Eric Blau

Milton Eric Blau (June 1, 1921 – February 17, 2009) was an author and is best known as the creator of the Off Broadway show Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Blau was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on June 1, 1921 to Hungarian immigrants who were residents of Manhattan's Lower East Side. He attended the City College of New York, which he left before graduating following an argument with a professor about William Shakespeare. Blau served in Europe during World War II in the United States Army Signal Corps, where he wrote poems for French journals that he had translated into French.

After completing his military service, he founded the journal Masses and Mainstream and worked as a writer and in public relations. He was a ghostwriter for sports instruction booklets on behalf of basketball player Bob Cousy and baseball's Roger Maris. Together with cartoonist Roy Doty, he created The Adventures of Danny Dee, an early show for children with animation that broadcast starting in 1953 on the New York City affiliate of the DuMont Television Network.

Although the similarity was lost as he grew older, Blau had an uncanny resemblance to Groucho Marx, and would often be approached by fans of the comedian.

Among the books he authored was The hero of the Slocum disaster, an historical novel exploring the infamous 1904 sinking of the General Slocum. He received the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the mystery novel The Keys to Billy Tillio.

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