Elmer Rice

Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, who took the name Elmer Rice, was born in New York in 1892 into a Jewish family of German origin; his grandfather had taken part in the revolutions of 1848. He left high school to work as a clerk, obtained a law degree in 1912 and gave up the bar shortly after being admitted to it. He ran a Broadway theatre from 1934 to 1937, directed the Federal Theatre in New York in 1935 and 1936 and in 1938 founded a company of authors with four colleagues. A trip to Germany in 1932 turned him towards political plays that the public shunned. He died in England in 1967.

In the catalogue 1

• TheatreStreet SceneElmer Rice · 1929Literature