Edwin Orr Denby (February 4, 1903 – July 12, 1983) was an American writer of dance criticism, poetry, and a novel, but is perhaps now best known for his work with Orson Welles in translating and adapting the 1851 French comedy '' The Italian Straw Hat'' to the American stage in 1936 in the form of the

farce Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity o ...

'' Horse Eats Hat''.

Early life, education and early career

The son of

Charles Denby, Jr. Charles Denby Jr. (November 14, 1861 – February 15, 1938) was an American diplomat in China and later in Vienna, Austria-Hungary and was known as one of the top scholars of Chinese language and culture of his time. Life Charles Denby Jr. was ...

and Martha Dalzell Orr, Edwin was born in Tientsin,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, where Charles had been appointed as chief foreign advisor to

Yuan Shi Kai Yuan Shikai (; 16 September 1859 – 6 June 1916) was a Chinese military and government official who rose to power during the late Qing dynasty and eventually ended the Qing dynasty rule of China in 1912, later becoming the Emperor of China. H ...

a year earlier. Edwin's grandfather, Charles Harvey Denby, who had served as the United States Ambassador to China for an unprecedented 13 years, died when Edwin was age one. Denby spent his childhood first in Shanghai, China, then in Vienna, Austria, where his father served as consul general from 1909 to 1915, before coming to the United States in 1916. He was educated at the

Hotchkiss School The Hotchkiss School is a coeducational University-preparatory school#North America, preparatory school in Lakeville, Connecticut, United States. Hotchkiss is a member of the Eight Schools Association and Ten Schools Admissions Organization. It i ...

in Lakeville, Connecticut; and attended Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but failed to graduate. He also attended classes at the University of Vienna, before obtaining a diploma in gymnastics (with specialty in modern dance) at the Hellerau-Laxenburg school in Vienna in 1928. He performed for several years, notably with the Darmstadt State Theater and celebrated triumphs alongside

Claire Eckstein Claire (Cläre) Eckstein (8 July 1904 – 25 September 1994) was a German modern dancer and choreographer. Life Born in Allendorf ( Hesse) the daughter of a Protestant pastor, Eckstein received her early training at Lucy Heyer's school of rhy ...

, a German ballerina and choreographer. Looking for someone to take his passport photo, he encountered photographer and filmmaker

Rudy Burckhardt Rudy Burckhardt (April 6, 1914 – August 1, 1999) was a Swiss-American filmmaker, and photographer, known for his photographs of the hand-painted billboards that began to dominate the American landscape in the 1940s and 1950s. Life Burckhardt was ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

in 1934, and the two remained inseparable for the rest of Denby's life. The following year, they returned to New York City,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, and rented a loft for eighteen dollars a month in a five-story walk-up building on West 21st Street in Chelsea. Denby's friendship with painter Willem de Kooning, who lived one floor below in the adjacent building, began shortly thereafter when de Kooning's kitten turned up on the fire-escape outside of Denby's window one evening.

Writing

Horse Eats Hat by Edwin Denby after Eugène Labiche

In 1935, soon after Denby's return to New York City, Orson Welles and

John Houseman John Houseman (born Jacques Haussmann; September 22, 1902 – October 31, 1988) was a Romanian-born British-American actor and producer of theatre, film, and television. He became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director ...

asked him to help translate and adapt '' The Italian Straw Hat'', by

Eugene Labiche Eugene may refer to: People and fictional characters * Eugene (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Eugene (actress) (born 1981), Kim Yoo-jin, South Korean actress and former member of the sin ...

and

Marc-Michel Marc-Antoine-Amédée Michel, known as Marc-Michel (22 July 1812 in Marseille – 12 March 1868 in Paris) was a French poet, playwright and journalist. He is perhaps best known today for the 1851 farce he co-wrote with Eugène Marin Labiche, ''The ...

, for the Broadway stage. The resulting play, titled '' Horse Eats Hat'', was scored by Paul Bowles, and was performed as a Works Progress Administration Federal Theatre Production in 1936. Denby also appeared in the play, playing one half of "The Horse". During his lifetime, being ambivalent about the publication of his poetry, he was known primarily as a dance critic. At the behest of Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, he began writing a dance column for the magazine '' Modern Music'' in 1936. In 1943, Thomson drafted Denby as the dance critic for the ''

New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

''.

Works

His dance reviews and essays were collected in ''Looking at the Dance'' (1949, reprinted 1968), ''Dancers, Buildings, and People in the Streets'' (1965) and ''Dance Writings'' (1986). Denby's works of poetry include ''In Public, In Private'' (1948), ''Mediterranean Cities'' (1956), ''Snoring in New York'' (1974), ''Collected Poems'' (1975) and ''The Complete Poems'' (1986). His English translation of Lao Tze's Chinese classic text '' Tao Te Ching'' from a German edition was published as ''Edwin's Tao'' in 1993. Denby's only novel, ''Mrs. W's Last Sandwich'' (also released as ''Scream in a Cave'') was published in 1972.

Guggenheim Fellow

In 1948, he was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

grant in poetry and dance criticism.

Death and legacy

On July 12, 1983, at the summer house he maintained with Burckhardt in

Searsmont Searsmont is a town in Waldo County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,400 at the 2020 census. History Located at the junction of several well-marked Indian trails, Searsmont was originally called Quantabacook. The town was a part of t ...

Maine, he committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills;

. he had been ill and increasingly concerned about the loss of his mental powers. Denby was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 2002.

References

External links

*
Jacket Magazine's Edwin Denby feature

{{DEFAULTSORT:Denby, Edwin 1903 births 1983 suicides 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American poets 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 20th-century translators American expatriates in Austria American expatriates in China American dance critics American male journalists 20th-century American journalists American magazine writers American male novelists American newspaper writers American translators Chelsea, Manhattan Dance writers Drug-related suicides in Maine English-language poets German–English translators Harvard University alumni Hotchkiss School alumni New York Herald Tribune people People from Searsmont, Maine Poets from Maine Poets from New York (state) University of Vienna alumni Novelists from Maine Writers from Manhattan American male poets American male dramatists and playwrights Novelists from New York (state) People from Chelsea, Manhattan 1983 deaths 20th-century American male writers