(World War I)
The end of American isolationism in 1917, when American forces were sent to fight in the trenches of France, had a profound impact on the public and found expression in the plays of the immediate postwar years and well into the 1920s. The Famous Mrs. Fair (1919) deals with the reintegration of a wife and mother into her family after having served in the military abroad. Some plays show the impact of war upon those at home, as in The Hero (1921). Others directly convey the horrors of war, as in What Price Glory (1924). Numerous comedies and family dramas simply contain a dialogue passage or two about American exposure to European ways in the course of the war, as in, for example, Abie's Irish Rose (1922), Sun-Up (1923), Hell-Bent fer Heaven (1924), The Wisdom Tooth (1926).
See also wars in American drama.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.