From the time of his first successful play in 1925 until just a few years before his death, John van Druten seldom let a theatrical season go by without supplying the commercial stage with at least one reliable, craftsmanlike play. One of his plays was a New York Drama Critics Circle Award winner, two were singled out by George Jean Nathan in his Theatre Book of the Year series for best-of-the-year accolades, four were selected for the John Gassner Best American Plays series, seven for the Burns Mantle Best Plays yearbooks, and nine for the Gollancz Famous plays yearbooks. Twelve of his plays had initial runs of more than 100 performances, and at the time of his death in 1957 his Voice of the Turtle (1943) held the record as the eighth longest-running play on Broadway and his I Remember Mama (1944) was in the top half of the Burns Mantle list of...