Elmer Rice

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Elmer Rice.

Elmer Rice (born September 28, 1892 as Elmer Reizenstein in New York City , † May 8, 1967 in Southampton ) was an American playwright. He introduced a number of innovations to the theater and enjoyed a popularity similar to that of Eugene O'Neill in the period between the world wars .

Career

Originally a lawyer, Rice received attention with his first melodramatic piece On Trial (1914). The work, which was based on a flashback technique based on the new medium of film , was immediately performed 350 times in New York alone. and has also seen three films so far.

Rice's breakthrough to the dramatic avant-garde came in 1923 with The Adding Machine . This drama revolves around a laid-off little employee who becomes the murderer of his boss, receives the death penalty for it and finds a rude awakening in the afterlife. According to Kindler's New Literature Lexicon , the work is "one of the best and most well-known socially critical dramas in the USA". The play of the "accomplished playwright", who has a precise gift for observation of the absurd in the behavior of a petty bourgeois, a talent for satirical formulation and "lively, often bizarre imagination", has expressionistic and surreal traits. His “hero” is trained in heaven for his next reincarnation - as a future operator of a super computer, because someone like him never escapes his fate as a slave.

For the naturalistic milieu sketch Street Scene ( Street Scene , 1929) Price received the renowned Pulitzer Prize - although he “rebelled against the conventional entertainment theater of Broadway ” and instead saw the stage as “an experimental site and a forum for dealing with everyday problems and social grievances” . The play shows the mostly divided residents of a tenement in New York's slum district within just one day. In 1931 the film adaptation of the same name by King Vidor was released . It also formed the template for Kurt Weill's musical of the same title , which Rice also helped create. In addition to other dramas, Rice wrote several essays and novels as well as an autobiography.

Life

Rice came from a German immigrant family. Grandfather Reizenstein, who had been active on the side of the German revolutionaries in 1848, had prospered the States, but Rice's parents were impoverished. The grandfather exercised considerable (rebellious) influence over his grandson. The family had to bear hard on Rice's father, who was an epileptic . Poverty forced young Rice to drop out of high school at the age of 14. After various jobs, including in factories, he decided rather listlessly to study at a New York law school, which he graduated in 1912. He devoured “left” literature, including that of George Bernard Shaw . The cynicism prevailing in the legal system soon denatured Reizenstein's grandson his career; he turned to writing.

Rice's successes as a playwright went hand in hand with private turmoil. Married three times in all, he also had numerous love affairs. In 1915 he married Hazel Levy, with whom he had two, in 1942 the actress Betty Field , with whom he had three children. This marriage ended in divorce in 1956. In the post-war period, Rice lived partly in Stamford, Connecticut , where he owned a tree-lined property. He died (from pneumonia) at the age of 74 while on a trip to Europe with his third wife Barbara on the British Isles.

In 1932, Rice had already undertaken a trip to Europe with his son Robert, which took them both to the Soviet Union and to Germany. Here the playwright saw the speakers Goebbels and Hitler . When he returned home, an article brought him hardship, among other things, in which he condemned Mussolini . After a few failed new plays and in the face of increasing attempts to silence critical voices like him, which went hand in hand with the apparently unstoppable commercialization of US theater, Rice turned away from stage work in the mid-1930s as abruptly as he once did his legal career the nail hung.

In 1938 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Works

Pieces

  • A Defection from Grace , 1913 (with Frank Harris , unpublished)
  • The Seventh Commandment , 1913 (with Frank Harris, unpublished)
  • The Passing of Chow-Chow , 1913 (one-act play, published 1925)
  • On Trial , 1914 (with Frank Harris), German Is Robert Parker Guilty? , Vienna 1929, Under Indictment , Berlin 1960
  • The Iron Cross , 1917
  • The Home of the Free , 1918
  • For the Defense , 1919
  • It is the Law , 1922
  • The Adding Machine , 1923, German premiere in Berlin 1947, German textbook Frankfurt / Main 2001
  • The Mongrel , 1924 (based on a novel by Hermann Bahr )
  • The Sidewalks of New York , 1925 (published 1934 as Three Plays Without Words )
  • Is He Guilty? , 1927
  • Wake Up, Jonathan , 1928 (with Hatcher Hughes )
  • The Gay White Way , 1928
  • Close Harmony , 1929 (with Dorothy Parker )
  • Cock Robin , 1929 (with Philip Barry )
  • Street Scene (street scene), 1929, German premiere in Berlin 1930
  • The Subway , 1929
  • See Naples and Die , 1930
  • The Left Bank , 1931
  • Counselor-at-Law , 1931
  • The House in Blind Alley: A Play in Three Acts , 1932
  • We, The People , 1933
  • Judgment Day , 1934
  • Two Plays , 1935 ( Between Two Worlds / Not for Children )
  • Black Sheep , 1938
  • American Landscape , 1938
  • Two On an Island , 1940 (music by Kurt Weill ), German Zwei in Manhattan , Berlin 1960
  • Flight to the West , 1941
  • The Talley Method , 1941
  • A New Life , 1944
  • Dream Girl (The Dreaming Girl), 1946
  • The Grand Tour , 1952, German Die große Reise , Berlin 1960
  • The Winner , 1954
  • Cue for Passion , 1959
  • Love Among the Ruins , 1963 (originally 1951)
  • Court of Last Resort , 1965

