![]() ![]() They occupied its edifice so long and so unapproachably that for decades it seemed that, unlike the iconic presidents, there would never be a fourth peer in their company. ![]() A generation younger, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller stormed onto Broadway with what would prove to be their most enduring works - The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman.įor the remainder of the 20th Century, O’Neill, Williams, and Miller populated the virtual Mt. During those years, Eugene O’Neill, already honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote his two masterpieces, The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Rushmore’s conclusion, a metaphorical equivalent was being assembled in American theater. And in a nation just emerging from the depredations of the Great Depression and headed into existential war against fascism, the monument served as palpable reminder of purpose, heritage, and exceptionalism. Those massive busts of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were plainly intended to be a pantheon of deities for the civil religion of American democracy. After 14 years of talent and risk and toil, they had hewn the faces of four presidents from the primordial granite of Mt. In the waning days of October 1941, the last of several hundred stone carvers finished their work in a remote corner of South Dakota. ![]()
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