S. N. Behrman
| S.N. Behrman | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Samuel Nathaniel Behrman June 9, 1893 Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | September 9, 1973 (aged 80) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter, writer |
| Years active | 1948-1961 |
Samuel Nathaniel Behrman (June 9, 1893 – September 9, 1973) was an American playwright, screenwriter, biographer, and longtime writer for The New Yorker. His son is the composer David Behrman.
Behrman's family immigrated from what is now Lithuania to the United States, where Samuel Nathaniel Behrman was born, the youngest of three sons, in a tenement in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1893. His parents spoke little English, and his father was a Talmudic scholar. (Though known for his sophisticated comedies and worldly characters, Behrman fondly dramatized his family-centered, impoverished childhood in one of his last plays, the 1958 The Cold Wind and the Warm, an autobiographical drama starring Eli Wallach, Maureen Stapleton, and Morris Carnovsky.) His own path, however, took him far from the Orthodox world of his parents.
A schoolmate and intimate friend, Daniel Asher, brought him to the theater when he was eleven to see Devil's Island, inspiring in him a love of the stage. "When he was a boy, Behrman saw all the famous plays and players of the first decade [of the twentieth century] as an usher in a Worcester theater." At fifteen, he ran away from home with another schoolmate for four days and stayed in New York City. Life in Worcester began to appear increasingly limited. At seventeen, he saw a production of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra at Boston's Park Street Theatre that determined him on his course; that play "seduced me to the theatre," he later remarked. After graduating from high school, Behrman attempted a career as an actor on the vaudeville circuit. Bad health forced him to quit, and he returned home to Worcester and attended Clark University. There he studied under the noted psychologist G. Stanley Hall and heard Sigmund Freud lecture on his 1909 American tour. He immersed himself in the plays of Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Arthur Pinero, and Maurice Maeterlinck.
College was a mixed experience for Behrman. He was repeatedly suspended for failing mandatory physical education classes. Daniel Asher, who devotedly believed in his friend's future, urged Behrman to take courses at nearby Harvard University. There he enrolled in an English composition class with the renowned writing instructor, Charles Townsend Copeland. He was suspended at Clark again in his sophomore year, at which time he transferred to Harvard. (in 1949, Clark University awarded Behrman an honorary degree.) While in Copeland's class in 1915, he sold a short story to the magazine The Parisienne. He then submitted one of his dramatic manuscripts to George Pierce Baker, whose playwriting workshop was one of the university's most respected courses. (Other famous alumni of the class include Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Wolfe, Sidney Howard, and Philip Barry.) Baker was impressed with Behrman's student work. In the New York Tribune nineteen years later, he would title an essay "Baker's Last Drama Lecture: From Aeschylus to Behrman," in tribute to his famous student. In 1916, Behrman was the only undergraduate in the legendary "47 Workshop" playwriting class, where he studied George Meredith's comedy. He earned his B.A. at Harvard and went on to graduate studies at Columbia University.
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