Sherwood: Memories Of His College Days

(Mr. Sears related the following incidents from his long friendship with Robert E. Sherwood '18, who died last November, to William H. McMasters for publication in the CRIMSON. Mr. Sears, a Boston attorney, has been President of the Massachusetts Bar Association for three terms. In 1954 he also served briefly as special counsel for the Senate Investigating Committee.)

I first met Robert Sherwood at Milton Academy where we were preparing for Harvard . . . Our collaboration in college came about by accident. I was banging out a melody at the piano, one afternoon, when Sherwood dropped in. He listened for a few minutes and I turned to him and said, "All I need is a lyric." Without so much as a flicker, he grabbed some paper and began drafting the rhythm on which to base his lines. I have heard of rapid composers but I doubt if any other American lyricist could equal the speed of Sherwood, or, for that matter, could compose finer poems. His skill was uncanny.

That was the start. During our undergraduate time in Harvard we never stopped. We put on three full shows of which the biggest hit was "Barnum Was Right." We also wrote and published several songs that were not included in our college productions. Our first Hasty Pudding show didn't carry Sherwood's name, since he didn't make the club until the following year; it was the rule to produce only the efforts of members. But he broke the rules with anonymity.

Cambridge's Tin-Pan Alley

Our apparent success seemed to inoculate us with a superiority complex. We decided that such rare talents deserve something besides loyal recognition. So we became music publishers and opened a shop in Harvard Square in a building where the rentals were low. We called the new firm "Sherry and Powers" and confidently expected we would put Witmark and New York's Tin-pan Alley out of business. The Sherry stood for Sherwood and the Powers was my middle name. Sherwood had one battered roll-top desk and I had the piano. To give the office a proper professional atmosphere, we evolved imitation montages of celebrity photographs and framed them to impress any stray visitors.

Over Sherwood's desk the group photographs were of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Keats, Byron, Shelly, Longfellow, Gilbert, Tennyson, Poe and others, but right in the center was an enlarged picture of Robert Emmet Sherwood that nobody could possibly overlook. Above my piano I had an equally large picture of music publisher Powers, surrounded by photographs and prints of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Sullivan, Wagner, Bizet, Liszt and others. Sherry and Powers associated only with the best. Nights when our shows were produced we would get over to the "Pudding Theatre" ahead of time and see that the folders holding the scores were properly arranged in the orchestra so that the faces of Sherry and Powers greeted the audience on arrival.

Sherwood and the Republicans

Sherwood was a devout Republican, at least, while in college. In the 1916 election, he went all out for Hughes. On election night, he was so restless that he insisted on having several of us go into Boston to get the latest returns. The first returns assured Hughes of election, and when the bulletin board of the Boston Herald gave out what it thought was the result, Sherwood immediately organized a parade of victory. As the tallest man in Harvard, he became the leader. I can still see him, waving his long arms, shouting some doggerel that he may have composed on the spur of the moment, heading down Tremont Street and turning the corner at Boylston. The next day, when the delayed returns from California changed the entire world's political picture, I was almost afraid to contact him.

Too Young to Pay

"A man of his height couldn't possibly be fitted with ready-made clothes so he had no choice but to patronize the tailors in the Square. It was when he had returned to Boston, after his service in France, and was trying to get located in some position where writing was an essential, that he received a letter from a Cambridge collection agency demanding payment for two suits, made by one of the college tailors. He turned the letter over to me. I had just started law school but I knew the answer to that one. I immediately sent the agency a hot letter calling their attention to the chronological fact that Sherwood was under 21 when he had purchased the clothes. Consequently the bill was uncollectable by law. At once, I was hit with a letter from the agency calling my special attention to an item for $40, with interest, owed by me for purchases at one of Harvard Square's leading drug stores. . .

Lost Something?

Sherwood's carelessness in some matters seemed never to desert him. I remember being in London a few years after he soared into the upper reaches of the theeatre, He was also there on business. I was stopping at the Mayfair and called him at his hotel and asked him if he could drop around for a nostalgic chat. He said: 'be right over, Sam.' As he knew the logical place to find me, I went down to the bar and he soon burst in and went into the usual back-slapping and greetings. We finally eased ourselves over to a table in the dining room and began ordering our regular preliminaries. Suddenly he began looking everywhere.

"What's missing, Bob?" I asked him, thinking it was just a gag.

"Missing?" he shouted back at me. "Only the manuscript of my latest play. That's all. The best that Sherwood ever wrote, if you really want to know." He stood up and glared down at me. "And I might add, just for the record," he moaned, "that there isn't another script, anywhere."

By this time, I was nearly as excited as Sherwood. "What is the name of it?" I asked him.

He drew his face into several knots and looked at me as though he was going to cry. Then he said: "Nothing personal, Sam, but the title of the play is Idiot's Delight."

We finally got the attention of the head waiter and when Sherwood explained to him that a valuable, original manuscript had probably been left in a taxi, the waiter said, in a very calm voice: "I wouldn't worry, sir. Nobody ever loses anything in a London taxicab." He was right. The script was back at Sherwood's hotel, the following morning. . . .