Name Sidney Kingsley Role Dramatist | Education Cornell University | |
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Died March 20, 1995, Oakland, New Jersey, United States Spouse Madge Evans (m. 1939–1981) Books 3 Plays about Crime and Criminals, Night Life Movies Dead End, Detective Story, Men in White, Homecoming Similar People Madge Evans, Philip Yordan, Lee Grant, William Wyler, Lillian Hellman | ||
Sidney kingsley the dramatists guild
Sidney Kingsley (22 October 1906 – 20 March 1995) was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Men in White in 1934.
Contents
- Sidney kingsley the dramatists guild
- Sidney kingsley the patriots the genesis
- Life and career
- Works
- References
Sidney kingsley the patriots the genesis
Life and career
Kingsley was born Sidney Kirschner in New York. He studied at Cornell University, where he began his career writing plays for the college dramatic club. He joined the Group Theater for the production of his first major work. In 1933 the company performed his play Men in White. Set in a hospital, the play dealt with the issue of illegal abortion, 1930s medical and surgical practices and the struggle of one promising physician who must choose to dedicate his life to medicine or devote himself to his fiancee. The play was a box-office smash.
Kingsley followed this success with the play Dead End in 1935. A story about slum housing and its connection to crime, the piece was also fairly successful, eventually spawning the Dead End Kids. The two plays which followed, the anti-war Ten Million Ghosts of 1936 and The World We Make of 1939, were flops and had short runs. But in 1943 Kingsley returned to his previous success with the historical drama The Patriots. This play, which told the story of Thomas Jefferson and his activities in the young American republic, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Kingsley continued writing for the theater late into his career, adapting Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon for the stage in 1951, and writing Lunatics and Lovers in 1954 and Night Life in 1962.
In addition to his work for the stage, Kingsley wrote a number of scripts for Hollywood productions, mostly based on his own work.
His marriage to actress Madge Evans in 1939 lasted until her death in 1981
Meeting him in 1957, Michael Korda described Kingsley as "a short, powerfully built man with broad shoulders, a big head, and rough-hewn features that made him look like a bust by Sir Jacob Epstein. Kingsley hired Korda as an assistant to do research for a screenplay he was writing for CBS on the Hungarian Revolution which was eventually canceled.
In 1965 Kingsley was elected president of the American Dramatists Guild and in 1983, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Kingsley died of a stroke on March 20, 1995, in his home in Oakland, New Jersey.