(March 27, 1878-January 10, 1956)
She was a theatre critic who edited Theatre Arts magazine between 1918 and 1946. Starting her writing career as a reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel, she became its literary editor in 1903. During this period she met Lewis M. Isaacs, a New York lawyer and free-lance composer. Early in their relationship she collaborated with him on a children's operetta patterned after the style of the Brothers Grimm. They married in 1904, moved to New York and began a long and fruitful life together, raising three children.
As a free-lance reviewer, she had sent Sheldon Cheney, editor of Theatre Arts, reviews of The Big Show, one of the Hippodrome extravaganzas, as well as The Century Girl, The Cohan Review of 1916, Robinson Crusoe, Jr., and in 1918 The Ziegfeld Follies. It was that year that Cheney invited her to join the editorial board of Theatre Arts. By 1922 her expertise in editorial feature writing gained her the editorship of Theatre Arts and in 1924 the magazine moved from quarterly to monthly publication. She is credited with broadening the spectrum of Theatre Arts to include related areas of dance, mime, and music. In 1946 Rosamond Gilder became the editor.
Edith was instrumental in founding the National Theatre Conference and led the group from 1932-1945. She was also one of the prime movers in 1935 who presented President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a request to charter the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA). "To create a national theatre to bring to the people throughout the country their heritage of the great drama of the past and the best of the present, which was too frequently unavailable to them under existing conditions." (ANTA Charter, 1935).
Theatre Arts' slogan was "A Record and a Prophecy" and this was its achievement. Month by month the contemporary scene was reported in word and picture, document, criticism and comment. The record of the past was also there, in the special articles and issues which brought to bear on particular subjects the resources of historical research, artistic expression and editorial skill, making these special projects of permanent historic value--the issue on Adolphe Appia, for example, is still the best study in English of the great pioneer of modern stage design; the issue devoted to the Negro in the American theatre, the issues on Lope de Vega, on musical comedy, on The World in the Mirror of the Theatre, on Shakespeare and the modern stage remain extraordinarily informative and pictorially captivating.
The "prophecy" was there in the words and deeds of young men and women of the theatre who received their first recognition in its pages, the new ideas, the new impulses, the new paths which were advanced and explored in the magazine's constant search for ways in which the theatre might spread to wider fields through wiser methods.
Barrett Clark described it as "the part and parcel of the growing up of the modern American theatre."
Every month! This was one of Mrs. Isaac's success as editor. She was brilliant, clear and firm in judgement. She had the journalist's sense of the immediate values, the critic's sense of permanent values.
Her range of taste and knowledge--stretching from the written word through the fields of painting, music, dance, poetry, architecture--combined with a generosity of spirit made her influence unique.
Under her, Theatre Arts pioneered along practical as well as aesthetic lines, waging an unflagging campaign for better building laws, reform in ticket speculation, new theatre architecture and cooperation among many theatre groups.
Resource: Theatre Arts Anthology eds. Rosamond Gilder, Hermine Rich Isaacs, Robert M. MacGregor and Edward Reed. Theatre Arts Books New York 1950
As a college speech and drama major in California, I subscribed to Theatre Arts Monthly and couldn't wait for the next issue to arrive. It kept me fascinated and informed about the theatre in New York City and throughout the country and the glorious stars who were lighting up the great white way. And it made me more determined than ever to live here some day. Thank you Ms. Isaacs, Ms. Gilder, et al.
Mari Lyn Henry, founder, The Society for the Preservation of Theatrical History
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