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Elmer Rice (1892–1967)

Author of The Adding Machine

33+ Works 360 Members 10 Reviews

About the Author

A native of New York City, Rice studied law and passed his bar exams. However, he immediately began writing, and On Trial (1914), which employed a flashback technique, made Rice an important playwright at age 22. He proceeded to study under Hatcher Hughes at Columbia University, where he also show more directed. He helped found the Playwrights' Company in 1938, the Dramatists Guild, and other groups. In 1951 he came to the defense of actors whose allegedly left-wing associations were causing them to lose their jobs. During his 45 years in the theater, Rice wrote 50 full-length plays, 4 novels, and several film and television scripts, as well as his autobiography and The Living Theater (1939), which appraises the theater in terms of the social and economic forces affecting its development. His two masterpieces are The Adding Machine (1923), an expressionistic comedy wherein the hero remains a cipher in mechanized society, and Street Scene (1929), which was originally entitled Landscape with Figures because Rice considered "the [tenement] house as the real protagonist of the drama." The plot's crime passionel is but one aspect of the crowded panorama of tenement life. Robert Hogan writes in assessing Rice's career, "Rice has produced a remarkable body of work---large, varied, experimental andhonest . . . . As a consistently experimental playwright he is rivalled in our theater only by O'Neill."Rice won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Street Scene. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery (image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)

Works by Elmer Rice

Associated Works

Holiday Inn [1942 film] (1942) — Writer — 275 copies
Famous American Plays of the 1920s (1959) — Contributor — 139 copies
Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre: Second Series (1947) — Contributor — 81 copies
The Theatre Guild Anthology (1936) — Contributor — 62 copies
50 Best Plays of the American Theatre [4-volume set] (1969) — Contributor — 33 copies
Best American Plays, Supplementary Volume, 1918-1958 (1961) — Contributor — 28 copies
Three Dramas of American Realism (1961) — Contributor — 28 copies
Street Scene [vocal score] (1981) — Book author — 12 copies
Reader's Digest Condensed Books 1950 v01 (1950) — Contributor — 4 copies
Contemporary Drama American Plays II (1938) — Contributor — 4 copies

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Reviews

The stifling oppression of poverty and the tragedy born from it is the subject of this mature film from King Vidor. Based on Elmer Rice's Pulitzer Prize-winning play this Samuel Goldwyn-produced film starring a young Sylvia Sidney is full of insight and maturity.

Though the entire film takes place on the steps of a tenement in New York where getting out is only a dream, only the first 15 minutes or so give evidence of its stage origins. Director Vidor, one of the greats who was always innovative, uses photographer George Barnes' camera and a fine early score — very early — from Alfred Newman to give the viewer a real feel for lives being led in sometimes quiet, and sometimes not so quiet, desperation. Soon you are lost in their world and begin to understand that much of what happens is simply born of poverty and having nowhere else to turn.

Much of the film consists of dialog between neighbors living in cramped and hot quarters. There are Jews and Germans and Irish, Rice's words and Vidor's direction letting their lives unfold through the street scene in front of their building during a scorching summer. A fire hydrant may offer some relief to the small children in the street but it will take more than water to cool down others.

At the center of everything is Mrs. Murrant (Estelle Taylor) and her daughter Rose (Sylvia Sidney). Taylor gives an excellent performance as a woman reaching out for any happiness she can find in the slums. Her husband, and Rose's father, provides food and shelter but is so caught up in his own unhappiness that he has no love or tenderness left to give.

Only trying to get more from life than just looking after someone else will lead the lonely mother of Rose into the other arms. Her actions are not lost on the other women in the building, especially the snide Mrs. Jones. Neither is it lost on her son Willie's friends. When Rose's father begins to suspect, tragedy cannot be far behind.

Sylvia underplays her Rose with sincerity and maturity. She sees both sides and understands that it is their environment which is at the heart of all their problems. She herself is loved by a young Jewish boy whose mother likes Rose but knows his focus on getting out falters whenever she is near. Rose will grow up in an instant, when her life and that of her brother Willie's will change forever.

There are some quietly powerful scenes in this talky but rewarding drama from the very early days of sound film. Rose attempting to cross the street while a young newsboy tries to get her to purchase his last paper, not knowing the sensational headline touches her personally, is quite moving. It is still a powerful scene as an ambulance pulls away from Rose, taking with it her youth in these slums.

There is a rich and mature ending with Vidor's camera following Rose toward the New York skyline of the time, offering hope, and perhaps a future born from tragedy. What begins as a somewhat dated early talkie eventually becomes a moving and touching film of real substance for those with patience.

King Vidor is all-too-often neglected when the subject of great directors comes up, but his body of work, spanning silent and sound pictures, proves he was a director who could handle even the most sensitive material and create something memorable. Beware of shortened and/or censored prints of this one.
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Matt_Ransom | 2 other reviews | Nov 26, 2023 |
It's interesting that so many bks that I add to my bkshelves here can't be found in the already existing database. This particular play is important as a commentary on the political machinations invoking "patriotism" for the destruction of civil liberties. Given that it's inspired by the nazi rise to power thru civil-liberties-curtailing after the burning of the Reichstag (German Parliament) bldg in Germany in the early 1930s & that it was written when that subject was topical, it's educational to compare it to the parallel curtailing of civil liberties in the USA after the mayhem of September 11, 2001.

Anyway, 2 days after writing that intro, I just finished this bk. Because it's in a fictional context, it becomes more generally applicable to any time & not dependent on topicality. Do you ever wonder when the US government & the people of the US became aware of the concentration camps? This play was performed in New York City, at the Belasco Theater on September 12, 1934. One of the main protaganists, when denouncing the dictator, proclaims: "I charge him with the murder of the thousands of innocent men and women who have perished on the scaffold, in the torture chamber, and in the concentration camps." It seems to me that I was raised w/ the vague notion that the US didn't really know about the concentration camps (or the extent of them) until they were liberated in 1945. Makes a feller wonder, eh?
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tENTATIVELY | 1 other review | Apr 3, 2022 |
A very good play. I like how creative it was and how all of the people's last bames were numbers. Could this symbolize that he is merely a number with respect for the company? Who wouldn't be mad enough to kill their boss after they had been replaced with a number machine after working at the company for over twenty years. The boss didn't even know his name!??! I did like, however, the ending where he and his late co-worker ended up finding love in the Elesian Fields of anciet Greece
 
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powell.442 | Feb 27, 2008 |
I was in the cast of this play in an Amateur production. The monotony of the working world and the theme of being only pawns in a bigger game is fascinating. I enjoyed doing this play and would love to do it again.
1 vote
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smudgedlens | 1 other review | Nov 15, 2007 |

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