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Elmer Rice

Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays The Adding Machine (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, Street Scene (1929).

Elmer Rice
Rice circa 1920
BornElmer Leopold Reizenstein
(1892-09-28)September 28, 1892
New York City, US
DiedMay 8, 1967(1967-05-08) (aged 74)
Southampton, Hampshire, England
OccupationPlaywright
EducationNew York Law School
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize for Drama (1929)
SpouseBetty Field (1942-1956)
Hazel Levy (1915-1942)

Biography

Early years

Rice was born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein at 127 East 90th Street in New York City.[1] His grandfather was a political activist in the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. After the failure of that political upheaval, he emigrated to the United States where he became a businessman. He spent most of his retirement years living with the Rice family and developed a close relationship with his grandson Elmer, who became a politically motivated writer and shared his grandfather's liberal and pacifist politics. A staunch atheist, his grandfather may also have influenced Elmer in his feelings about religion as he refused to attend Hebrew school or to have a bar mitzvah. In contrast, Rice's relationship with his father was very distant. As he wrote in his autobiography, his grandfather and his Uncle Will, both of whom boarded with the family, made up for the affection and attention his father withheld.[2] A child of the tenements, Rice spent much of his youth reading, to his family's consternation, and later observed, "Nothing in my life has been more helpful than the simple act of joining the library."[3]

Because of his need to support his family when his father's epilepsy worsened, Rice did not complete high school, and he took a number of menial jobs before earning his diploma by preparing for the state examinations on his own and then applying to law school. Though he disliked legal studies and spent a good deal of class time reading plays in class (because they could be finished within the span of a two-hour lecture, he said), Rice graduated from New York Law School in 1912 and began a short-lived legal career.[4] Leaving the profession in 1914, he was always to retain a cynical outlook about lawyers, but his two years in a law office provided him with material for several plays, most notably Counsellor-at-Law (1931). Courtroom dramas became a Rice specialty.

Needing to make a living, he decided to try writing full-time. It was a wise decision. His first play, On Trial (1914), a melodramatic murder mystery, was a great success and ran for 365 performances in New York.[5] George M. Cohan offered to buy the rights for $30,000, a proposition Rice declined largely because he did not believe Cohan could be serious. Co-authored with a friend, Frank Harris (not the famed Oscar Wilde biographer), the play was purportedly the first American drama to employ the technique of reverse-chronology, telling the story from its conclusion to its starting-point. On Trial then went on tour throughout the United States with three separate companies and was produced in Argentina, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Scotland and South Africa. The author ultimately earned $100,000 from his first work for the stage.[6] None of his later plays earned him as much as On Trial. The play was adapted for the cinema three times, in 1917, 1928, and 1939.

Political and social issues occupied Rice's attention in this period as well. World War I and Woodrow Wilson's conservatism confirmed him in his criticism of the status quo. (He had been firmly converted to socialism in his teens, he said, by reading George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Maxim Gorky, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair.[7]) He frequented Greenwich Village, then the most bohemian part of New York City, in the late 1910s and became friendly with many socially conscious writers and activists, including the African-American poet James Weldon Johnson and the illustrator Art Young.[8]

Career

 
From left, Joseph P. Bickerton, Jr. (theatre producer), Elmer Rice (playwright) and Carl Laemmle Jr. (Universal producer) sign a contract for the film version of Counsellor at Law

After writing four more plays of no special distinction, Rice startled audiences in 1923 with his next contribution to the theatre, the boldly expressionistic The Adding Machine, which he wrote in 17 days.[9] A satire about the growing regimentation of life in the machine age, the play tells the story of the life, death and bizarre afterlife of a dull bookkeeper, Mr. Zero. When Mr. Zero, a mere cog in the corporate machine, discovers that he is to be replaced at work by an adding machine, he snaps and murders his boss. After his trial and execution, he enters the next life only to confront some of the same issues and, judged to be of minimal use in heaven, is sent back to Earth for recycling. Theatre critic Brooks Atkinson called it "the most original and brilliant play any American had written up to that time ... the harshest and most illuminating play about modern society [Broadway had ever seen]."[10] Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott were enthusiastic. Other reviewers spoke of him, hyperbolically, as a writer who might become America's Ibsen.[11] Directed with great ingenuity by Philip Moeller, designed by Lee Simonson, and produced by the Theatre Guild, the play starred Dudley Digges (actor) and Edward G. Robinson, then at the start of his acting career.[12] Ironically, it made its author no money at all. (Adapted as an innovatively staged musical in 2007, The Adding Machine enjoyed a successful Off-Broadway run in 2008.)

