Love Goes to Press
Two war correspondents wrote a farce about two war correspondents. A hit in London in 1946, it closed on Broadway after four performances.
- 1995
About Martha Gellhorn
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeA three-act comedy set at a press camp on the Italian front, written with Virginia Cowles, whom Gellhorn had met covering the Spanish Civil War. Its heroines are two women correspondents who keep scooping the men around them and cannot get their working lives and their love lives to agree. It opened at the Embassy Theatre in London in June 1946 and did well; the Broadway production the following January closed after four performances. The two of them wrote it as a lark, and it is the only play either published.
The story, in more detail
Gellhorn and Cowles had spent the war outmanoeuvring male colleagues and military press officers, and the play is that experience turned into farce. The setting is a correspondents' camp on the Italian front, the heroines file better copy than the men around them, and the plot turns on whether either of them will give any of it up for a man. Neither author had written for the stage before.
London took it and New York did not. The Embassy Theatre run in June 1946 was well received and transferred; the Broadway production the following January closed after four performances and poor notices. The play then went out of print for close to fifty years, and it exists as a readable text because Sandra Whipple Spanier edited it for Bison Books in 1995 — which is why this record is dated 1995 rather than 1946, following the rule set out on the drama genre page.
Why we recommend it
Written by the people it satirises
Gellhorn and Cowles had both spent the war getting past male colleagues and military censors. The jokes come from the inside.
The lightest thing she published
Nothing else in her work is trying this hard to entertain, which makes it useful for measuring the rest.
Recovered by a scholar
Spanier's Bison edition is why the play is readable at all; the text had been out of print for decades.
What this book explores
Timeline
1946
The comedy, written with Virginia Cowles, opens at London's Embassy Theatre in June, is well received, and transfers.
1947
The Broadway production closes after four performances in January.
1995
Out of print for close to fifty years, the play appears in book form for the first time, edited by Sandra Whipple Spanier for Bison Books.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- University of Nebraska Press
- 1995
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Love Goes to Press: frequently asked questions
Who wrote Love Goes to Press?
Martha Gellhorn, with Virginia Cowles, whom she had met covering the Spanish Civil War. It is a stage play.
What is Love Goes to Press about?
A three-act comedy set at a press camp on the Italian front, whose heroines are two women war correspondents who keep scooping the men around them and can't reconcile their working lives with their love lives.
Is it based on real experience?
Yes. Gellhorn and Cowles had spent the war outmanoeuvring male colleagues and military press officers, and the play turns that experience into comedy.
Who was Virginia Cowles?
An American war correspondent Gellhorn met covering the Spanish Civil War, and her co-author on the play.
What kind of work is it?
A three-act stage comedy — a rare venture into drama for both women, drawn straight from their war years.