LIST OF JEWISH AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHTS

''This is a list of famous Jewish American playwrights. For other famous Jewish Americans, see List of Jewish Americans.''

★ Lynn Ahrens^[1]

★ Sholom Aleichem^[2]

★ Woody Allen (1935–) Academy Award-winning film director, writer, actor, and comedian^[3]

★ George Axelrod^[4]

★ Jeff Baron

★ S. N. Behrman^[5]

★ David Belasco^[6]

★ Saul Bellow^[7]

★ Mel Brooks^[8]

★ Paddy Chayefsky^[9]

★ Betty Comden & Adolph Green^[10]

★ Norman Corwin^[11]

★ Howard Dietz^[12]

★ Eve Ensler^[13]

★ Harvey Fierstein^[14]

★ Edna Ferber^[15]

★ Herb Gardner^[16]

★ Larry Gelbart^[17]

★ Josh Greenfeld^[18]

★ Oscar Hammerstein II^[19]

★ Otto Harbach^[20]

★ Yip Harburg^[21]

★ Moss Hart^[22]

★ Ben Hecht^[23]

★ Lillian Hellman^[24]

★ Peretz Hirshbein^[25]

★ Israel Horovitz^[26]

★ Sidney Howard^[27]

★ George Jessel^[28]

★ George S. Kaufman

★ Sidney Kingsley^[29]

★ Tony Kushner^[30]

★ James Lapine^[31]

★ Arthur Laurents^[32]

★ H. Leivick^[33]

★ Alan Jay Lerner^[34]

★ Ira Levin^[35]

★ Craig Lucas^[36]

★ David Mamet^[37]

★ Donald Margulies^[38]

★ Arthur Miller^[39]

★ Itamar Moses

★ Clifford Odets^[40]

★ Carl Reiner^[41]

★ Elmer Rice^[42]

★ Morrie Ryskind^[43]

★ Rod Serling^[44]

★ Irwin Shaw^[45]

★ Wallace Shawn^[46]

★ Sidney Sheldon^[47]

★ Martin Sherman^[48]

★ Neil Simon^[49]

★ Isaac Bashevis Singer^[50]

★ Jill Soloway — playwright, television writer^[51]

★ Aaron Sorkin (1961–) screenwriter, producer and playwright^[52]

★ Gertrude Stein^[53]

★ Joseph Stein^[54]

★ Jeffrey Sweet^[55]

★ Alfred Uhry^[56]

★ Wendy Wasserstein (1950–2006) playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University, also the recipient of the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama^[57]

★ Jerome Weidman^[58]

★ Franz Werfel^[59]

★ Norman Wexler screenwriter of "Saturday Night Fever","Joe", "Serrpic", "Mandingo"