When Dorothy Parker was at work on her play the following year (loosely based on fellow Algonquin Round Table member Robert Benchley, his marital problems, and the extra-marital temptations he was grappling with) and needed a co-author, she approached Elmer Rice, now acknowledged as the Broadway "boy wonder" of the moment. It was a smooth collaboration and resulted in a brief affair between Parker and the already-married Rice, begun at Rice's insistent urging.[13] The run of the play did not go smoothly, however; despite good reviews, Close Harmony (1924) closed quickly and was forgotten.

Rice was a prolific, even tireless writer. His plays over the next five years included the unproduced The Sidewalks of New York (1925), Is He Guilty? (1927) and The Gay White Way (1928) and two collaborations, Wake Up, Jonathan (1928) with Hatcher Hughes, a dramatist unknown today and Cock Robin (1929) with Philip Barry, a Broadway name equal to Rice's. None of these plays were a success. Rice was a theatre professional by this time: open to collaboration, increasingly interested in producing and directing his own plays. In the 1930s, he even bought a Broadway house, the famed Belasco Theatre.

 
Original Broadway production of Street Scene (1929)

Rice's second hit (after The Adding Machine) proved to be his most lasting literary accomplishment. Originally entitled Landscape with Figures, Street Scene (1929), later the subject of an opera by Kurt Weill, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for its realistic chronicle of life in the slums. "With fifty characters casually strolling through it," Brooks Atkinson wrote, "it looked like an improvisation...Based on the facade of a house at 25 West 65th Street, which Rice selected as typical, the tall massive setting caught the tone and humanity of a decaying brownstone."[14] The script had been rejected by most producers who read it, and director George Cukor abandoned it as un-stageable after the second day of rehearsals. Rice took over the direction himself and proved that it was highly stageworthy, if unconventional in its narrative style and disorienting naturalism. Like The Adding Machine, the play's break with the conventions of stage realism was part of its appeal.[15]

Rice's plays of the 1930s included The Left Bank (1931), a comedy dramatizing an expatriate's superficial attempt to escape from American materialism in Paris, and Counsellor-at-Law (1931), a vigorous work that drew a realistic picture of the legal profession for which Rice had been trained. (The latter play is probably more frequently revived in regional theatres than any of Rice's other plays.) In that decade, he also wrote two novels and enjoyed a lucrative period in Hollywood, writing screenplays. His time in Hollywood was not without its friction, though, as he was looked upon by many studio heads as one of "those Eastern Reds."[16]

The Depression-inspired, anti-capitalist We, the People (1933) was a play particularly close to Rice's heart. It dealt with "the misfortunes of a typical skilled workman and his family, helplessly engulfed in the tide of national adversity," as its author described it. Rice engaged an activist-minded cast and noted set designer Aline Bernstein to design the fifteen different sets that the ambitious play called for. We, the People failed amid what Rice called "agitated" reviews.[17] A 1932 trip to the Soviet Union and to Germany, where he heard Hitler and Goebbels speak, provided material for Rice's next plays. The Reichstag fire trial is an element in Judgement Day (1934), and conflicting American and Soviet ideologies form the subject of the conversation-piece Between Two Worlds (1934).

 
Maxwell Anderson, S.N. Behrman, Robert E. Sherwood and Elmer Rice, four of the five founders of the Playwrights' Company (1938)

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).

