Word: reizenstein
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Died. Elmer Rice (born Reizenstein), 74, U.S. dramatist and one of the firsi to see the American stage as a vehicle for social criticism; of pneumonia; in Southampton, England. Short, peppery and prolific, Rice despised the frothy shows so in vogue during his youth ("I'm interested in being realistic about life") and used the theater to get his strident views across. Over the years, he bitingly attacked everything from fascism to automation, theater critics, social smugness, TV blacklisting and militarism in more than 50 full-length plays. Only a few of them (1919's On Trial...
Elmer Leopold Reizenstein grew up in Manhattan in a family of decent-hearted intellectual ciphers who owned no books. His mother smothered him in a cocoon of maternal affection; his father, an epileptic, mainly embarrassed the boy. But there was Grandpa, who took him to plays at the German Theater in Irving Place at an early age, and Uncle Will, who offered to slip him the money for his initial excursion into...
Riled by Broadway's lukewarm-to-cool appreciation of his three last plays (We, the People, Judgment Day, Between Two Worlds), testy, red-headed Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein) three years ago made a public face at all dramatic critics and declared he was "disenchanted" with Broadway for good. So far he has kept his word...
Black Sheep (written & produced by Elmer Rice [Reizenstein]). Immediately after Producer Hopkins had unpleasantly surprised theatregoers with his inept Rendezvous, along came Playwright Rice with the second major disappointment of the play week. The author of Pulitzer Prize-winning Street Scene foisted on his following a scrappy bit of nonsense dealing with a short-story writer who left his respectable home to wander over the world. When he returned it was with considerable literary kudos and a mistress. He settled into his family's comfortable life with amazing ease, took up golf, curried favor with the Press, jacked...
Counsellor-at-Law. Playwright Elmer Rice (born Reizenstein), was once a lawyer. He has now written a drama about a successful legal light named George Simon (Paul Muni). Mr. Simon, when the play begins, is sitting on top of the world but it so happens that he has a stain on his otherwise unblemished past. A kind man, he once framed testimony on behalf of a young fourth offender who would otherwise have gotten a life sentence in prison. An enemy of Lawyer Simon discovers this lapse, comes so close to ruining Lawyer Simon that Lawyer Simon is about...