Novels

  • On Trial , 1915 (based on the play of the same name)
  • Papa Looks for Something , 1926 (unpublished)
  • A Voyage to Purilia , New York 1930 (previously published in New Yorker )
  • Imperial City , New York 1937, German people on Broadway , Frankfurt / Main 1952
  • The Show Must Go On , New York 1949, German The game goes on , Konstanz 1951

Considerations

  • The Playwright as Director , in: Theater Arts Monthly May 13, 1929
  • Organized Charity Turns Censor , in: Nation 132, June 1931
  • The Joys of Pessimism , in: Forum 86, July 1931
  • Sex in the Modern Theater , in: Harper's 164, May 1932
  • Theater Alliance: A Cooperative Repertory Project , in: Theater Arts Monthly June 19, 1935
  • The Supreme Freedom , 1949
  • Conformity in the Arts , 1953
  • Entertainment in the Age of McCarthy , in: New Republic 176, April 1953
  • The Living Theater , Harper & Bros 1959
  • Minority Report , Autobiography, New York 1964
  • Author! Author! , in: American Heritage April 16, 1965

Filmography (selection)

  • 1917: On Trial
  • 1922: For the Defense
  • 1924: It is the Law
  • 1928: On Trial
  • 1930: Oh, Sailor behave
  • 1931: Street Scene
  • 1933: Counselor at Law
  • 1939: On Trial
  • 1948: Dream Girl
  • 1969: The Adding Machine

literature

  • RL Collins: The Playwright and the Press: Elmer Rice an His Critics , in: Theater Annual 7, 1949
  • Robert Goode Hogan: The Independence of Elmer Rice , Twayne Publishers Inc., New York 1965
  • Jean Gould: Elmer Rice , in: ders .: Modern American Playwrights , New York 1966, pages 8-25
  • William R. Elwood: An Interview with Elmer Rice on Expressionism , in: Educational Theater Journal 20, No. 1 March 1968
  • Frank Durham: Elmer Rice , Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois 1970
  • Malcom Goldstein: The Political Stage , New York 1974
  • Anthony F. Palmieri: Elmer Rice: A Playwright's Vision of America , Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1980
  • Fred Dayton Behringer: The Political Theater of Elmer Rice , University of Texas, 1980
  • Christopher WE Bigsby: A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama , Volume 1, Cambridge 1982
  • Bernard F. Dukore: American Dramatists, 1918-1945 , New York 1984
  • JT Dorsey: Our Decentralized Literature , Amherst / Mass. 1986, pages 88-106
  • Michael Vanden Heuvel: Elmer Rice: A Research and Production Sourcebook , Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996
  • Barry Witham: Between Two Worlds: Elmer Rice Chairs the Thirties Debate , in: Norma Jenckes (Ed.): New Readings in American Drama: Something's Happening Here , New York: Peter Lang, 2002

Film portrait: by actor Jon Favreau in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle , 1994

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Paul B. Reuben , accessed July 2011.
  2. ^ Hubert Zapf: The belated genre: the American modern drama. In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 283-305, here pp. 289f.
  3. ^ Hubert Zapf: The belated genre: the American modern drama. In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 283-305, here p. 290.
  4. ↑ a b Kindler's New Literature Lexicon in the Munich 1988 edition
  5. ↑ 1947, based on texts by Langston Hughes . See street scene
  6. ^ Members: Elmer Rice. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 21, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Rice, Elmer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reizenstein, Elmer (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1967
Place of death Southampton