Rice was one of the more politically outspoken dramatists of his time and took an active part in the American Civil Liberties Union, the Authors' League, the Dramatists Guild of America where he was elected as the eighth president in 1939, and P.E.N. He was the first director of the New York office of the Federal Theatre Project, but resigned in 1936 to protest government censorship of the Project's "Living Newspaper" dramatization of Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. An outspoken defender of free speech, he left that position with a "blast of scorn" at the Roosevelt administration's efforts to control artistic expression.[18] (In 1932, Rice reluctantly supported the Communist Party candidate in the presidential election because he found Hoover and Roosevelt equally displeasing alternatives with an insufficient grasp of the crisis the country faced.[19] though in subsequent elections he became an FDR supporter) He also spoke out against McCarthyism in the 1950s.

In the end, Elmer Rice did not believe he had been a success as a writer, not as he wished to define success.[20] He needed to make a living and, while deriding the commercialism of the New York stage, he managed to earn a considerable amount of money, but at a cost to his more experimental vision. The realistic drama he could write with ease was at odds with the innovations that most intrigued him. The Adding Machine and Street Scene were anomalies and did not make money. An even more radical venture, The Sidewalks of New York of 1925, was an episodic play without words, "in which speech is indicated by gesture, by a series of situations in which there was no need for speech."[21] The Theatre Guild turned the script down flat; Broadway would never be ready for the level of experimentation that inspired Rice, a reality that was a source of continuous frustration for him.

Personal life

Rice was married in 1915 to Hazel Levy and had two children with her, Margaret and Robert. After his divorce in 1942, he married actress Betty Field with whom he had three children, John, Judy and Paul. Field and Rice divorced in 1956.

Alhough born into a working-class family with no interest in the arts and known primarily for his attachment to theater and politics, Rice was passionate about Old Master and modern art. His art collection, slowly assembled over the years, included works by Picasso, Braque, Rouault, Leger, Derain, Klee, and Modigliani.[22] He regularly frequented New York's museums, and in his autobiography, wrote of his first trip to Spain and the powerful impact Velazquez had on him and, in Mexico, of enjoying the work of Diego Rivera and the Mexican Muralists, artists who shared his political views.[23] He was close friends with Japanese-American modernist painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi.[24]

Elmer Rice lived for many years on a wooded estate in Stamford, Connecticut until his death in Southampton, England in 1967 of pneumonia after suffering a heart attack.[25] Obituaries took note of a long and respected theater career. Brooks Atkinson described Rice in his history of Broadway as "a plain, rather sober man with a reticent, unyielding personality...But when a social principle was at stake, he was more clear-headed than most people, and he was quietly invincible...He was one of Broadway's most eminent citizens."[26]

Archive

Elmer Rice's papers were placed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 1968, a year after his death. Additions have been made by family members over the years. The collection spans over 100 boxes and includes contracts, correspondence, manuscript drafts, notebooks, photographs, royalty statements, scripts, theater programs, and over seventy-three scrapbooks.[27] The Ransom Center's library division has over 900 books from Rice's personal library, many of which are personally inscribed to or annotated by Rice.[28]

Film portrayal

Rice was portrayed by the actor Jon Favreau in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

 
WPA poster, California, 1938

Stage productions

  • A Defection from Grace with Frank Harris (1913, unpublished)
  • The Seventh Commandment with Frank Harris (1913, unpublished)
  • The Passing of Chow-Chow (1913, one act, published in 1925)
  • On Trial (1914) with Frank Harris
  • The Iron Cross (1917)
  • The Home of the Free (1918)
  • For the Defense (1919)
  • It Is the Law (1922)
  • The Adding Machine (1923)
  • The Mongrel (1924) from a novel by Hermann Bahr
  • Close Harmony (with Dorothy Parker, 1924)
  • The Sidewalks of New York (1925, unpublished in 1925, published in 1934 as Three Plays Without Words)
  • Is He Guilty? (1927)
  • Wake Up, Jonathan with Hatcher Hughes (1928)
  • The Gay White Way (1928)
  • Cock Robin with Philip Barry (1929)
  • Street Scene (1929, also directed)
  • The Subway (1929)
  • See Naples and Die (1930, also directed)
  • The Left Bank (1931, also produced and directed)
  • Counsellor-at-Law (1931, also produced and directed)
  • The House in Blind Alley: A Play in Three Acts (1932)
  • We, the People (1933, also produced and directed)
  • Three Plays Without Words (1934, one act)
    • Landscape with Figures
    • Rus in Urbe
    • Exterior
  • The Home of the Free (1934, one act)
  • Judgment Day (1934, also produced and directed)
  • Two Plays (1935)
  • Black Sheep (1938, also produced and directed)
  • American Landscape (1938, also directed)
  • Two On an Island (1940, also directed)
  • Flight to the West (1940, also directed)
  • The Talley Method (1941, also produced and directed)
  • A New Life (1944)
  • Dream Girl (1946, also directed)
  • The Grand Tour (1952, also directed)
  • The Winner (1954, also directed)
  • Cue for Passion (1959, also directed)
  • Love Among the Ruins (1963)
  • Court of Last Resort (1965)

