State of the Union is a play by American playwrights Russel Crouse

Russel Crouse

Russel Crouse was an American playwright and librettist, best known for his work in the Broadway writing partnership of Lindsay and Crouse.-Life and career:...

 and Howard Lindsay

Howard Lindsay

Howard Lindsay was an American theatrical producer, playwright, librettist, director and actor. He is best known for his writing work as part of the collaboration of Lindsay and Crouse, and for his performance, with his wife Dorothy Stickney, in the long-running play Life with...

 about a fictional Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 presidential candidate. The play premiered on November 14, 1945 at the Hudson Theatre

Hudson Theatre

The Hudson Theatre is a former Broadway theater located at 141 West 44th Street, in midtown Manhattan, New York. Today the Hudson functions as a conference center and television studio. It is owned by Millennium & Copthorne Hotels.-History:...

 on Broadway, ran for 765 performances, and closed on September 13, 1947. Both playwrights received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Pulitzer Prize for Drama

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...

 for their work.

In 1948 the play was adapted for a film

State of the Union (film)

State of the Union is a 1948 film adaptation written by Myles Connolly and Anthony Veiller of the Russel Crouse, Howard Lindsay play of the same name. Directed by Frank Capra and starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, the film is Capra's first and only project for MGM Pictures...

 directed by Frank Capra

Frank Capra

Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...

.

Members of Manhattan's upper society, artistic, and literary communities understood fully that the plot of the play was based upon the long extramarital affair of Wendell Willkie

Wendell Willkie

Wendell Lewis Willkie was a corporate lawyer in the United States and a dark horse who became the Republican Party nominee for the president in 1940. A member of the liberal wing of the GOP, he crusaded against those domestic policies of the New Deal that he thought were inefficient and...

 with Irita Van Doren

Irita Bradford Van Doren

Irita Bradford Van Doren was an American literary figure and editor of the New York Herald Tribune book review for 37 years....

. The play opened 13 months after Willkie's death.

Some persons felt Crouse and Lindsay should have got a flogging rather than a Pulitzer Prize. By publicizing the supposed affair, even tacitly, the play humiliated Willkie's widow, and exposed their teenage son to "adult matters" between his parents.

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