He wasn't lazy. He liked to put things off as long as he could. He was a procrastinator. He got his copy done just in the nick of time for the New Yorker. They often had to send runners out to get it. Benchley's law is "Any man can do any amount of work, provided it's not the work he's supposed to be doing." So he would find all manner of things to do rather than start a piece.

Although every member of the audience at the Art Theatre last week had probably read Tchekhov's The Cherry Orchard several times, a large number of them had, perhaps, never seen it acted before. It was no doubt on this account that as the first act proceeded the readers, now transformed into seers, felt themselves shocked and outraged. The beautiful, mad drama which I had staged often enough in the...