Novels

  • On Trial (1915, a novelization of the play)
  • Papa Looks for Something (unpublished, 1926)
  • A Voyage to Purilia (1930), serialized in the New Yorker in 1929
  • Imperial City (1937)
  • The Show Must Go On (1949)

Non-fiction

  • "The Playwright as Director," Theatre Arts Monthly 13 (May 1929): pp. 355–360
  • "Organized Charity Turns Censor," Nation 132 (June 10, 1931) pp. 628–630
  • "The Joys of Pessimism," Forum 86 (July 1931) pp. 33–35
  • "Sex in the Modern Theatre," Harper's 164 (May 1932) pp. 665–673
  • "Theatre Alliance: A Cooperative Repertory Project," Theatre Arts Monthly 19 (June 1935) pp. 427–430
  • "The Supreme Freedom" (1949) (pamphlet)
  • "Conformity in the Arts" (1953) (pamphlet)
  • "Entertainment in the Age of McCarthy," New Republic 176 (April 13, 1953) pp. 14–17
  • The Living Theatre (1959)
  • Minority Report (1964)
  • "Author! Author!" American Heritage 16 (April 1965) pp 46–49, 84-86

Selected filmography (play adaptations)

Other writing

  • 1921: Doubling for Romeo (scenario)
  • 1922: Rent Free (scenario)
  • 1942: Holiday Inn (adaptation)

References

  1. ^ Biographical information for this entry is taken from Durham, Palmieri, and Rice's autobiography.
  2. ^ Rice, p. 26.
  3. ^ Rice, pp. 42, 62.
  4. ^ Rice, p. 82.
  5. ^ Palmieri, pp. 34-35.
  6. ^ Rice, pp. 98-119. Rice aptly entitled this chapter of his memoirs "The Jackpot."
  7. ^ Rice, p. 137
  8. ^ Rice, pp. 158-160.
  9. ^ Durham, pp. 32-54.
  10. ^ Atkinson, p. 215.
  11. ^ Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: A Biography (New York: Villard, 1987), p. 123.
  12. ^ Atkinson, p. 216.
  13. ^ Meade, pp. 124-125.
  14. ^ Atkinson, p. 275.
  15. ^ Durham, pp. 57-68.
  16. ^ Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 237.
  17. ^ Rice, pp. 328-329.
  18. ^ Atkinson, p. 274.
  19. ^ Rice, p. 326.
  20. ^ Rice, p. 236.
  21. ^ Rice, p. 236
  22. ^ Rice, pp. 267, 337.
  23. ^ Rice, pp. 331-332.
  24. ^ Rice, p. 216.
  25. ^ "Elmer Rice, Noted American-jewish Playwright, Dies in London; Was 74". 10 May 1967.
  26. ^ Atkinson, pp. 274. 276.
  27. ^ "Elmer Rice: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Anderson, Maxwell, 1888-1959., Behrman, S. N. (Samuel Nathaniel), 1893-1973., Field, Betty, 1918-1973., Howard, Sidney Coe, 1891-1939., Sherwood, Robert E. (Robert Emmet), 1896-1955., Wharton, John F. Retrieved November 3, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  28. ^ "University of Texas Libraries / HRC". catalog.lib.utexas.edu. Retrieved November 3, 2017.

Sources

  • Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway. New York: Atheneum, 1970.
  • Durham, Frank. Elmer Rice. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970.
  • Hogan, Robert. The Independence of Elmer Rice. New York: Twayne, 1965.
  • Palmieri, Anthony. Elmer Rice: A Playwright's Vision of America. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980.
  • Rice, Elmer. Minority Report. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.

