RICE, ELMER

Rice, Elmer: translation

(1892-1967)

Elmer Leopold Reizenstein was born in New York and studied law before giving it up for playwriting, renaming himself Elmer Rice. He wrote plays ranging from gritty realism toexpressionistfantasy. His first successful drama,On Trial(1914), made use of his legal background in its depiction of a sensational murder case and employed cinematic-style flashbacks in the revelation of its plot. Rice's next few plays also had legal settings, includingFor the Defense(1919) andIt Is the Law(1922). He collaborated withHatcher Hugheson a vehicle forMinnie Maddern FiskecalledWake Up, Jonathan! (1921).Rice's most important work of the early 1920s wasThe Adding Machine(1923), which ranks alongside Eugene O'Neill'sThe Emperor Jones(1920) andThe Hairy Ape(1922) as among the finest examples ofexpressionismseen on Broadway. Rice collaborated with Dorothy Parker onClose Harmony(1924), but it flopped, after which he worked with Philip Barry onCock Robin(1928), a modest success.

Following two 1929 plays,The SubwayandSee Naples and Die, Rice offered the Pulitzer PRiZE-winningStreet Scene, a hardhittingnaturalistic melodramaset on the steps of a tenement and focusing on the frictions in New York City's immigrant melting pot. In 1931, Rice wrote two successful plays,The Left BankandCoun-sellor-at-Law,* but his firebrand leftist politics led him to spend much of his energy in the 1930s on propagandistic plays. His biggest late-career hit,Dream Girl* (1945), was written as a vehicle for his wife, actress Betty Field.*

Rice directed many of his own plays, includingStreet SceneandCounsellor-at-Law, as well as plays by others, notably Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winningAbe Lincoln in Illinois* (1938). He served as regional director for the Federal Theatre Project,* but resigned when censorship was threatened. Rice wrote two memoirs,The Living Theatre(1959) andMinority Report(1963), was a founder of the Playwrights' Company* in 1938, and he was an outspoken opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Communist "witch hunt" blacklisting of theatre and film writers.