PROFESSOR MARGERY BAILEY

 

Margery Bailey (1893-1963) was a charismatic Professor of English and Dramatic Arts and Literature at Stanford University [1].   She was influential in the organization of dramatic societies along the West Coast and personally contributed to the acting and directing.   As a teacher and guiding influence, her students included John Steinbeck, Agnus Bowmer, and others with whom she maintained lifelong correspondences.

 

 

Margery Bailey as one of the first women to achieve tenure as a Stanford Professor [2]

 

 

Dr. Margery Bailey as Stanford Professor Emeritus [3]

 

To encourage dramatic arts she established the Stanford University Dramatists’ Alliance in 1935-1936 which offered prizes for original dramatic works in annual nation-wide completions.   She founded a Shakespearian Festival in the San Francisco Bay Area.  After one of her students, Agnus Bowmer, founded the competing Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), she assisted that endeavor by adding an Educational Program entitled the “Institute of Renaissance Studies”, by creating a world class library of Shakespearian reference material, and by creating a volunteer organization for the financial support of aspiring actors and the festival itself for which she coined the name of “Tudor Guild.”

http://stanford.lunaimaging.com:8081/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size0/SHPC/1122/00017151_001.jpg&userid=1&username=admin&resolution=0&servertype=JVA&cid=4&iid=Stanford&vcid=NA&usergroup=Stanford_Historical_Photograph-1-Admin&profileid=11

Biography

Margery Bailey was born in Santa Cruz, California, in 1891.  She entered Stanford University and was awarded a B.A. degree in 1914, an M.A. in English in 1916, and then continued as an Instructor of English Literature.  In 1920 she took a leave of absence to study at Yale earning a Ph.D. in 1922 and afterward returned to Stanford becoming an Assistant Professor in 1926.  She was one of the few women to achieve tenure as an Associate Professor in 1937 and despite an unparalleled record of productivity was only promoted to full Professor in 1953, three years before her retirement.

In 1937-1938, she made a memorable year long tour of Europe in an extensive study of the pre-war societies of Germany, Italy, France, and England. As a Stanford Professor, she was offered a rare glimpse into the outpouring of art, literature, and drama which flowered in times of rising tensions just prior to the outbreak of WWII.  She published the journal of her trip and lectured widely on it.

Professor Bailey retired in 1956 but remained as a Professor Emeritus until 1963.    She passed away at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California on June 17, 1963 of a paralytic stroke at age 72.  At the time she was directing a play at the OSF.  Her home from 1939-1963 at 559 Kingsley Avenue, Palo Alto, California, is remembered today as a historical landmark.

Margery Bailey Home in Palo Alto [4]

Students

Margery Bailey was an advisor to undergraduate John Steinbeck and twice persuaded him to return to his studies there.  She was later referenced as one of two memorable and influential people in his formative years.

She was also the Ph.D. advisor to Angus Bowmer who created the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. 

Stanford Dramatist’s Alliance

To foster interest in the dramatic arts especially along the West Coast, she created the Dramatists’ Alliance of Stanford University annually garnering hundreds of original works from North America and Europe.

 

Various awards were offered; to wit

 

            Maxwell Anderson Award,

            Miles Anderson Award,

Thomas Wood Stevens Award for serious drama,

Benet Award,

Etherege Award for full length comedy,

Gray Award for dramatic criticism, and not least,

Raymond MacDonald Alden Award for short plays.

 

1935

Foundation of the Dramatists’ Alliance by Professor Margery Bailey of Stanford Unversity.

 

1936 [98 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“Surrey” by Florette Henri of Mount Airy, Croton-on-Hudson, New York

[The career of Henry Howard, sonnetter and Earl of Surrey, a favorite under Henry VIII]

 

1937 [228 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

 “Souvenir de la Mal-Maison” by Dorothy Dow of Chicago, Illinois

[An Empire comedy]

 

1938 [157 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“John Brown” by Kirke Mechem of Topeka, Kansas

[American hero-history, realistic in tone, chronological aspects of the famous movement against slavery]

 

1939 [181 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award [joint award]

“Night before the Border” by Jean Clark of Eugene, Oregon

[Tragedy of futile sympathies in a contemporary political situation]

“Distant Harvest” by Arthur McCullough Sampley of Denton, Texas

[Misery of modern Jewish refugees and their deep capacities to love and hate]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award for Comedy

 “Molehills” by Muriel Roy Bolton of Los Angeles, California

[A triad on dressing for dinner in differing states of mind]  Miss Bolton is a writer for MGM.