External links

elmer, rice, born, elmer, leopold, reizenstein, september, 1892, 1967, american, playwright, best, known, plays, adding, machine, 1923, pulitzer, prize, winning, drama, york, tenement, life, street, scene, 1929, rice, circa, 1920bornelmer, leopold, reizenstein. Elmer Rice born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein September 28 1892 May 8 1967 was an American playwright He is best known for his plays The Adding Machine 1923 and his Pulitzer Prize winning drama of New York tenement life Street Scene 1929 Elmer RiceRice circa 1920BornElmer Leopold Reizenstein 1892 09 28 September 28 1892New York City USDiedMay 8 1967 1967 05 08 aged 74 Southampton Hampshire EnglandOccupationPlaywrightEducationNew York Law SchoolNotable awardsPulitzer Prize for Drama 1929 SpouseBetty Field 1942 1956 Hazel Levy 1915 1942 Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early years 1 2 Career 1 3 Personal life 2 Archive 3 Film portrayal 4 Stage productions 5 Novels 6 Non fiction 7 Selected filmography play adaptations 8 Other writing 9 References 10 Sources 11 External linksBiography EditEarly years Edit Rice was born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein at 127 East 90th Street in New York City 1 His grandfather was a political activist in the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states After the failure of that political upheaval he emigrated to the United States where he became a businessman He spent most of his retirement years living with the Rice family and developed a close relationship with his grandson Elmer who became a politically motivated writer and shared his grandfather s liberal and pacifist politics A staunch atheist his grandfather may also have influenced Elmer in his feelings about religion as he refused to attend Hebrew school or to have a bar mitzvah In contrast Rice s relationship with his father was very distant As he wrote in his autobiography his grandfather and his Uncle Will both of whom boarded with the family made up for the affection and attention his father withheld 2 A child of the tenements Rice spent much of his youth reading to his family s consternation and later observed Nothing in my life has been more helpful than the simple act of joining the library 3 Because of his need to support his family when his father s epilepsy worsened Rice did not complete high school and he took a number of menial jobs before earning his diploma by preparing for the state examinations on his own and then applying to law school Though he disliked legal studies and spent a good deal of class time reading plays in class because they could be finished within the span of a two hour lecture he said Rice graduated from New York Law School in 1912 and began a short lived legal career 4 Leaving the profession in 1914 he was always to retain a cynical outlook about lawyers but his two years in a law office provided him with material for several plays most notably Counsellor at Law 1931 Courtroom dramas became a Rice specialty Needing to make a living he decided to try writing full time It was a wise decision His first play On Trial 1914 a melodramatic murder mystery was a great success and ran for 365 performances in New York 5 George M Cohan offered to buy the rights for 30 000 a proposition Rice declined largely because he did not believe Cohan could be serious Co authored with a friend Frank Harris not the famed Oscar Wilde biographer the play was purportedly the first American drama to employ the technique of reverse chronology telling the story from its conclusion to its starting point On Trial then went on tour throughout the United States with three separate companies and was produced in Argentina Austria Canada France Germany the Netherlands Hungary Ireland Japan Mexico Norway Scotland and South Africa The author ultimately earned 100 000 from his first work for the stage 6 None of his later plays earned him as much as On Trial The play was adapted for the cinema three times in 1917 1928 and 1939 Political and social issues occupied Rice s attention in this period as well World War I and Woodrow Wilson s conservatism confirmed him in his criticism of the status quo He had been firmly converted to socialism in his teens he said by reading George Bernard Shaw H G Wells John Galsworthy Maxim Gorky Frank Norris and Upton Sinclair 7 He frequented Greenwich Village then the most bohemian part of New York City in the late 1910s and became friendly with many socially conscious writers and activists including the African American poet James Weldon Johnson and the illustrator Art Young 8 Career Edit From left Joseph P Bickerton Jr theatre producer Elmer Rice playwright and