"High Tor" is a 1936 play by Maxwell Anderson (b.1888-1959, 70). Twenty years after the original Broadway production, Maxwell Anderson adapted the stage play into a television musical play with stage and film composer Arthur Schwartz (b.1900-1984, 83), providing the score. Presented on CBS's "The Ford Star Jubilee" in a 90 minute "color film" television special, transmitted electronically as a broadcast presentation starring Bing Crosby. This "35mm-camera color Hollywood filmed production" was the only television special NOT performed as a normally scheduled "90 minute-live-color electronic-broadcast-transmission in front of a live studio audience in a CBS video studio facility". The play "High Tor" is named for a summit overlooking the Tappan Zee portion of New York's Hudson River, near where Anderson lived in Rockland County. The story was inspired by the real life controversy over quarrying the palisades along the lower Hudson. The play also shares the plot element of a ghostly crew of Dutch sailors on the Hudson with Washington Irving's short story Rip Van Winkle. Anderson (at age 58) began writing the play in May 1936. The play "High Tor" was first presented on stage in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 1936. Maxwell Anderson's neighbor in Rockland County, actor Burgess Meredith and Peggy Ashcroft appeared in the stage play's lead roles. The Cleveland production moved to Broadway ten days later on January 9, performed through June, 1937, where it played 171 performances at the Martin Beck Theatre. Anderson won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best American play of the 1936-1937 season. The award included this citation: 'In its decision the circle celebrates the advent of the first distinguished fantasy by an American in many years. Imaginative and as comic as it is poetic in both spirit and expression, High Tor is a singular accomplishment, giving rare grace to this theatrical season in New York'. In 1942, Anderson helped organize and served as the chairman of the Rockland County Committee To Save High Tor, which helped raise money to purchase the property in 1943 for the creation of a public park.

Film

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