 

1940 [196 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

 “A Parting at Imsdorf” by N. Richard Nusbaum of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [A war setting with a theme on human tenderness crossing faiths and codes]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award for Comedy [joint award]

“Formula for Pancakes” by Muriel Roy Bolton of Chicago, Illinois.

“No Boots in Bed” by Ronald Elwy Mitchell of Madison, Wisconsin

 

1941 [276 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“The Levite” by Agnes Irene Smith of Marshal, Illinois

[Forceful drama based on an old Utah legend]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award for Comedy

“Cardinal Virtue” by Carter Kissell of Gates Mills and Cleveland, Ohio

[Comedy of genteel blackmail and romance]

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award [first year offered]

“Until Charlot Comes Home” by Rachel Reynolds of Vancouver, B.C.

[A dramatic war play]

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/49339019/

 

1942 [179 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“Night Song” later re-titled “Dark of the Moon” by Howard Richardson of Iowa City, Iowa and North Carolina

[A tragedy of earthy mysticism based on superstitions of the Carolina mountains]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award for Comedy

“Hoe Corn, Dig 'Taters," by Gladys Wheeler Charles and George Savage

[The story concerns the Kentucky hill folk and their troubles with the modern draft board]

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award

“Going Home; A Ballad Requiem for Abraham Lincoln” by  M. Greenwald of New York.

http://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19420724-01.2.6&srpos=26&e=-------en-20--21--txt-txIN-Alden+Award------

 

 

1943 [157 total entries – wartime shortages of gasoline and tires constrained attendance]

Winner of the Thomas Wood Stevens Award

“The Shoemaker’s House” by Ronald Elroy Mitchell of Madison, Wisconsin

[Fall of Lidice as seen through the experiences of one family]

 

No entry was judged worth of the Etherege Award

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award

“Home is the Hunter” by Alice M. Dennis of Elmira, New York

[Horror play of the quietly dreadful end of the Gestapo agent within the hiding place of his own home as the war comes to its end]

 

1944

Winner of the Maxell Anderson Award

“Lead Her up to Candy” from Berkeley, CA

[Imaginative Boy of the hills tells tall tales]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award

“The Wives of Saint Joseph” by Ronald Elwy Mitchell of Madison, WI

[Men of Saxony lured across a river by the Women of Hesse]

 

Winner of the Benet Award

“TMD.” by Sgt. Edwin A. Gross of New York

[A Midwest boy’s club reads letter from soldier’s brothers]

 

Winner of the Gray Award

“A Generation of Still Breeding Thoughts” by Mary Humiliata Caspary, Sr. of Immaculate Hearts College of Hollywood, CA

 

1945 [212 total entries]

Winner of the Etherege Award for Comedy

“Father Was President” by Sgt. Malvin Wald and Walter Doniger of Beverly Hills, California

[Theodore Roosevelt as head of family]

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award

“Summer Fury” by James Broughton of San Francisco, California

[Love story set in the violence of the race disturbances in Los Angles of last year]

James Broughton graduated Stanford in 1935.  Published in “The Best One-Act Plays”, New York, Dodd Mead, 1957.

http://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19450803-01.2.58&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------

 

Winner of the Stephens’ Award

“The Daylight Grows” by Geneva Harrison, N.Y.

[Family’s response to WWI but brothers and sons see more clearly.]

 

1946 [151 total entries]

No entry was judged worthy of the Maxwell Anderson Award

 

Winner of the Dr. Miles McKinnen Anderson Award

“The Festered Lilly” later re-titled “The Beat of a Wing” by Hermine Duthie Decker of Portland, Oregon

 

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

“As Sound as a Bell” by Marvin Wald of Beverly Hills in collaboration with Pamela Wilcox, daughter of Herbert Wilcox, British motion picture producer.

