Tag Archives: Big Night

Who was Dawn Powell?

powellbeach

1896 Born in family home at 53 West North Street in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, on November 28, the second of three daughters of Roy King Powell and Hattie Sherman Powell. (In later years Powell habitually gives her birth year as 1897. Father, b. August 24, 1869, and mother, b. March 24, 1872, are both from […]

1932 Diary

Cover 1932 Diary

Another very rich and substantial diary. Powell begins the year in Hollywood then flees back first to Ohio and then to New York. Very little of this has ever been printed. Publication of “Come to Sorrento,” which the publishers insist upon calling “The Tenth Moon.” Here is Powell’s uncut entry for August 15, 1932. Much […]

1933 Diary

Cover 1933 Diary

Another unusually rich and descriptive diary. “Big Night” opens in January and closed after nine performances to mostly terrible reviews. (One of the few sympathetic critics was Robert Benchley.) Powell would finish the second of the only two plays produced during her lifetime this year. At the end of the year, she seems to have […]

1934 Diary

Cover 1934 Diary

Powell completes “Jig-Saw,” which does only moderately better than “Big Night,” but is published in book form. Powell’s novel “The Story of a Country Boy” is published. She also begins the first of her great New York satires, “Turn, Magic Wheel.”