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The Highest Tree
As told by McClain, "[Schary's] hero is a physicist who has been working on a military project and is brought up sharp with the pronouncement that he has acute leukemia and has only six months to live. The realization affects his relationship with his children and relatives, with the young woman who has fallen in love with him after his wife's death, and most importantly with his profession. Finally he decides to devote his remaining days to work with his son, who is a geneticist, in a world-wide effort to abolish further experiments in atomic weapons."
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
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May 3, 2026
Though this 1959 stage play is not the author's best-known work (that would be his play about future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's battle with polio, Sunrise at Campobello, which first ran on Broadway from 1958-59), it's still a surprise to discover that mine will actually be its first Goodreads review. (That being the case, I'm doubly glad I could give it a favorable one!)
Born into a prosperous (his father owned a catering business) ethnic Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey in 1905, Isadore "Dore" Schary went on to have a very successful career on Broadway and in Hollywood. He became a writer (and occasionally a director) of both plays and films, and eventually a producer of the latter; from 1951-56, he was actually president of MGM, one of Hollywood's power-house studios. His philosophy was that the dramatic arts should "provoke thought," "educate and inform" as well as entertain; and this particular play is an excellent example of what he meant by that.
During World War II, a sub rosa race between Germany, Japan and the U.S. to develop an effective atomic bomb resulted in the mass destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, quickly followed by the discovery that exploding these weapons produced radiation that might be more lethal and widespread in its effects than the blasts themselves. With the rapid advent of the Cold War and the Soviet Union's acquisition of the same WMD technology, much of the U.S. (and world) population was gripped by the fear of an apocalyptic third world war that might annihilate the human race, or even all life on the planet. By 1959, this hadn't happened, and neither the U.S. nor the Soviet leadership wanted to initiate it --BUT, they were committed to enlarging and improving their nuclear bomb stockpiles, which they were convinced required frequent test explosions. Many people realized that the actual large amounts of radiation sent into the ecosystem by these tests was more of a clear and present danger to human survival than a hypothetical World War III, so long as it stayed hypothetical. This play was Schary's alarm bell sounded to highlight that concern.
Set in the author's present, The Highest Tree takes place over three days, the Tuesday to Thursday of Thanksgiving week, in the New York City mansion of eminent physicist Aaron Cornish, who helped to develop the A-bomb and still works for the government's nuclear weapons program. Like a lot of real-life scientists in the earlier decades of the 20th century, he'd worked with radioactive materials before the hazards of radiation were really understood; and we learn early on that he's just gotten a diagnosis of terminal leukemia, a piece of news he doesn't want to break to his family yet. (Two of his fictional colleagues have already died of radiation-induced cancers, just as radiation exposure ultimately killed Marie Curie in real life.) Aaron's son, a geneticist who's just learned that his wife is pregnant with their first child, has been asked to join a committee lobbying for the discontinuation of nuclear testing. He wants to join, but is concerned that his doing so might be an embarrassment to his dad because of the nature of Aaron's employment. This sets up the moral conflict which is the central focus of the play.
While it's the central focus, however, it's not harped on exclusively on every page. Aaron is a three-dimensional, well-realized character realistically depicted as a man in his 50s facing the prospect of premature death in some six months, a profoundly wrenching emotional experience regardless of its cause. He's also a man surrounded by a web of personal relationships with other three-dimensional characters, whom he cares about and who are going to be majorly affected by his passing. A long-time widower, he's been seeing Mary, a 30-year-old woman; they're in love with each other, but not yet engaged. His bossy and controlling sister (who wishes Mary didn't exist) and her husband are in the midst of a generational conflict with their two grown kids, who have the audacity to want to make their own decisions. And then there's Aaron's hard-drinking brother, who's cheating on his fourth wife, but blaming himself for poor parenting of his long-estranged daughter by one of his exes.... On my first reading of this play, in high school American Literature class, my classmates and I tended to dismiss all of these plot lines as soap opera distracting from the main theme. But on my recently completed reread, I recognize that the main theme gains a feeling of reality from being realistically embedded in the overall lives of people you care about. I also give Schary credit for not demonizing Aaron's boss, John Devereaux, who serves here as spokesperson for the idea (which I agree with Schary is misguided and morally wrong) that nuclear weapons and the willingness to test --and use-- them is a necessary evil to protect "our freedom." (In fact, Schary doesn't demonize any of his characters; he's more interested in helping us understand them.) This is one play that I rate more highly on the second reading than on the first.