 [Plight of a man who committed the perfect murder]

 

1947

Winner of the Thomas Wood Stevens Award

"American Primitive" by Thomas McEvoy Patterson of Amarillo, Texas

[A tragedy of Negro life in the deep south]

 

No entry was judged worth of the Etherege Award

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award

"Dutch Courage" by Alan Drady of San Francisco, California

[Tragedy of the clash between liberators and liberated in Holland]

http://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19470709-01.2.41&srpos=39&e=-------en-20--21--txt-txIN-Dramatists+Alliance------

 

1948 [189 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“Salem Story” by Alexander Sidney of New York

[Psychology of Salem witch persecutions and fate of Giles Corey family who resisted them]

 

Winner of the Miles Anderson Award

“Speak to the Earth” by Aurand Harris of New York

[Illegitimate farm boy marries a girl ruined by a spoiled nephew]

 

Winner of the Benet Award

“Resurrection” by William P. Edmunds of Ann Arbor, MI

[The real meaning of the life of Jesus for modern man]

 

Winner of the Gray Award

“The Essence of Tragedy” by Robert Gene Bander, Stanford Veteran’s Village, CA

 

1949

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

“Among Ourselves” by Joanna Roos of New York

[Deals with racial issues in a northern school.]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award for Comedy

“Sight Unseen” by Dean Warner Law of Redwood City, CA

[Ghosts in a British manor house refuse to materialize so the impecunious girl-owner can sell to an American woman interested in psychic research]

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award

“Pan, Pan is Dead” by Jack Lyman Gariss of Huntington Park, CA

[A religious fantasy in which Greek worshipers converted to Christianity aided by the god himself]

 

1950 [188 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“The Atom Clock” by Cornel Lengyel of Hollywood, California [A symbolistic treatment of a conflict of ideals]

 

Winner of the Dr. Miles McKinnen Anderson Award

“Dorothy” by Warner Law of Woodside, Californa

 

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

“The Dismissal of Jefferson Maury” by Junius Eddy of Baylor University, Texas

[Tracing the life of a Professor unjustly dismissed from State University as a radical]

 

1951 [209 total entries]

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

The Fig-Tree Madonna” by Irving Fineman of Shaftsbury, Vermont

[Italian widow whose husband had carved a religious figure made of fig wood]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award for Comedy

“Comfort me with Apples” by Robert Crosby Colson of New York

[Witty satire on pretensions of religion and psychology]

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award

“River Rat” by 1Lt. Mary Elizabeth Mruzik of Affton, Missouri

[A story of the power and comfort of dreams]

 

1952

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

“Sunday’s People” by Samuel Rulon of Philadelphia, PA.

[Each life touches on others and only by hiding from ourselves do we fail to notice the universality of our longings.]

 

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“Imperial Wife” by Helen Shirley Fowke

[Drama of Josephine as a prototype of all wives who enslave themselves.]

 

Winner of the Dr. Miles McKinnen Anderson Award

“Lo, the Angel” by Nancy Wallace Henderson of Chapel Hill, NC

[Negro mother’s faith in vision leads to fasting in order to bring her son safe from war service.]

 

1953

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

“Napoleon” by Sol Stein of Elmhurst, NY

[Napoleon’s loss of conviction that the people must be ruled by the capable.]

 

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“Don Juan in the Provences” by Richard Edwin Eshleman of Los Angeles, CA

[A revolutionary comedy in the manner of Opera Bouffe.]

 

1954 [234 total entries]

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“Uriel Acosta” by Howard Sackler of New York [A Jew in the time of the Inquisition]

 

Winner of the Dr. Miles McKinnen Anderson Award

“The Duelist” by Rex Gunn of Los Angeles, California [Dueling in San Francisco of the gold rush era]

 

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

“In the Plaza” by Frank William Durkee of Menlo Park, California [Jealousy of a husband during a honeymoon in a South American hotel]

 

1955

 

1956

Winner of the Maxwell Anderson Award

“Felicia” by James Facos of Springfield, MA

[Wife and friends wish to keep Italian organ grinder quiet in bed in his last illness]

 

Winner of the Dr. Miles McKinnen Anderson Award

“Comrade, Comrade!” by Frank Magary and Victor Larson of Sacramento, CA

[American and European journalists argue the value of communism]

 

1957

 

1958 [159 total entries]

No entry was judged worthy of the Maxwell Anderson Award

 

Winner of the Dr. Miles McKinnen Anderson Award

“Let this be Heard” by Marjorie Milton of San Mateo, California [Liberal Southerner depressed by life into drinking too much has a bored neurotic daughter who manages to seduce a young Negro doctor]

 

Winner of the Raymond Macdonald Alden Award

“The Casket-Maker” by Richard Franklin of Los Angeles, California [In rural Pennsylvania, the town undertaker and practical joker inadvertently causes the death of a young bridegroom]

