Avery and Jule Hopwood

"Avery Hopwood (1882-1928) was one of the most popular American playwrights of the early twentieth century, with four hits running on Broadway at the same time — two of them among the longest-running of their day: The Gold Diggers (1919-1921) and The Bat (1920-22, written with Mary Roberts Rinehart). ... Hopwood was a master of formulaic entertainment; he knew how to score a hit — and often. ... But Hopwood aspired to greater work — good fiction, 'something,' he once told a newspaper reporter, 'which an intelligent man can sit down and read and think about.'" — Jack Sharrar, in the afterword to The Great Bordello, Hopwood's "lost novel," as gathered and championed by his mother, Jule Hopwood.

"All the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate, I give, devise, and bequeath unto the Regents of the University of Michigan, as prizes to be known as 'The Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Prizes,' to be awarded annually to students who perform the best creative work in the fields of dramatic writing, fictions, poetry, and the essay. In this connection, it is especially desired that the students competing for the prizes shall not be confined to academic subjects, but shall be allowed the widest possible latitude, and that the new, the unusual, and the radical shall be especially encouraged."  —  excerpted from Jule Hopwood's will

"'It is especially desired that students shall not be confined to academic subjects, but shall be allowed the widest possible latitude. The new, the unusual and the radical shall be especially encouraged.' Thus the terms of the will of the late James Avery Hopwood, playwright, in leaving some $200,000 to the University of Michigan to establish the Avery and Jule Hopwood prizes for creative writing. Playwright Hopwood, a graduate of the University of Michigan, was drowned while bathing in the surf off Juan-les-Pins, France, on July 1. His total estate was valued at some $1,000,000."  —  Time Magazine, August 1928 (Vol. 12 Issue 6, p40).