of the best-known Hollywood and Broadway actors and production companies.
No stranger to hard work, Frings began her career as a movie fan magazine correspondent and rose to literary prominence by earning the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Frings’ Pulitzer achievement is rare among women—only 13 have received this honor since the first one was awarded in 1918.
Uncommon Woman
A passionate writer, Ketti Frings (née Katherine Hartley in 1909) was a multi-genre success who never felt limited to one subject or one style. A frequent adapter, Frings won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for her stage adaptation of Thomas Wolfe’s lengthy novel, Look Homeward Angel: The Story of a Buried Life, published in 1929. Fewer than a dozen women have won this award, and this play also garnered the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in addition to the title “Woman of the Year,” from the Los Angeles Times.
Frings, who began her career as a movie fan magazine correspondent under the pseudonym, “Anita Kilgore,” later worked with many of the finest professionals in theatre and film. For Angel, she collaborated with Tony-Nominated Director George Roy Hill and the financially successful theatrical producer Kermit Bloomgarden, as pictured in the illustration. In addition, acting luminaries Anthony Perkins, Hugh Griffith, Jo Van Fleet received Tony Nominations along with Jo Mielziner for Best Scenic Design, and the company Motley for Best Costume Design.
Although a 1978 musical adaptation of this work, “Angel,” closed after only five performances, this second adaptation garnered a Tony Award for Frances Sternhagen (Best Actress in a Musical) and a Drama Desk Award for Joel Higgins (Best Featured Actor in a Musical).
Enduring Angel
Frings, the daughter of a box salesman whose family lived in more than a dozen different U.S. cities before she started high school in St. Louis, had her work cut out for her when she composed her Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic adaptation of Thomas Wolfe’s stream-of-consciousness novel, “Look Homeward Angel.” Concentrating her play on the latter half of the long novel, which centered on the Gant Family’s boardinghouse “Dixieland,” as the site of life-changing events for the three Gant sons, Frings dramatized the crisis point of an early 20th century dysfunctional American family.
While the play seems wordy and even melodramatic to contemporary ears, Frings focused effectively on a 3-week period that involved highly dramatic events in the life of the Gants. The original Broadway production ran 564 performances, earning praise for her “realism” from the noted critic Harold Clurman writing in The Nation.
Frings’ adaptation of Look Homeward Angel continues to find an audience in Broadway revivals, including one produced as recently as 2008 (link TO Variety CITE below). A perennial favorite among high school drama programs for its existential ending and numerous dramatic roles, a production ran in Community School 128 in Libertyville, Illinois during February 2011.
Attraction to Playwriting
According to Craig, (link), p. 14, Frings professed to having written many plays in high school so that she could play “the best parts.” A biographical sketch published in the New York Times regarding the 1958 Pulitzer winners, states that Ketti discovered as early as 1950 that Wolfe had wanted to be a playwright.
Her feeling of kinship led Frings to consider adapting his Angel. (LINK)According to Carolyn Craig, (link –cite p. 19) Ketti’s windowless, sky lit study afforded her the lonely perspective crucial to the persona of Wolfe’s character Eugene’s deceased older brother Ben, who closes the Epilogue of Look Homeward Angel by saying: ”The World is nowhere, no one, Gene. You are your world.” (italics, Frings.)
The Two-Career Couple, Hollywood-Style
After high school Frings attended Principia College (St. Louis) for a year, but left to begin her varied writing career and eventually moved to the South of France where she began to write fiction. Ketti met her husband-to-be, German boxer Kurt Frings, and they were married in 1938. (Link to NYT sketches)
The Frings’ return to the U.S. was delayed by U.S. immigration, so they lived in Mexico for two years where Ketti completed the novel Hold Back the Dawn (1940), which she adapted for the film starring Olivia DeHaviland and Charles Boyer in 1941.
Kurt gave Ketti her nickname, and he went on to become a successful Hollywood agent for such high-profile clients as Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. The couple had two children, Kathie and Peter, and divorced in 1963. Ketti died of cancer in 1981 in Los Angeles.
Sources:
- Harold Clurman, “Theatre,” The Nation, December 14, 1957, pp. 463-464.
- Cox, Gordon. "'Angel' wings to Broadway." Daily Variety. Reed Business Information. 2008. HighBeam Research. 27 Mar. 2011.
- Craig, Carolyn Casey, Women Pulitzer Playwrights. North Carolina: McFarland and Company Inc. Publishers, 2004. Chapter 9 "Ketti Frings and her Stageworthy Angel," pp. 113-126.
- Frings, Ketti. Look Homeward Angel. NY: Samuel French, Inc. 1958.
- "Frings, Ketti (1909–1981)." Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Gale Research Inc. 2002. HighBeam Research. 26 Mar. 2011.
- Cox, Gordon. "'Angel' wings to Broadway." Daily Variety. Reed Business Information. 2008. HighBeam Research. 27 Mar. 2011.
- Community High School District 128. "Libertyville High School to Present Winter Play, Look Homeward, Angel." 28 January 2011.
- “Sketches for the Pulitzer Prize Winners for 1958 in Letters, Music, and Journalism,” The New York Times. New York: The New York Times, May 6, 1958. Archive accessed March 31, 2011. n.p.
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