John William Van Druten (1 June 1901 – 19 December 1957) was an English playwright and theatre director. He began his career in London, and later moved to America, becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.
Van Druten was born in London in 1901, son of a Dutch father named Wilhelmus van Druten and his English wife Eva. He was educated at University College School and read law at the University of London. Before commencing his career as a writer, he practised law for a while as a solicitor and university lecturer in Wales. His first play, The Return Half, was performed by members of the RADA Ex-Students' Club on October 5, 1924. John Gielgud played the leading character, a would-be poet whose businessman stepfather ships him off to Australia.
He came to prominence with Young Woodley, a slight but charming study of adolescence, produced in New York in 1925. However, it was banned in London by the Lord Chamberlain's office owing to its then-controversial portrayal of a schoolboy falling in love with his headmaster's wife. In Britain, it was first produced privately (by Phyllis Whitworth's Three Hundred Club) and then at the Arts Theatre in 1928. When the ban was lifted, it had a successful run at the Savoy Theatre in the West End with a cast including Frank Lawton, Derrick De Marney, and Jack Hawkins. The play was filmed twice. It was revived at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2006.
Van Druten was one of the more successful playwrights of the early 1930s in London, with star-studded West End productions of his work, including Diversion (1927), After All (1929), London Wall (1931) with Frank Lawton and John Mills, There's Always Juliet (1931), Somebody Knows (1932), Behold, We Live (1932) with Gertrude Lawrence and Gerald du Maurier, The Distaff Side (1933), and Flowers of the Forest (1934).
He later emigrated to America, where he wrote Leave Her to Heaven (February 1940), a drama set in London and Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex, which was shortly followed by major successes with Old Acquaintance (NY December 1940 – May 1941 and London with Edith Evans) and The Voice of the Turtle (1943), which ran for three seasons in New York and was filmed with Ronald Reagan. His subsequent play, I Remember Mama (1944), ran for 713 performances. It was later made into a movie and a television series. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. His play Make Way for Lucia (1948), based on the Mapp and Lucia novels of E. F. Benson, was premiered in New York, but did not have its first professional British production until 1995.
His 1951 play I Am a Camera, together with Christopher Isherwood's short stories, Goodbye to Berlin (1939), formed the basis of Joe Masteroff's book for the Kander and Ebb musical Cabaret (1966). When I Am a Camera opened on Broadway in 1951, drama critic Walter Kerr gave the play a largely positive review in New York Herald Tribune. However, he was later erroneously attributed to have made a two-word review of "No Leica". This quip about the play was made by Goodman Ace and reported by gossip columnist Walter Winchell in his syndicated newspaper column.
On 26 April 1921, Van Druten married Paula Cinquevalli, daughter of the music hall artist Paul Cinquevalli. The marriage ended in divorce a few years later. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, he was in a relationship with Carter Lodge (died 1995), who was the manager of the AJC Ranch that Van Druten, British actress Auriol Lee and Lodge bought together in Coachella Valley. When the relationship ended, Lodge continued to live on the ranch with his new partner, Dick Foote. When Van Druten died in 1957, he left the entire property of the ranch to Lodge and the rights in his work, including "I Am a Camera", which entitled Lodge to earn a percentage from the movie Cabaret (1972).
He died at Indio, California on 19 December 1957 of undisclosed causes. He is buried in the Coachella Valley Public Cemetery.
John Van Druten's friend and colleague, Christopher Isherwood had fled Europe just before WWII broke out. Isherwood settled in the Los Angeles area and began a life-long association with his guru, Swami Prabhavananda. It was Isherwood who wrote The Berlin Stories, on which Van Druten based his play, I Am A Camera. Through Isherwood Van Druten became involved with the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood, which was founded in 1930 by Swami Prabhavananda.
From 1951 until his death in 1957, Van Druten was an Editorial Advisor, along with Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, and Christopher Isherwood, for the bi-monthly journal Vedanta and the West, published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California. During that time, the journal published 10 essays by Van Druten.
Young Woodley (NY 1925, London 1928)
The Return of the Soldier (from Rebecca West's novel, 1928)
Sea Fever (with Auriol Lee, from the French, 1931)
There's Always Juliet (1931, NY 1932)
Hollywood Holiday (with Benn W. Levy, 1931)
The Distaff Side (1933, NY 1934)
Old Acquaintance (1940, NY 1941 and London with Edith Evans)
The Damask Cheek (with Lloyd Morris, 1942)