Originally established in 1919, the Theatre Guild began as an independent theatrical production company dedicated to developing new American works, as well as to bringing the best of contemporary British and European drama to New York audiences. From 1919 through 1939, a governing board principally composed of six key members (Theresa Helburn, Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Lee Simonson, Maurice Wertheim, and Helen Westley) guided the operations of the Guild. Among the many highlights of these years were productions of works by American playwrights, including Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, Eugene O'Neill and Robert E. Sherwood. During this period, the Guild also presented the world premieres of several plays by George Bernard Shaw, including Heartbreak House (1920), and became his American agent. In its earliest days, however, the Guild relied mainly upon works by European writers, commissioning translations or adaptations of plays by such diverse authors as Karel Capek, Henrik Ibsen, and Ferenc Molnár. In 1927, the Guild also began a fruitful association with the innovative director, Rouben Mamoulian, who staged both the original productions of Dorothy and DuBose Heyward's play, Porgy (1927), and George Gershwin's folk opera, Porgy and Bess (1935). In addition to directing several other dramatic productions for the Guild, Mamoulian would later be responsible for its two biggest successes in musical theater, Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945).
During the 1930s, internal division within the Guild led to the development of competing, splinter groups, such as the Group Theatre and The Playwrights' Company, and, ultimately, the reorganization of the Guild itself. By 1939, the Theatre Guild had become a leaner organization, with Langner and Helburn replacing the board and now functioning as co-directors. In addition to continuing to champion the work of new American dramatists, during the 1940s, the Guild would begin several initiatives to reach a broader audience. Among these efforts were the implementation of a national subscription theater service and the regular broadcast of a radio program, The Theatre Guild on the Air (1945), both of which served to enhance the Guild's prestige. These outreach efforts, along with the phenomenal success of Oklahoma!, helped to reestablish the Guild's financial stability, but most of the early, innovative fervor had been lost.
In 1953, the Theatre Guild of the Air radio program was transformed into a television show, The United States Steel Hour. This prize-winning anthology series was broadcast for twelve seasons and the Guild would become active in other areas of television production as well. During the 1960s, the Guild grew increasingly involved with international touring, assembling a national theater company headed by Helen Hayes, which, under the auspices of the State Department, presented the works of American playwrights around the world. In 1968, the Guild became a pioneer in arranging travel tours, developing programs to take its subscribers to attend plays in European countries. By the 1970s, however, the Guild rarely produced any shows for the Broadway theater, although its corporate identity continued to exist in some form. In 1975, it launched the Theatre At Sea cruises, an annual offering, which continues to the present day. The Guild's last official credit on Broadway was as a co-producer of the stage version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical film, State Fair (1996).