Stevenson, Janet, 1913-2009

Janet Marshall Stevenson has been a novelist, playwright, biographer, a teacher, a journalist, and a social activist during her long life. Stevenson has written on civil rights, the women's and the peace movements, and the environment. In the early 1950s she was fired from the University of Southern California for alleged ties with the communist party. In 2003, at the age of 90, Stevenson was still politically active and still writing.

She was born on February 4, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois to John C. and Atlantis McClendon Marshall. Her father was an investment banker. Stevenson earned her bachelor's degree at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania in 1933. She graduated from Yale University with a Master of Fine Arts degree in theater in 1937. She resides in Warrenton, Oregon.

Stevenson's merit as a writer was noticed early in her career when she won her first award in 1938- the John Golden Fellowship in playwriting, an award that was shared in the same year with playwright Tennessee Williams. Subsequently, she won the following awards: Friends of American Writers Award for Weep No More (the novel), 1957, and the National Arts of the Theatre Award, for "Weep No More," (the play from which the novel was adapted) 1953; the International Bicentennial Playwriting Prize for "The Third President", 1976; the Preston Jones Fellowship for "Sarah Ann" (later titled "Time out of Mind"), 1983; and the Charles Erskine Scott Wood Retrospective Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts, 1990.

It may be of interest to some researchers that Stevenson used several pen names: Janet Lewis, Clare Thorne, Janet Holmes, and Jane Marsh. Before her marriage she used her maiden name, Janet Marshall.

Stevenson met her first husband, playwright and screenwriter, Philip Stevenson, while both were working for a summer theatre in Surry, Maine. She was working in costumes and Philip, in publicity. The couple collaborated on several plays, including "Counterattack," which was produced on Broadway in 1944. It was later turned into a successful motion picture of the same name. She and Philip had two sons, Joseph and Edward. They were divorced in 1964.

The author's teaching career began at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, as Lecturer in Theater from 1951 to 1953. She moved on to Grambling College, Grambling, Louisiana as assistant professor of English from 1966 to 1967; and then to Portland State University, Portland, Oregon as Lecturer in 1968. Of particular interest to the researcher will be the papers documenting her subsequent firing from the University of Southern California. Stevenson's contract was not renewed because of her alleged association with communist party members. Her then husband, Philip, was a blacklisted Hollywood writer. The university used a defense of "academic freedom" to justify their right not to renew Stevenson's contract. She had refused to sign an "oath of loyalty" (as described by one newspaper columnist) when she was hired, and refused again two years later, arguing that her right of association was an element of academic freedom. She never divulged her contacts and continued to write under her name, Janet Stevenson. Philip Stevenson used the pen name, Lars Lawrence, to publish his novels and screenplays. He died while traveling in the Soviet Union in 1965 at age 69. Stevenson married her second husband, Benson Rotstein, an educator, later that same year.

In 1970, Janet's husband Benson Rotstein's contract was not renewed by the Astoria [Oregon] School Board because of his involvement in the peace movement and his use of controversial articles and books in his psychology classes. He appealed to the American Association of University Professors, and their decision was still pending when he died in a boating accident later in the year.

In 1986, in her mid-70's Stevenson was elected Mayor of Hammond, Oregon, a small town near the mouth of the Columbia, where Lewis and Clarke landed when they retreated from the Washington side of the great river.