 

1959

Winner of the Stephen Vincent Benet Award

“Berlin West” by Lillian P. Quiat of San Bruno, CA

[A firm and touching play on a child escaping to the West]

 

Winner of the Etherege Award

“The Privacy of Don Pancracio” by Judith Gordon (Mrs. Richard Wormser) of Sante Fe, NM

[Hilarious circus between two culture groups in Santa Fe]

 

Winner of the Thomas Wood Stevens Award

“Prelude to Treason” by Philip Kennon of Manila, Philippines

[Deals with morale among prisoners of war]

 

1950+ (?)

Charles Gerold (1927-) Alden Award Dramatists’ Alliance San Francisco, 17 Woodford Drive, Moraga, CA 94556.

 

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Dr. Margery Bailey was the Ph.D. advisor to OSF Founder Angus Bowmer at Stanford.  Inspired by Dr. Bailey’s Shakespearian Festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area, Agnus founded the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

In 1948, Dr. Bailey contributed to this effort.  She founded and served as the director of the Institute of Renaissance Studies.

She also acted and directed plays [2].

In support of her educational activities at OSF, Margery Bailey founded a collection of rare volumes on Shakespeare’s life and time including source material from the late 1500’s on which he likely based his works, with a personal contribution of 200 items.  Since then, with the help of Jim Sandoe, a librarian and play director, the Margery Bailey collection at Southern Oregon University has grown to more than 7200 volumes. [5]

She was a founder of the Tudor Guild, a volunteer group that provides support for aspiring actors applying for OSF parts, and which now solicits donations and operates a gift shop.

Correspondence

Much material at Stanford [1].

https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4085142

Her students included John Steinbeck and Agnus Bowmer.  She maintained a correspondence with John Phillips Marquand (1893-1960), Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), Gertrude Stein (1874-1946),  Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962),  Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb (1876-1944), Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944),  Brauns, Robert A. Hughes, Myna B. Klein, H. Arthur. Seller, Thomas. Webster, Grace Margaret. Persky, Phillip.

 

She also has original letters from Helen Keller and Gregory Peck.

At the OSF Archives, there are several reel-to-reel recordings of her lectures in the old “Green Room,” a knoll outside the Elizabethan Theatre, as well as other information. Lue Douthit [Wit and “Tales from the Vault”] also has some of Dr. Bailey’s writings, an oral history transcript of her local landlady while she summered in Ashland, and several photographs.

http://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19350718-01.2.8&srpos=394&e=-------en-20--381-byDA-txt-txIN-Margery+Bailey------#

 

Literary Works

James Boswell, “The Hypochondriac: Being the Seventy Essays by the Celebrated Biographer James Boswell, Appearing in the London Magazine from November, 1777, to August, 1783, and Here First Reprinted,” edited by Margery Bailey, 2 volumes, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1928.  Ph.D. Thesis at Yale.

http://www.jamesboswell.info/scholars/margery-bailey

 

Seven Peas in the Pod, with illustrations and musical notes, 1921, by Margery Bailey.

 

The Little Man with One Shoe, with pictures and musical notes, 1921 by Margery Bailey.

 

The Stanford Miscellany. General Editor, 1930, Margery Bailey.

 

"Stanford Writers, 1891-1941," published by the Stanford Dramatists' Alliance, with a foreword by Margery Bailey.

 

Ashland Studies in Shakespeare, 1957 by Margery Bailey.

 

Some famous quotations include

”The Commonwealth party [socialist party in Britain in WWII] quenched a whole generation of play-acting.” [6]

References

1.      http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt8w10390w

 

2.      http://insight.stanford.edu/luna/servlet/view/search;JSESSIONID=3c1e697c-8da5-4b4e-a269-ea23037e0f59?QuickSearchA=QuickSearchA&q=bailey

 

3.      http://collections.stanford.edu/images/bin/search/advanced/process;jsessionid=B60820206FE7DE0224228B210E632495?sort=dateCreated&clauseMapped(collectionBrowse)=Stanford+Historical+Photograph+Collection&browse=1&offset=12045&sortReverse=false

 

4.      http://www.pastheritage.org/HHTByYear/HHT2001.html

 

5.      http://hanlib.sou.edu/tour/bailey.html

 

6.      http://www2.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwdictyns?book=Dictionary&va=quench