Born into a prosperous (his father owned a catering business) ethnic Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey in 1905, Isadore "Dore" Schary went on to have a very successful career on Broadway and in Hollywood. He became a writer (and occasionally a director) of both plays and films, and eventually a producer of the latter; from 1951-56, he was actually president of MGM, one of Hollywood's power-house studios. His philosophy was that the dramatic arts should "provoke thought," "educate and inform" as well as entertain; and this particular play is an excellent example of what he meant by that.
During World War II, a sub rosa race between Germany, Japan and the U.S. to develop an effective atomic bomb resulted in the mass destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, quickly followed by the discovery that exploding these weapons produced radiation that might be more lethal and widespread in its effects than the blasts themselves. With the rapid advent of the Cold War and the Soviet Union's acquisition of the same WMD technology, much of the U.S. (and world) population was gripped by the fear of an apocalyptic third world war that might annihilate the human race, or even all life on the planet. By 1959, this hadn't happened, and neither the U.S. nor the Soviet leadership wanted to initiate it --BUT, they were committed to enlarging and improving their nuclear bomb stockpiles, which they were convinced required frequent test explosions. Many people realized that the actual large amounts of radiation sent into the ecosystem by these tests was more of a clear and present danger to human survival than a hypothetical World War III, so long as it stayed hypothetical. This play was Schary's alarm bell sounded to highlight that concern.
Set in the author's present, The Highest Tree takes place over three days, the Tuesday to Thursday of Thanksgiving week, in the New York City mansion of eminent physicist Aaron Cornish, who helped to develop the A-bomb and still works for the government's nuclear weapons program. Like a lot of real-life scientists in the earlier decades of the 20th century, he'd worked with radioactive materials before the hazards of radiation were really understood; and we learn early on that he's just gotten a diagnosis of terminal leukemia, a piece of news he doesn't want to break to his family yet. (Two of his fictional colleagues have already died of radiation-induced cancers, just as radiation exposure ultimately killed Marie Curie in real life.) Aaron's son, a geneticist who's just learned that his wife is pregnant with their first child, has been asked to join a committee lobbying for the discontinuation of nuclear testing. He wants to join, but is concerned that his doing so might be an embarrassment to his dad because of the nature of Aaron's employment. This sets up the moral conflict which is the central focus of the play.
While it's the central focus, however, it's not harped on exclusively on every page. Aaron is a three-dimensional, well-realized character realistically depicted as a man in his 50s facing the prospect of premature death in some six months, a profoundly wrenching emotional experience regardless of its cause. He's also a man surrounded by a web of personal relationships with other three-dimensional characters, whom he cares about and who are going to be majorly affected by his passing. A long-time widower, he's been seeing Mary, a 30-year-old woman; they're in love with each other, but not yet engaged. His bossy and controlling sister (who wishes Mary didn't exist) and her husband are in the midst of a generational conflict with their two grown kids, who have the audacity to want to make their own decisions. And then there's Aaron's hard-drinking brother, who's cheating on his fourth wife, but blaming himself for poor parenting of his long-estranged daughter by one of his exes.... On my first reading of this play, in high school American Literature class, my classmates and I tended to dismiss all of these plot lines as soap opera distracting from the main theme. But on my recently completed reread, I recognize that the main theme gains a feeling of reality from being realistically embedded in the overall lives of people you care about. I also give Schary credit for not demonizing Aaron's boss, John Devereaux, who serves here as spokesperson for the idea (which I agree with Schary is misguided and morally wrong) that nuclear weapons and the willingness to test --and use-- them is a necessary evil to protect "our freedom." (In fact, Schary doesn't demonize any of his characters; he's more interested in helping us understand them.) This is one play that I rate more highly on the second reading than on the first.
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