Contemporary Inscription signed "Martha Joffe"


Uncommon play based on Humphrey Cobb's classic World War One novel. The work was made into a stunning 1957 Stanley Kubrick film starring Kirk Douglas and Ralph Meeker.

Sidney Coe Howard (26 June 1891 – 23 August 1939) was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for Gone with the Wind.

Humphrey Cobb (September 5, 1899 – April 25, 1944) was a screenwriter and novelist. He is best known for writing the novel Paths of Glory, which was made into an acclaimed 1957 movie by Stanley Kubrick.

Cobb's novel had no title when it was finished, so the publisher held a contest. The winning entry came from the ninth stanza of the famous Thomas Gray poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard".[2]

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th'inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."