Elmer Rice

Elmer Rice was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays The Adding Machine and his Pulitzer Prizewinning drama of New York tenement life, Street Scene .

Rice was born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein at 127 East 90th Street in New York City, New York. His grandfather was a political activist in the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. After the failure of that political upheaval, he emigrated to the United States where he became a businessman. He spent most of his retirement years living with the Rice family and developed a close relationship with his grandson Elmer, who became a politically motivated writer and shared his grandfathers liberal and pacifist politics. A staunch atheist, his grandfather may also have influenced Elmer in his feelings about religion as he refused to attend Hebrew school or to have a bar mitzvah. In contrast, Rices relationship with father was very distant. As he wrote in his autobiography, his grandfather and his Uncle Will, both of whom boarded with the family, made up for the affection and attention his father withheld. A child of the tenements, Rice spent much of his youth reading, to his familys consterna

Source: Wikipedia