Works and Legacy
March revised both The Set-Up and The Wild Party in 1968, removing some anti-Semitic caricatures from both works. Most critics deplored these changes, and Art Spiegelman returned to the original text when he published his illustrated version of The Wild Party in 1994. (The Set-Up has not been reprinted since 1968.)
Both of March's long poems were made into films. Robert Wise's 1949 film version of The Set-Up loses the poem's racial dimension by casting the white actor Robert Ryan in the lead, while the Merchant Ivory Productions 1975 version of The Wild Party changes March's plot to conflate the poem with the Fatty Arbuckle scandal.
The Wild Party continues to attract new readers and adaptations. In 2000, two separate musical versions played in New York, one on Broadway, composed by Michael John LaChiusa, and the other off-Broadway, composed by Andrew Lippa, with mixed critical and popular success. The Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College holds a substantial collection of March's personal papers, including unpublished poems, scripts, and a memoir entitled Hollywood Idyll. See: Joseph Moncure March (AC 1920) Papers, 1896-1999 (Bulk: 1917-1977)
March's uncle, General Peyton Conway March, was once Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in World War I. His grandfather was the philologist Francis Andrew March, and his adopted daughter is the retired actress Lori March Williams.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Moncure March
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