Career
Sundgaard worked with the Federal Theatre Project early in his career. In 1938, the FTP produced, as part of the Living Newspaper series, his play Spirochete: A History, about the spread of syphilis.[1] The play, the writing of which had been encouraged by Susan Glaspell, was a hit in Chicago at its premiere, but met with tremendous protest upon its transfer to Philadelphia.[1]
His first play for Broadway was a collaboration with Marc Connelly; titled Everywhere I Roam, it lasted 13 performances in 1938 and 1939. T. Edward Hambleton (1953-2005) produced his plays The First Crocus in 1942 and The Great Campaign in 1947; each lasted five performances only.[1] Of Love Remembered appeared in 1967, directed by Burgess Meredith and starring Ingrid Thulin.[3][5]
Sundgaard wrote the libretti for close to a dozen operas and musicals by composers such as Alec Wilder, Douglas Moore, and Kurt Weill. With Moore he wrote the opera Giants in the Earth, after the novel by Ole Edvart Rølvaag; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951. In 1952, he wrote The Lowland Sea with Wilder.[3] In 1948, he and Weill collaborated on the folk opera Down in the Valley, and in 1944 he and Leonard Louis Levinson (1904–1974), wrote the book for Rhapsody, a collaboration with Fritz Kreisler and John Latouche. Another opera with Moore, Gallantry, a parody of television soap operas, was premiered by the Columbia University School of Music in 1958.[6] With Victor Ziskin he wrote the short-lived The Young Abe Lincoln, which played briefly on Broadway in 1961.[1] Sundgaard was also a lyricist, writing words to several songs by Wilder. "How Lovely is Christmas" was recorded by Bing Crosby;[3] "Where Do You Go?" was recorded by Frank Sinatra and released on his 1959 album No One Cares.[7][8]
In 1946, the State of Utah's Centennial Commission commissioned Sundsgaard to be the librettist and lyricist for the musical Promised Valley, to celebrate the centennial of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. The Commission initially approached Kurt Weill to write the music for their new musical, and while he declined, he suggested Sundsgaard as the librettist. Crawford Gates, a young LDS composer, composed the music. The musical premiered in Salt Lake City in July 1947, and was considered a commercial and critical success. A shortened version played for tourists in downtown Salt Lake City’s Temple Square every summer for eighteen years, and the musical has been revived in Utah several times since. [9] In 1975, Sundsgaard collaborated with LDS composer K. Newell Dayley to write the musical "Brigham!" as part of the celebrations for Brigham Young University's centennial year, with Dayley composing the music and Sundgaard writing the book and lyrics. [10]
Besides theatrical work, Sundgaard wrote nonfiction for The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, among other publications.[1] With Eric Carle, he also wrote children's books, such as The Lamb and the Butterfly of 1988; his The Bear who Loved Puccini, published in 1992, was illustrated by Dominic Catalano.[3]
