Rice, Elmer (Leopold)

Rice, Elmer [Leopold] [né Reizenstein] (1892–1967), playwright. The native New Yorker studied law and began to practice before switching to the theatre. In a career that lasted more than forty years, he had more than twenty plays produced on Broadway, ranging from starkly realistic drama to comic fantasy. His earliest work leaned heavily on his experience as a lawyer, and his first drama, On Trial (1914), provided one of the most sensational first nights in theatre history. For the Defense (1919) and It Is the Law (1922) followed, as did a vehicle for Mrs. Fiske written with Hatcher Hughes, Wake Up, Jonathan! (1921). The Adding Machine (1923) was a landmark expressionistic fantasy. Close Harmony (1924), written with Dorothy Parker, was well received but failed, while his mystery Cock Robin (1928), written with Philip Barry, enjoyed a modest run. He earned a Pulitzer Prize for his unflinching slice of New York life, Street Scene (1929), but two other plays the same year, The Subway and See Naples and Die, were unsuccessful. Rice deftly probed American expatriates in Paris in The Left Bank (1931), then a month later returned to the legal world with the powerful drama Counsellor‐at‐Law. For the rest of the 1930s he wrote largely well‐intentioned propaganda pieces, which failed to please critics and playgoers: We, the People (1932), Judgment Day (1934), Between Two Worlds (1934), and American Landscape (1938). Of his later works, such as Two on an Island (1940), Flight to the West (1940), A New Life (1943), The Grand Tour (1951), Not for Children (1951), The Winner (1954), and Cue for Passion (1958), his most interesting play was Dream Girl (1945), written for his wife, Betty Field. Rice directed most of his own plays, as well as those by others, including Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938). He served as a regional director of the Federal Theatre Project and was a founder of the Playwrights' Company. Autobiography: Minority Report, 1963.