Elmer Rice
Personal Information
Personal Information
|
|
|
|
|
Elmer Rice (Playwright), 1892-1967.
Rice had a long, varied and successful
career. For fifty years he wrote and
directed plays, but he also wrote
novels, essays, film scenarios, radio
and television scripts, and an
autobiography. He directed and
produced
many plays. A member of the Screen
Writers Guild,
he was asked to represent it on the
council of the Authors League of
America, an association that continued
for forty years. In 1938 he founded
the
Playwrights Producing Company with
Maxwell Anderson, S.N. Behrman, Sidney
Howard and Robert Sherwood. Always
committed to social and political
activism, he wrote a number plays that
express his life-long passion for
liberty and for social justice. For
many years he was on the board of the
American Civil Liberties Union. His
opinions remain current; for example,
in his novel The Imperial City he
remarks that the “electorate seldom
insisted upon either ability or
probity
in its chief executives, but it did
demand a blameless private life.”
Because of the number and variety of
his plays his work defies
generalization; the best known plays
are The Adding Machine (1923), Street
Scene (1929) and Dream Girl (1946).
|
|
|
|
Awards
Awards
|
|
Award |
Production |
Function |
| 1 |
WON
|
2005 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Revival |
Counsellor-At-Law |
Playwright |
