FITCH
There are scores of scholarly and journalistic essays about, and reminiscences of, Clyde Fitch and more than a dozen doctoral dissertations. There was published, in 1915, a sumptuous four-volume anthology of Fitch’s collected plays, and, in 1924, a selective anthology of his mountainous correspondence. Yet no biography has been written of a man whose work and achievement in the theatre is only matched by the colossus that was his personality. Critically, Fitch was maligned as often as he was mocked, yet he lived in his life in the midst of irony, having been made extraordinarily rich by the audiences who worshiped him.
A caricature from Sunday World Magazine. Fitch was gay. And it wasn’t much of a secret. For example, there are tales of his legendary sartorial flamboyance, full of bold colors, unusual patterns and cuts that marked him a dandy and a “sissy.” His effeminacy was his calling card. One school chum who later became a critic, fondly recalled how the “motive power” in Fitch’s hips resembed a “gay sidewheel excursion steamer,” with the port and starboard wheels moving in turn instead of together, and the voice of a “hysterical woman who just missed the train.”
Fitch’s plays sparked moral fires. In The City, Fitch wished to reply to the many critics who claimed his plays limned women characters too superbly — that Fitch, for all his fame, could not write a “man’s play.” The playwright’s audacious use of one word in The City — “goddamn,” uttered by an actor at top voice — marked the first time an expletive was uttered at a Broadway performance.
The opening-night audience supposedly fainted.
I love great art, no matter the medium.