After the failure of these plays, Rice returned to Broadway in 1937 to write and direct for the Playwrights' Company, which he had helped to establish along with Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, and Robert E, Sherwood. Of his later plays, the most successful was the fantasy "Dream Girl" (1945) in which an over-imaginative girl encounters unexpected romance in reality. Rice's last play was "Cue for Passion" (1958), a modern psycho-analytical variation of the Hamlet theme in which Diana Wynyard played a Gertrude-like character. In his retirement, Rice was the author of a controversial book on American drama, "The Living Theatre" (1960), and of a richly detailed autobiography, "Minority Report" (1964).