Contents

Footnotes

Footnotes

1. [1]
2. [2] "Recognized as the best Jewish writer who ever lived in Russia and wrote in Yiddish..."
3.
4. [3]
5. [4] "He was the third child of Joseph and Zelda Behrman, Jewish immigrants living on Worcester's East Side."
6. [5] "It was staged by the young David Belasco, a Sephardic Jew..."
7. [6] "American author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, one of the major representatives of Jewish-American writers..."
8. [7] "as the 77-year-old Brooklyn-born Jewish comedian put it unrepentantly..."
9. [8]
10. [9]
11. [10] "Corwin, who is Jewish, started his journalism career sans a high school..."
12. [11]
13. [12] [13] "The celebrated actress-playwright, born to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, sees herself as “a Jewish being. My mother looked like Doris Day. I was a dead ringer for Anne Frank. I came out Jewish.”"
14. [14] "Harvey Fierstein, nice Jewish boy from Bensonhurst, dressed in holiday finery..."
15. [15]
16. [16]
17. [17] "Besides writing the Oscar-nominated screenplay "Oh, God!" the Jewish comedy screenwriter is famous..."
18. [18] "He, Josh Greenfeld, was a Jewish writer from Greenwich Village."
19. [19] "When American Jewish songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote Oklahoma!, they were, Felstiner argues, doing what all children of immigrant parents do: desiring to possess the new land."
20. [20]
21. [21] [22]
22. [23] (on Hart and George S. Kaufman) "Both were tall, dark and Jewish, and both had private demons..."
23. [24] "Ben Hecht was an American Jewish journalist, novelist, and playwright.
24. [25] [26] "She is Jewish."
25. [27]
26. [28] [29]
27. [30] "Sidney Howard was of course Jewish having emigrated to the United States from Germany twenty years before.
28. [31]
29. [32] "second-generation American Jewish writers: Miller, Odets, Sidney Kingsley"
30. [33] "The gay, Jewish socialist raised in Louisiana and educated at Columbia and NYU most enjoys addressing audiences that are receptive to ideas for change and progress."
31. [34] "finest Jewish playwrights, including Elizabeth Swados, William Finn and James Lapine, Herb Gardner..."
32. [35] "...the creation of Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim: four gay Jewish men, all working at the very top of their craft." [36] "Laurents also writes extensively on being gay, Jewish, left-wing..."
33. [37]
34. [38] [39]
35. [40] "Dickens wasn’t Jewish, in case you were wondering. But Bette just did a remake of The Stepford Wives, based on the novel by Ira Levin, who is."
36. [41] "Besides the mainstage premiere of a major new work by acclaimed Jewish playwright Craig Lucas..."
37. [42] "David Mamet is a Jewish writer, though until recently few accounts of his life or work suggested as much..."
38. [43] "he was Donald Margulies, the darling of regional theater, the state-sanctioned "Jewish American Playwright""
39. [44] "Let's have a look. Miller, like myself, (and like Ed Siegel) is a Jewish-American, meaning, simply..."
40. [45] "...introduced the work of Jewish playwrights Aaron Hoffman, Clifford Odets, and Paddy Chayefsky to contemporary audiences..."
41. [46] "But consider the milieu the show's Jewish creator, Carl Reiner, was trying to portray: the heavily Jewish New York comedy scene out of which came Your Show..."
42. [47] "Elmer Rice, nee Reizenstein, an American/Jewish writer of the ‘20s and ‘30s, did not necessarily focus on Jewish characters and issues..."
43. [48] "George and Ira Gershwin team up with another Jewish team—George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind..."
44. [49] "Rod was Jewish and that doesn't necessarily mean that it should have meant more..."
45. [50] "Amis and I often talked about Jewish matters, such as novels by American Jews, like Irwin Shaw – that dates it."
46. [51]
47. [52]
48. [53]""Being Jewish and being gay are the most important parts of me," he explains, "and they’re the DNA in my bones.""
49. [54] "Broadway Bound is the least known play of prolific Jewish playwright Neil Simon’s trio of comical semi-autobiographical dramas."
50. [55]
51. 'Soloway' — [56] "One aspect of herself that Soloway reveals in her book, due out in paperback next month (published by Free Press), is that she, a self-described "Jewess," feels a sisterly solidarity with Monica Lewinsky, as well as Chandra Levy"
52. 'Sorkin' — [57] "...says the Jewish Sorkin..."
53. [58] "Scholars of the life of Gertrude Stein were recently startled to learn that in 1938 the prominent Jewish-American writer had spearheaded a campaign urging..."
54. [59]
55. [60]
56. [61] "I’ve probably come late to the party accepting, and being proud of, the fact that I’m Jewish. But I’m here. Am I an observant Jew? No. Maybe I’ll get there."
57. 'Wasserstein' — [62] "“My father loved me dearly, but I’m not a Jewish American Princess,” playwright Wendy Wasserstein said. “I’m a Jewish mother, but I’m not Molly Goldberg.”"
58. [63]
59. [64] "Werfel was a German-speaking Jew and never forgot his Jewish background..."