Elmer Rice

Elmer Rice
Rice circa 1920
Born	Elmer Leopold Reizenstein (1892-09-28)September 28, 1892 New York City,U.S.
Died	May 8, 1967(1967-05-08)(aged 74) Southampton,Hampshire, England
Occupation	Playwright
Education	New York Law School(LLB)
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize for Drama(1929)
Spouse	Betty Field(1942-1956) Hazel Levy (1915-1942)

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

Biography

Early years

Rice was born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein at 127 East 90th Street in New York City.His grandfather was a political activist in theRevolutions of 1848in 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.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."

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 fromNew York Law Schoolin 1912 and began a short-lived legal career.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 notablyCounsellor-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.George M. Cohanoffered 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 famedOscar Wildebiographer), 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 Trialthen 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.None of his later plays earned him as much asOn 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 andWoodrow 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 readingGeorge Bernard Shaw,H. G. Wells,John Galsworthy,Maxim Gorky,Frank Norris,andUpton Sinclair.) He frequentedGreenwich 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 poetJames Weldon Johnsonand the illustratorArt Young.

Career

From left,Joseph P. Bickerton, Jr.(theatre producer), Elmer Rice (playwright) andCarl 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 boldlyexpressionisticThe Adding Machine,which he wrote in 17 days.A satire about the growing regimentation of life in themachine 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 anadding 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 criticBrooks Atkinsoncalled 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]."Dorothy ParkerandAlexander Woollcottwere enthusiastic. Other reviewers spoke of him, hyperbolically, as a writer who might become America's Ibsen.Directed with great ingenuity byPhilip Moeller,designed byLee Simonson,and produced by theTheatre Guild,the play starredDudley Digges (actor)andEdward G. Robinson,then at the start of his acting career.Ironically, it made its author no money at all. (Adapted as an innovatively staged musical in 2007,The Adding Machineenjoyed a successful Off-Broadway run in 2008.)

WhenDorothy Parkerwas at work on her play the following year (loosely based on fellowAlgonquin Round TablememberRobert 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.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 unproducedThe Sidewalks of New York(1925),Is He Guilty?(1927) andThe Gay White Way(1928) and two collaborations,Wake Up, Jonathan(1928) with Hatcher Hughes, a dramatist unknown today andCock 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 famedBelasco Theatre.

Original Broadway production ofStreet Scene(1929)

Rice's second hit (afterThe Adding Machine) proved to be his most lasting literary accomplishment. Originally entitledLandscape with Figures,Street Scene(1929), later the subject of an opera byKurt Weill,won thePulitzer Prize for Dramafor 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."The script had been rejected by most producers who read it, and directorGeorge Cukorabandoned 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. LikeThe Adding Machine,the play's break with the conventions of stage realism was part of its appeal.

Rice's plays of the 1930s includedThe Left Bank(1931), a comedy dramatizing an expatriate's superficial attempt to escape from American materialism in Paris, andCounsellor-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."

The Depression-inspired, anti-capitalistWe, 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 Peoplefailed amid what Rice called "agitated" reviews.A 1932 trip to the Soviet Union and to Germany, where he heardHitlerandGoebbelsspeak, provided material for Rice's next plays. TheReichstag fire trialis an element inJudgement Day(1934), and conflicting American and Soviet ideologies form the subject of the conversation-pieceBetween Two Worlds(1934).

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

After the failure of these plays, Rice returned to Broadway in 1937 to write and direct for thePlaywrights' 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 fantasyDream Girl(1945) in which an over-imaginative girl encounters unexpected romance in reality. Rice's last play wasCue for Passion(1958), a modern psycho-analytical variation of the Hamlet theme in whichDiana Wynyardplayed 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 theAmerican Civil Liberties Union,the Authors' League, theDramatists Guild of Americawhere he was elected as the eighth president in 1939, and P.E.N. He was the first director of the New York office of theFederal Theatre Project,but resigned in 1936 to protest government censorship of the Project's "Living Newspaper"dramatization ofMussolini'sinvasion of Ethiopia. An outspoken defender of free speech, he left that position with a "blast of scorn" at theRooseveltadministration's efforts to control artistic expression.(In 1932, Rice reluctantly supported theCommunist Partycandidate in the presidential election because he foundHooverand Roosevelt equally displeasing alternatives with an insufficient grasp of the crisis the country faced.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.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 MachineandStreet Scenewere anomalies and did not make money. An even more radical venture,The Sidewalks of New Yorkof 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."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 actressBetty Fieldwith whom he had three children, John, Judy and Paul. Field and Rice divorced in 1956.

Although 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.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.He was close friends with Japanese-American modernist painterYasuo Kuniyoshi.

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.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."

Archive

Elmer Rice's papers were placed at theHarry Ransom Centerat 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.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.

Film portrayal

Rice was portrayed by the actorJon Favreauin the 1994 filmMrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

WPAposter, California, 1938

Stage productions

• A Defection from Gracewith Frank Harris (1913, unpublished)
• The Seventh Commandmentwith 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 byHermann Bahr
• Close Harmony(withDorothy Parker,1924)
• The Sidewalks of New York(1925, unpublished in 1925, published in 1934 asThree Plays Without Words)
• Is He Guilty?(1927)
• Wake Up, JonathanwithHatcher Hughes(1928)
• The Gay White Way(1928)
• Cock RobinwithPhilip 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

• On Trial(1915, a novelization of the play)
• Papa Looks for Something(unpublished, 1926)
• A Voyage to Purilia(1930), serialized in theNew Yorkerin 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,"Nation132 (June 10, 1931) pp. 628–630
• "The Joys of Pessimism,"Forum86 (July 1931) pp. 33–35
• "Sex in the Modern Theatre,"Harper's164 (May 1932) pp. 665–673
• "Theatre Alliance: A Cooperative Repertory Project,"Theatre Arts Monthly19 (June 1935) pp. 427–430
• "The Supreme Freedom" (1949) (pamphlet)
• "Conformity in the Arts" (1953) (pamphlet)
• "Entertainment in the Age of McCarthy,"New Republic176 (April 13, 1953) pp. 14–17
• The Living Theatre(1959)
• Minority Report(1964)
• "Author! Author!"American Heritage16 (April 1965) pp 46–49, 84–86

Selected filmography (play adaptations)

• 1917: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 Machine

Other writing

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

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 Papersat theHarry Ransom Center
• Works by Elmer RiceatProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about Elmer RiceatInternet Archive
• Elmer Riceat theInternet Broadway Database
• Elmer Riceat theInternet Off-Broadway Database
• Elmer RiceatIMDb
• Elmer Riceatanswers
• "Elmer Rice"atPAL: Perspectives in American Literature: A Research and Reference Guide