[ad_1]
Playwright, copywriter, and screenwriter Robert E. Somerfeld died final week. He was 90.
Born in Chicago to Mary Somerfeld (née Rose) and Moses Somerfeld, Robert had his first
manufacturing as knowledgeable author at age 13 with Junior Junction at ABC Radio Network. He authored prize-winning books on psychological magic in 1951 and 1952 and graduated from the University of Illinois in 1953, the place he edited a school humor journal and performed school basketball.
After attending graduate college at UCLA, Robert went on to grow to be a Clio award-winning advert company copywriter in New York and Los Angeles. He had a strong freelance profession writing for main firms reminiscent of IBM, Mobil, and Pfizer. In 1963, he wrote the acclaimed brief movie Weekend Pass, which launched his screenwriting profession. Throughout the Nineteen Sixties, he pitched, developed, and accomplished quite a few TV films (together with Love Hate Love with Ryan O’Neal and Lesley Ann Warren), function movies, and TV reveals. Rod Serling, a good friend and mentor, recalled Robert as “an enormous talent with an unerring sense of humor.”
But he might have been finest often called an absurdist playwright of such one-act performs reminiscent of The Silent Men (La MaMa), The Projection Room (Lucille Lortel Theatre), and Yo Yo (Ensemble Studio Theatre), all produced in New York’s Off- and Off-Off-Broadway circle within the late Nineteen Sixties and ’70s. Other theatre credit embody Richie (Orpheum Theatre, 1980) and Whistler’s Mummy (a staged studying with Kathleen Chalfant, directed by David Schweitzer, at Playwrights Horizons in 2007).
Honors and awards embody the distinguished Audrey Wood National Playwriting Award for his first full-length play, Hugger, Mugger (1976), and the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Award for Revelation Pie (1990). His 40+ performs had been carried out internationally, with favorable opinions in The New York Times, the L.A. Times and the Village Voice. He was a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Westport Theatre Group, and the Circle Rep Playwright Project, and was a faithful mentor to many younger playwrights and screenwriters. He additionally taught writing to blind and low-vision college students at NYC’s Lighthouse Guild. Richard Kostelanetz, creator of the guide, The End of Intelligent Writing, known as Somerfeld “one of the most interesting recent playwrights.”
He is survived by his spouse of 53 years, author Nancy Swallow Somerfeld, his two daughters (additionally writers), Gretchen Somerfeld and Erika Somerfeld, and his stepson, Jesse Daughtrey.
Gretchen Somerfeld is an NYU Tisch graduate and screenwriter whose work focuses on historic drama, in addition to adaptation. Secret Weapon, her screenplay on actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr, has obtained the Alfred P. Sloan award, the Writers Lab/Meryl Streep honor, inclusion within the Film Independent Writers Lab, and obtained a staged studying on the Hamptons International Film Festival.