Carl Laemmle Jr Universal producer sign a contract for the film version of Counsellor at Law After writing four more plays of no special distinction Rice startled audiences in 1923 with his next contribution to the theatre the boldly expressionistic The Adding Machine which he wrote in 17 days 9 A satire about the growing regimentation of life in the machine age the play tells the story of the life death and bizarre afterlife of a dull bookkeeper Mr Zero When Mr Zero a mere cog in the corporate machine discovers that he is to be replaced at work by an adding machine he snaps and murders his boss After his trial and execution he enters the next life only to confront some of the same issues and judged to be of minimal use in heaven is sent back to Earth for recycling Theatre critic Brooks Atkinson called it the most original and brilliant play any American had written up to that time the harshest and most illuminating play about modern society Broadway had ever seen 10 Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott were enthusiastic Other reviewers spoke of him hyperbolically as a writer who might become America s Ibsen 11 Directed with great ingenuity by Philip Moeller designed by Lee Simonson and produced by the Theatre Guild the play starred Dudley Digges actor and Edward G Robinson then at the start of his acting career 12 Ironically it made its author no money at all Adapted as an innovatively staged musical in 2007 The Adding Machine enjoyed a successful Off Broadway run in 2008 When Dorothy Parker was at work on her play the following year loosely based on fellow Algonquin Round Table member Robert Benchley his marital problems and the extra marital temptations he was grappling with and needed a co author she approached Elmer Rice now acknowledged as the Broadway boy wonder of the moment It was a smooth collaboration and resulted in a brief affair between Parker and the already married Rice begun at Rice s insistent urging 13 The run of the play did not go smoothly however despite good reviews Close Harmony 1924 closed quickly and was forgotten Rice was a prolific even tireless writer His plays over the next five years included the unproduced The Sidewalks of New York 1925 Is He Guilty 1927 and The Gay White Way 1928 and two collaborations Wake Up Jonathan 1928 with Hatcher Hughes a dramatist unknown today and Cock Robin 1929 with Philip Barry a Broadway name equal to Rice s None of these plays were a success Rice was a theatre professional by this time open to collaboration increasingly interested in producing and directing his own plays In the 1930s he even bought a Broadway house the famed Belasco Theatre Original Broadway production of Street Scene 1929 Rice s second hit after The Adding Machine proved to be his most lasting literary accomplishment Originally entitled Landscape with Figures Street Scene 1929 later the subject of an opera by Kurt Weill won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for its realistic chronicle of life in the slums With fifty characters casually strolling through it Brooks Atkinson wrote it looked like an improvisation Based on the facade of a house at 25 West 65th Street which Rice selected as typical the tall massive setting caught the tone and humanity of a decaying brownstone 14 The script had been rejected by most producers who read it and director George Cukor abandoned it as un stageable after the second day of rehearsals Rice took over the direction himself and proved that it was highly stageworthy if unconventional in its narrative style and disorienting naturalism Like The Adding Machine the play s break with the conventions of stage realism was part of its appeal 15 Rice s plays of the 1930s included The Left Bank 1931 a comedy dramatizing an expatriate s superficial attempt to escape from American materialism in Paris and Counsellor at Law 1931 a vigorous work that drew a realistic picture of the legal profession for which Rice had been trained The latter play is probably more frequently revived in regional theatres than any of Rice s other plays In that decade he also wrote two novels and enjoyed a lucrative period in Hollywood writing screenplays His time in Hollywood was not without its friction though as he was looked upon by many studio heads as one of those Eastern Reds 16 The Depression inspired anti capitalist We the People 1933 was a play particularly close to Rice s heart It dealt with the misfortunes of a typical skilled workman and his family helplessly engulfed in the tide of national adversity as its author described it Rice engaged an activist minded cast and noted set designer Aline Bernstein to design the fifteen different sets that the