Trivia

Won Broadway's 1952 Tony Award as Best Play for "The Fourposter."

When he was 10 year old, de Hartog ran away to become a cabin boy on board a Dutch fishing boat. Despite his father having returned de Hartog home, when he was 12 years old, de Hartog ran away to a steamer in the Baltic.

While de Hartog was lecturing at the University of Houston on playwriting, he and his wife volunteered at Jefferson Davis County Hospital.

De Hartog and his wife transformed a 90-foot Dutch ship into a houseboat, which they made their home. During the floods in the Netherlands of 1953, The Rival was transformed into a floating hospital about which de Hartog wrote in The Little Ark.

Jan de Hartog was born to a Dutch Calvinist minister and professor of theology, Arnold Hendrik, and his wife, Lucretia de Hartog, who was a lecturer in medieval mysticism.