ambitious play called for We the People failed amid what Rice called agitated reviews 17 A 1932 trip to the Soviet Union and to Germany where he heard Hitler and Goebbels speak provided material for Rice s next plays The Reichstag fire trial is an element in Judgement Day 1934 and conflicting American and Soviet ideologies form the subject of the conversation piece Between Two Worlds 1934 Maxwell Anderson S N Behrman Robert E Sherwood and Elmer Rice four of the five founders of the Playwrights Company 1938 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 Rice was one of the more politically outspoken dramatists of his time and took an active part in the American Civil Liberties Union the Authors League the Dramatists Guild of America where he was elected as the eighth president in 1939 and P E N He was the first director of the New York office of the Federal Theatre Project but resigned in 1936 to protest government censorship of the Project s Living Newspaper dramatization of Mussolini s invasion of Ethiopia An outspoken defender of free speech he left that position with a blast of scorn at the Roosevelt administration s efforts to control artistic expression 18 In 1932 Rice reluctantly supported the Communist Party candidate in the presidential election because he found Hoover and Roosevelt equally displeasing alternatives with an insufficient grasp of the crisis the country faced 19 though in subsequent elections he became an FDR supporter He also spoke out against McCarthyism in the 1950s In the end Elmer Rice did not believe he had been a success as a writer not as he wished to define success 20 He needed to make a living and while deriding the commercialism of the New York stage he managed to earn a considerable amount of money but at a cost to his more experimental vision The realistic drama he could write with ease was at odds with the innovations that most intrigued him The Adding Machine and Street Scene were anomalies and did not make money An even more radical venture The Sidewalks of New York of 1925 was an episodic play without words in which speech is indicated by gesture by a series of situations in which there was no need for speech 21 The Theatre Guild turned the script down flat Broadway would never be ready for the level of experimentation that inspired Rice a reality that was a source of continuous frustration for him Personal life Edit Rice was married in 1915 to Hazel Levy and had two children with her Margaret and Robert After his divorce in 1942 he married actress Betty Field with whom he had three children John Judy and Paul Field and Rice divorced in 1956 Alhough born into a working class family with no interest in the arts and known primarily for his attachment to theater and politics Rice was passionate about Old Master and modern art His art collection slowly assembled over the years included works by Picasso Braque Rouault Leger Derain Klee and Modigliani 22 He regularly frequented New York s museums and in his autobiography wrote of his first trip to Spain and the powerful impact Velazquez had on him and in Mexico of enjoying the work of Diego Rivera and the Mexican Muralists artists who shared his political views 23 He was close friends with Japanese American modernist painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi 24 Elmer Rice lived for many years on a wooded estate in Stamford Connecticut until his death in Southampton England in 1967 of pneumonia after suffering a heart attack 25 Obituaries took note of a long and respected theater career Brooks Atkinson described Rice in his history of Broadway as a plain rather sober man with a reticent unyielding personality But when a social principle was at stake he was more clear headed than most people and he was quietly invincible He was one of Broadway s most eminent citizens 26 Archive EditElmer Rice s papers were placed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 1968 a year after his death Additions have been made by family members over the years The collection spans over 100 boxes and includes contracts correspondence manuscript drafts notebooks photographs royalty statements scripts theater programs and over seventy three scrapbooks 27 The Ransom Center s library division has over 900 books from Rice s personal library many of which are personally inscribed to or annotated by Rice 28 Film portrayal EditRice was portrayed by the actor Jon Favreau in the 1994 film Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle WPA poster California 1938Stage productions EditA Defection from Grace with Frank Harris 1913 unpublished The Seventh Commandment with Frank Harris 1913 unpublished The Passing of Chow Chow 1913 one act published in 1925 On Trial 1914 with Frank Harris The Iron Cross 1917 The Home of the Free 1918 For the Defense 1919 It Is the Law 1922 The Adding Machine 1923 The Mongrel 1924 from a novel by Hermann Bahr Close Harmony with Dorothy Parker 1924 The Sidewalks of New York 1925 unpublished in 1925 published in 1934 as Three Plays Without Words Is He Guilty 1927 Wake Up Jonathan with Hatcher Hughes 1928 The Gay White Way 1928 Cock Robin with Philip Barry 1929 Street Scene 1929 also directed The Subway 1929 See Naples and Die 1930 also directed The Left Bank 1931 also produced and directed Counsellor at Law 1931 also produced and directed The House in Blind Alley A Play in Three Acts 1932 We the People 1933 also produced and directed Three Plays Without Words 1934 one act Landscape with Figures Rus in Urbe Exterior The Home of the Free 1934 one act Judgment Day 1934 also produced and directed Two Plays 1935 Between Two Worlds also produced and directed Not for Children Black Sheep 1938 also produced and directed American Landscape 1938 also directed Two On an Island 1940 also directed Flight to the West 1940 also directed The Talley Method 1941 also produced and directed A New Life 1944 Dream Girl 1946 also directed The Grand Tour 1952 also directed The Winner 1954 also directed Cue for Passion 1959 also directed Love Among the Ruins 1963 Court of Last Resort 1965 Novels EditOn Trial 1915 a novelization of the play Papa Looks for Something unpublished 1926 A Voyage to Purilia 1930 serialized in the New Yorker in 1929 Imperial City 1937 The Show Must Go On 1949 Non fiction Edit The Playwright as Director Theatre Arts Monthly 13 May 1929 pp 355 360 Organized Charity Turns Censor Nation 132 June 10 1931 pp 628 630 The Joys of Pessimism Forum 86 July 1931 pp 33 35 Sex in the Modern Theatre Harper s 164 May 1932 pp 665 673 Theatre Alliance A Cooperative Repertory Project Theatre Arts Monthly 19 June 1935 pp 427 430 The Supreme Freedom 1949 pamphlet Conformity in the Arts 1953 pamphlet Entertainment in the Age of McCarthy New Republic 176 April 13 1953 pp 14 17 The Living Theatre 1959 Minority Report 1964 Author Author American Heritage 16 April 1965 pp 46 49 84 86Selected filmography play adaptations Edit1917 On Trial 1922 For the Defense 1924 It Is the Law 1928 On Trial 1930 Oh Sailor Behave 1931 Street Scene 1933 Counsellor at Law 1939 On Trial 1948 Dream Girl 1969 The Adding MachineOther writing Edit1921 Doubling for Romeo scenario 1922 Rent Free scenario 1942 Holiday Inn adaptation References Edit Biographical information for this entry is taken from Durham Palmieri and Rice s autobiography Rice p 26 Rice pp 42 62 Rice p 82 Palmieri pp 34 35 Rice pp 98 119 Rice aptly entitled this chapter of his memoirs The Jackpot Rice p 137 Rice pp 158 160 Durham pp 32 54 Atkinson p 215 Marion Meade Dorothy Parker A Biography New York Villard 1987 p 123 Atkinson p 216 Meade pp 124 125 Atkinson p 275 Durham pp 57 68 Joseph McBride Frank Capra The Catastrophe of Success New York Simon and Schuster 1992 p 237 Rice pp 328 329 Atkinson p 274 Rice p 326 Rice p 236 Rice p 236 Rice pp 267 337 Rice pp 331 332 Rice p 216 Elmer Rice Noted American jewish Playwright Dies in London Was 74 10 May 1967 Atkinson pp 274 276 Elmer Rice An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center norman hrc utexas edu Anderson Maxwell 1888 1959 Behrman S N Samuel Nathaniel 1893 1973 Field Betty 1918 1973 Howard Sidney Coe 1891 1939 Sherwood Robert E Robert Emmet 1896 1955 Wharton John F Retrieved November 3 2017 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint others link University of Texas Libraries HRC catalog lib utexas edu Retrieved November 3 2017 Sources EditAtkinson Brooks Broadway New York Atheneum 1970 Durham Frank Elmer Rice Carbondale IL Southern Illinois University Press 1970 Hogan Robert The Independence of Elmer Rice New York Twayne 1965 Palmieri Anthony Elmer Rice A Playwright s Vision of America Madison NJ Farleigh Dickinson University Press 1980 Rice Elmer Minority Report New York Simon and Schuster 1963 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Elmer Rice Elmer Rice Papers at the Harry Ransom Center Works by Elmer Rice at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Elmer Rice at Internet Archive Elmer Rice at the Internet Broadway Database Elmer Rice at the Internet Off Broadway Database Elmer Rice at IMDb Elmer Rice at answers com Elmer Rice at PAL Perspectives in American Literature A Research and Reference Guide Elmer Rice at Find a Grave Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Elmer Rice amp oldid 1128213224, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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